Jan and Her Job
by L. Allen Harker · English · Gutenberg #29945 · 503,404 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Jan and Her Job
Author: L. Allen Harker
Release date: September 9, 2009 [eBook #29945]
Language: English
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JAN AND HER JOB
[Illustration: "But surely," said Peter, "I _am_ your job--part of it,
anyway."]
JAN AND HER JOB
BY
L. ALLEN HARKER
AUTHOR OF "A ROMANCE OF THE NURSERY"; "MISS ESPERANCE AND MR. WYCHERLY";
"MR. WYCHERLY'S WARDS"; "THE FFOLLIOTS OF REDMARLEY," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
***
Published March, 1917
TO
F. R. P.
"_Chary of praise and prodigal of counsel--
Who but thou?_"
R. L. S.
_CONTENTS_
CHAPTER PAGE
I. JAN 1
II. JAN'S MAIL 13
III. BOMBAY 19
IV. THE BEGINNING OF THE JOB 39
V. THE CHILDREN 52
VI. THE SHADOW BEFORE 62
VII. THE HUMAN TOUCH 78
VIII. THE END OF THE DREAM 91
IX. MEG 97
X. PLANS 124
XI. THE STATE OF PETER 139
XII. "THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES" 149
XIII. THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 162
XIV. PERPLEXITIES 173
XV. WREN'S END 184
XVI. "THE BLUDGEONINGS OF CHANCE" 201
XVII. "THOUGH AN HOST SHOULD ENCAMP AGAINST
ME" 212
XVIII. MEG AND CAPTAIN MIDDLETON 220
XIX. THE YOUNG IDEA 240
XX. "ONE WAY OF LOVE" 252
XXI. ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE 261
XXII. THE ENCAMPMENT 276
XXIII. TACTICS 287
XXIV. "THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID" 303
XXV. A DEMONSTRATION IN FORCE 325
XXVI. IN WHICH SEVERAL PEOPLE SPEAK THEIR MINDS 339
XXVII. AUGUST, 1914 351
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
"But surely," said Peter, "I _am_ your job--part of it,
anyway" _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
"It would make it easier for both of us if you'd face it,
my dear" 66
He washed his small sister with thoroughness and despatch,
pointing out ... that he "went into all the
corners" 156
William rushed out to welcome the strangers. Two ...
nice children 188
JAN AND HER JOB
CHAPTER I
JAN
She was something of a puzzle to the other passengers. They couldn't
quite place her. She came on board the P. and O. at Marseilles. Being
Christmas week the boat was not crowded, and she had a cabin to herself
on the spar deck, so there was no "stable-companion" to find out
anything about her.
The sharp-eyed Australian lady, who sat opposite her at the Purser's
table, decided that she was not married, or even engaged, as she wore no
rings of any kind. Besides, her name, "Miss Janet Ross," figured in the
dinner-list and was plainly painted on her deck-chair. At meals she sat
beside the Purser, and seemed more or less under his wing. People at her
table decided that she couldn't be going out as a governess or she would
hardly be travelling first class, and yet she did not look of the sort
who globe-trot all by themselves.
Rather tall, slender without being thin, she moved well. Her ringless
hands were smooth and prettily shaped, so were her slim feet, and always
singularly well-shod.
Perhaps her chief outward characteristic was that she looked
delightfully fresh and clean. Her fair skin helped to this effect, and
the trim suitability of her clothes accentuated it. And yet there was
nothing challenging or particularly noticeable in her personality.
Her face, fresh-coloured and unlined, was rather round. Her eyes
well-opened and blue-grey, long-sighted and extremely honest. Her hair,
thick and naturally wavy, had been what hairdressers call "mid-brown,"
but was now frankly grey, especially round the temples; and the grey
hair puzzled people, so that opinions differed widely regarding her age.
The five box-wallahs (gentlemen engaged in commercial pursuits are so
named in the East to distinguish them from the Heaven-Born in the
various services that govern India), who, with the Australian lady, sat
opposite to her at table, decided that she was really young and
prematurely grey. Between the courses they diligently took stock of her.
The Australian lady disagreed with them. She declared Miss Ross to be
middle-aged, to look younger than she was. In this the Australian lady
was quite sincere. She could not conceive of any _young_ woman
neglecting the many legitimate means that existed of combating this most
distressing semblance--if semblance it was--of age.
The Australian lady set her down as a well-preserved forty at least.
Mr. Frewellen, the oldest and crossest and greediest of the five
box-wallahs, declared that he would lay fifteen rupees to five annas
that she was under thirty; that her eyes were sad, and it was probably
trouble that had turned her hair. At his time of life, he could tell a
young woman when he saw one. No painted old harridan could deceive
_him_. After all, if Miss Ross _had_ grey hair, she had plenty of it,
and it was her own. But Mr. Frewellen, who sat directly opposite her,
was prejudiced in her favour, for she always let him take her roll if it
was browner than his own. He also took her knife if it happened to be
sharper than the one he had, and he insisted on her listening to his
incessant grumbling as to the food, the service, the temperature, and
the general imbecility and baseness of his fellow-creatures.
Like the Ancient Mariner, he held her with his glittering spectacles.
Miss Ross trembled before his diatribes. He spoke in a loud and rumbling
voice, and made derogatory remarks about the other passengers as they
passed to their respective tables. She would thankfully have changed
hers, but that it might have seemed ungrateful to the Purser, into whose
charge she had been given by friends; and the Purser had been most kind
and attentive.
The Australian lady was sure that the Purser knew more about Miss Ross
than he would acknowledge--which he did. But when tackled by one
passenger about another, he was discreet or otherwise in direct ratio to
what he considered was the discretion of the questioner. And he was a
pretty shrewd judge of character. He had infinite opportunities of so
judging. A sea-voyage lays bare many secrets and shows up human nature
at its starkest.
Janet Ross did not seek to make friends, but kindly people who spoke to
her found her pleasant and not in the least disposed to be mysterious
when questioned, though she never volunteered any information about
herself. She was a good listener, and about the middle of any voyage
that is a quality supplying a felt want. Mankind in general finds his
own doings very interesting, and takes great pleasure in recounting the
same. Even the most energetic young passenger cannot play deck-quoits
all day, and mixed cricket matches are too heating to last long once
Aden is left behind. A great many people found it pleasant to drop into
a chair beside the quiet lady, who was always politely interested in
their remarks. She looked so cool and restful in her white frock and
shady hat. She did _not_ buy a solar topee at Port Said, for though this
was her first voyage she had not, it seemed, started quite unwarned.
In the middle of the Indian Ocean she suddenly found favour in the eyes
of Sir Langham Sykes, and when that was the case Sir Langham proclaimed
his preference to the whole ship. No one who attracted his notice could
remain in obscurity. When he was not eating he was talking, generally
about himself, though he was also fond of asking questions.
A short, stout man with a red face, little fierce blue eyes, a booming
voice, noisy laugh and a truculent, domineering manner, Sir Langham
made his presence felt wherever he was.
It was "her shape," as he called it, that first attracted his attention
to Miss Ross, as he watched her walking briskly round and round the
hurricane-deck for her morning constitutional.
"That woman moves well," he remarked to his neighbour; "wonder if she's
goin' out to be married. Nice-looking woman and pleasant, no frills
about her--sort that would be kind in illness."
And Sir Langham sighed. He couldn't take any exercise just then, for his
last attack of gout had been very severe, and his left foot was still
swathed and slippered.
There was a dance that night on the hurricane-deck, and Sir Langham,
while watching the dancers, talked at the top of his voice with the more
important lady passengers. On such occasions he claimed close intimacy
with the Reigning House, and at all times of day one heard such
sentences as, "And _I_ said to the Princess Henrietta," with a full
account of what he did say. And the things he declared he said, and the
stories he told, certainly suggested a doubt as to whether the ladies of
our Royal Family are quite as strait-laced as the ordinary public is led
to believe. But then one had only Sir Langham's word for it. There was
no possibility of questioning the Princess.
Presently Sir Langham got tired of trying to drown the band--it was such
a noisy band--and he hobbled down the companion on to the almost
deserted deck. Right up in the stern he spied Miss Ross, quite alone,
sitting under an electric light absorbed in a book. Beside her was an
empty chair with a comfortable leg-rest. Sir Langham never made any
bones about interrupting people. It would not, to him, have seemed
possible that a woman could prefer any form of literature to the charm
of his conversation. So with a series of grunts he lowered himself into
it, arranged his foot upon the rest, and, without asking permission, lit
a cigar.
"Don't you care for dancin'?" he asked.
She closed her book. "Oh, yes," she said, "but I don't know many men on
board, and there are such a lot of young people who do know one another.
It's pretty to watch them; but the night is pretty, too, don't you
think? The stars all seem so near compared to what they do at home."
"I've seen too many Eastern nights to take much stock in 'em now," he
said in a disparaging voice. "I take it this is all new to you--first
voyage, eh?"
"Yes, I've never been a long voyage before."
"Goin' to India, I suppose. You'd have started sooner if you'd been
goin' for the winter to Australia. Now what are you goin' to India
_for_?"
"To stay with my sister."
"Married sister?"
"Yes."
"Older than you, then, of course."
"No, younger."
"Much younger?"
"Three years."
"Is she like you?"
"Not in the least. She is a beautiful person."
"Been married long?"
"Between five and six years. I'm to take her home at the end of the cold
weather."
"Any kids?"
"Two."
"And you haven't been out before?"
"No; this is my first visit."
"She's been home, I suppose?"
"Yes, once."
"Is her husband in the Army?"
"No."
Had Sir Langham been an observant person he would have noted that her
very brief replies did not exactly encourage further questions. But his
idea of conversation was either a monologue or a means of obtaining
information, so he instantly demanded, "What does her husband do?"
The impulse of the moment urged her to reply, "What possible business is
it of yours _what_ he does?" But well-bred people do not yield to these
impulses, so she answered quietly, "He's in the P.W.D."
"Not a bad service, not a bad service, though not equal to the I.C.S.
They've had rather a scandal in it lately. Didn't you see about it in
the papers just before we left?"
At that moment Sir Langham was very carefully flicking the ash from the
end of his cigar, otherwise he might have observed that as he spoke his
companion flushed. A wave of warm colour surged over her face and bare
neck and receded again, leaving her very pale. Her hands closed over the
book lying in her lap, as if glad to hold on to something, and their
knuckles were white against the tan.
"Didn't you see it?" he repeated. "Some chap been found to have taken
bribes over contracts in a native state. Regular rumpus there's been.
Quite right, too; we sahibs must have clean hands. No dealing with brown
people if you haven't clean hands--can't have rupees sticking to 'em in
any Government transactions. Expect you'll hear all about it when you
get out there--makes a great sensation in any service does that sort of
thing. I don't remember the name of the chap--perhaps they didn't give
it--do you?"
"I didn't see anything about it," she said quietly. "I was very busy
just before I left, and hardly looked at a paper."
"Where is your sister?"
"In Bombay."
"Oh, got a billet there, has he? Expect you'll like Bombay; cheery
place, in the cold weather, but not a patch on Calcutta, to my mind. I
hear the Governor and his wife do the thing in style--hospitable, you
know; got private means, as people in that position always ought to
have."
"I don't suppose I shall go out at all," she said. "My sister is ill,
and I've got to look after her. Directly she is strong enough to travel
I shall bring her home."
"Oh, you _must_ see something of the social life of the place while
you're there. D'you know what I thought? I thought you were goin' out to
get married, and"--he continued gallantly--"I thought he was a deuced
lucky chap."
She smiled and shook her head. She was not looking at Sir Langham, but
at the long, white, moonlit pathway of foam left in the wake of the
ship.
"I say," he went on confidentially, "what's your Christian name? I'm
certain they don't call you Janet. Is it Nettie, now? I bet it's
Nettie!"
"My _family_," said Miss Ross somewhat coldly, "call me Jan."
"Nice little name," he exclaimed, "but more like a boy's. Now, I never
got a pet name. I started Langham, and Langham I've stopped, and I
flatter myself I've made the name known and respected."
He wanted her to look at him, and leaned towards her: "Look here, Miss
Ross, I'm goin' to ask you a funny question, and it's not one you can
ask most women--but you're a puzzle. You've got a face like a child, and
yet you're as grey as a badger. What _is_ your age?"
"I shall be twenty-eight in March."
She looked at him then, and her grey eyes were so full of amusement
that, incredulous as he usually was as to other people's statements, he
knew that she was speaking the truth.
"Then why the devil don't you _do_ something _to_ it?" he demanded.
She laughed. "I couldn't be bothered. And it might turn green, or
something. I don't mind it. It began when I was twenty-three."
"_I_ don't mind it either," Sir Langham declared magnanimously; "but
it's misleading."
"I'm sorry," she said demurely. "I wouldn't mislead anyone for the
world."
"Now, what age should you think _I_ am? But I suppose you know--that's
the worst of being a public character; when one gets nearly a column in
_Who's Who_, everybody knows all about one. That's the penalty of
celebrity."
"Do you mind people knowing your age?"
"Not I! Nor anything else about me. _I've_ never done anything to be
ashamed of. Quite the other way, I can assure you."
"How pleasant that must be," she said quietly.
Sir Langham turned and looked suspiciously at her; but her face was
guileless and calm, with no trace of raillery, her eyes still fixed on
the long bright track of foam.
"I suppose you, now," he muttered hoarsely, "always sleep well, go off
directly you turn in--eh?"
Her quiet eyes met his; little and fierce and truculent, but behind
their rather bloodshot boldness there lurked something else, and with a
sudden pang of pity she knew that it was fear, and that Sir Langham
dreaded the night.
"As a rule I do," she said gently; "but of course I've known what it is
to be sleepless, and it's horrid."
"It's hell," said Sir Langham, "and I'm in it every night this voyage,
for I've knocked off morphia and opiates--they were playing the deuce
with my constitution, and I've strength of mind for anything when I
fairly take hold. But it's awful. When d'you suppose natural sleep will
come back?"
She knew that he did not lack physical courage, that he had fearlessly
faced great dangers in many outposts of the world; but the demon of
insomnia had got a hold of Sir Langham, and he dreaded the night
unspeakably. At that moment there was something pathetic about the
little, boastful, filibustering man.
"I think you will sleep to-night," she said confidently, "especially if
you go to bed early."
She half rose as she spoke, but he put his hand on her arm and pressed
her down in her chair again.
"Don't go yet," he cried. "Keep on tellin' me I'll sleep, and then
perhaps I shall. You look as if you could will people to do things.
You're that quiet sort. Will me, there's a good girl. Tell me again I'll
sleep to-night."
It was getting late; the music had stopped and the dancers had
disappeared. Miss Ross did not feel over comfortable alone with Sir
Langham so far away from everybody else. Especially as she saw he was
excited and nervous. Had he been drinking? she wondered. But she
remembered that he had proclaimed far and wide that, because of his
gout, he'd made a vow to touch no form of "alcoholic liquor" on the
voyage, except on Christmas and New Year's Day. It was six days since
Christmas, and already Aden was left behind. No, it was just sheer
nervous excitement, and if she could do him any good....
"I feel sure you will sleep to-night," she said soothingly, "if you will
do as I tell you."
"I'll do any mortal thing. I've got a deck-cabin to myself. Will you
keep willin' me when you turn in?"
"Go to bed now," she said firmly. "Undress quickly, and then think about
nothing ... and I'll do the rest."
"You will, you promise?"
"Yes, but you must keep your mind a perfect blank, or I can't do
anything."
She stood up tall and straight. The moonlight caught her grey hair and
burnished it to an aureole of silver.
With many grunts Sir Langham pulled himself out of his chair. "No
smokin'-room, eh?"
"Good night," Miss Ross said firmly, and left him.
"Don't forget to ask your sister's husband about that chap in the
P.W.D.," he called after her. "He's sure to know all about it. What's
his name?--your brother-in-law, I mean."
But Miss Ross had disappeared.
"Now how the devil," he muttered, "am I to make my mind, _my_ mind, a
perfect blank?"
Two hours later Sir Langham's snores grievously disturbed the occupants
of adjacent cabins.
In hers, Miss Ross sat by the open porthole reading and re-reading the
mail that had reached her at Aden.
CHAPTER II
JAN'S MAIL
_Bombay, December 13th._
My Dear Jan,
It was a great relief to get your cable saying definitely
that you were sailing by the _Carnduff_. Misfortunes seem
to have come upon us in such numbers of late that I dreaded
lest your departure might be unavoidably delayed or
prevented. I will not now enter into the painful question
of my shameful treatment by Government, but you can well
understand that I shall leave no stone unturned to reverse
their most unfair and unjust decision, and to bring my
traducers to book. Important business having reference to
these matters calls me away at once, as I feel it is most
essential not to lose a moment, my reputation and my whole
future being at stake. I shall therefore, to my great
regret, be unable to meet you on your arrival in Bombay,
and, as my movements for the next few months will be rather
uncertain, I may find it difficult to let you have regular
news of me. I would therefore advise you to take Fay and
the children home as soon as all is safely over and she is
able to travel, and I will join you in England if and when
I find I can get away. I know, dear Jan, that you will not
mind financing Fay to this extent at present; as, owing to
these wholly unexpected departmental complications, I am
uncommonly hard up. I will, of course, repay you at the
earliest possible opportunity.
Poor Fay is not at all well; all these worries have been
very bad for her, and I have been distracted by anxiety on
her behalf, as well as about my own most distressing
position, and a severe attack of fever has left me weak and
ailing. I thought it better to bring Fay down to Bombay,
where she can get the best medical advice, and her being
there will save you the long, tiresome journey to
Dariawarpur. It is also most convenient for going home. She
is installed in a most comfortable flat, and we brought our
own servants, so I hope you will feel that I have done my
best for her.
Fay will explain the whole miserable business to you, and
although appearances may be against me, I trust that you
will realise how misleading these may be. I cannot thank
you enough for responding so promptly to our ardently
expressed desire for your presence at this difficult time.
It will make all the difference in the world to Fay; and,
on her account, to me also.
Believe me, always yours affectionately,
HUGO TANCRED.
_Bombay, Friday._
Jan my dear, my dear, are you really on your way? And shall
I see your face and hear your kind voice, and be able to
cry against your shoulder?
I can't meet you, my precious, because I don't go out. I'm
afraid. Afraid lest I should see anyone who knew us at
Dariawarpur. India is so large and so small, and people
from everywhere are always in Bombay, and I couldn't bear
it.
Do you know, Jan, that when the very worst has happened,
you get kind of numbed. You can't suffer any more. You
can't be sorry or angry or shocked or indignant, or
anything but just broken, and that's what I am.
After all, I've one good friend here who knew us at
Dariawarpur. He's got a job at the secretariat, and he
tries to help me all he can. I don't mind him somehow. He
understands. He will meet you and bring you to the
bungalow, so look out for him when the boat gets in. He's
tall and thin and clean-shaven and yellow, with a grave,
stern face and beautiful kind eyes. Peter is an angel, so
be nice to him, Jan dear. It has been awful; it will go on
being awful; but it will be a little more bearable when you
come--for me, I mean--for you it will be horrid. All of us
on your hands, and no money, and me such a crock, and
presently a new baby. The children are well. It's so queer
to think you haven't seen "little Fay." Come soon, Jan,
come soon, to your miserable FAY.
Jan sat on her bunk under the open porthole. One after the other she
held the letters open in her hand and stared at them, but she did not
read. The sentences were burnt into her brain already.
Hugo Tancred's letter was dated. Fay's was not, and neither letter bore
any address in Bombay. Now, Jan knew that Bombay is a large town; and
that people like the Tancreds, who, if not actually in hiding, certainly
did not seek to draw attention to their movements, would be hard to
find. Fay had wholly omitted to mention the surname of the tall, thin,
yellow man with the "grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes." Even in
the midst of her poignant anxiety Jan found herself smiling at this. It
was so like Fay--so like her to give no address. And should the tall,
thin gentleman fail to appear, what was Jan to do? She could hardly go
about the ship asking if one "Peter" had come to fetch her.
How would she find Fay?
Would they allow her to wait at the landing-place till someone came, or
were there stringent regulations compelling passengers to leave the
docks with the utmost speed, as most of them would assuredly desire to
do?
She knitted her brows and worried a good deal about this; then suddenly
put the question from her as too trivial when there were such infinitely
greater problems to solve.
Only one thing was clear. One central fact shone out, a beacon amidst
the gloom of the "departmental complications" enshrouding the conduct of
Hugo Tancred, the certainty that he had, for the present anyway, shifted
the responsibility of his family from his own shoulders to hers. As she
sat square and upright under the porthole, with the cool air from an
inserted "wind-sail" ruffling her hair, she looked as though she braced
herself to the burden.
She wished she knew exactly what had happened, what Hugo Tancred had
actually done. For some years she had known that he was by no means
scrupulous in money matters, and that very evening Sir Langham had made
it clear to her that this crookedness had not stopped short at his
official work. There had been a scandal, so far-reaching a scandal that
it had got into the home papers.
This struck Jan as rather extraordinary, for Hugo Tancred was by no
means a stupid man.
It is one thing to be pleasantly oblivious of private debts, to omit
cheques in repayment of various necessaries got at the Stores by an
obliging sister-in-law. One thing to muddle away in wild-cat
speculations a wife's money that, but for the procrastination of an
easy-going father, would have been tightly tied up--quite another to
bring himself so nearly within the clutches of the law as to make it
possible for the Government of India to dismiss him.
And what was he to do? What did the future hold for him?
Who would give employment to however able a man with such a career
behind him?
Jan's imagination refused to take such flights. Resolutely she put the
subject from her and began to consider what her own best course would be
with Fay, her nephew and niece, and, very shortly, a new baby on her
hands.
Jan was not a young woman to let things drift. She had kept house for a
whimsical, happy-go-lucky father since she was fourteen; mothered her
beautiful young sister; and, at her father's death, two years before,
had with quiet decision arranged her own life, wholly avoiding the
discussion and the friction which generally are the lot of an unmarried
woman of five-and-twenty left without natural guardians and with a large
circle of friends and relations.
It was nearly two o'clock when she undressed and went to bed, and before
that she had drafted two cablegrams--one to a house-agent, the other to
her bankers.
CHAPTER III
BOMBAY
For Jan the next two days passed as in a more or less disagreeable
dream. She could never afterwards recall very clearly what happened,
except that Sir Langham Sykes seemed absolutely omnipresent, and made
her, she felt, ridiculous before the whole ship, by proclaiming far and
wide that she had bestowed upon him the healing gift of sleep.
He was so effusive, so palpably grateful, that she simply could not
undeceive him by telling him that after they parted the night before she
had never given him another thought.
When he was not doing this he was pursuing, with fulminations against
the whole tribe of missionaries, two kindly, quiet members of the
Society of Friends.
In an evil moment they had gratified his insatiable curiosity as to the
object of their voyage to India, which was to visit and report upon the
missionary work of their community. Once he discovered this he never let
them alone, and the deck resounded with his denunciations of all
Protestant missionaries as "self-seeking, oily humbugs."
They bore it with well-mannered resignation, and a common dislike for
Sir Langham formed quite a bond of union between them and Jan.
There was the usual dance on New Year's Eve, the usual singing of "Auld
Lang Syne" in two huge circles; and Jan would have enjoyed it all but
for the heavy foreboding in her heart; for she was a simple person who
responded easily to the emotions of others. Before she could slip away
to bed Sir Langham cornered her again, conjuring her to "will" him to
sleep and "to go on doin' it" after they parted in Bombay. He became
rather maudlin, and she seized the opportunity of telling him that her
best efforts would be wholly unavailing if he at all relaxed the
temperate habits, so necessary for the cure of his gout, that he had
acquired during the voyage. She was stern with Sir Langham, and her
admonitions had considerable effect. He sought his cabin chastened and
thoughtful.
The boat was due early in the morning. Jan finished most of her packing
before she undressed; then, tired and excited, she could not sleep. A
large cockroach scuttling about her cabin did not tend to calm her
nerves. She plentifully besprinkled the floor with powdered borax, kept
the electric light turned on and the fan whirring, and lay down
wide-awake to wait for the dawn.
The ship was unusually noisy, but just about four o'clock came a new
sound right outside her porthole--the rush alongside of the boat bearing
the pilot and strange loud voices calling directions in an unknown
tongue. She turned out her light (first peering fearfully under her
berth to make sure no borax-braving cockroach was in ambush) and knelt
on her bed to look out and watch the boat with its turbaned occupants:
big brown men, who shouted to one another in a liquid language full of
mystery.
For a brief space the little boat was towed alongside the great liner,
then cast off, and presently--far away on the horizon--Jan saw a streak
of pearly pinkish light, as though the soft blue curtain of the night
had been lifted just a little; and against that luminous streak were
hills.
In spite of her anxiety, in spite of her fears as to the future, Jan's
heart beat fast with pleasurable excitement. She was young and strong
and eager, and here at last was the real East. A little soft wind
caressed her tired forehead and she drank in the blessed coolness of the
early morning.
Both day and night come quickly in the East. Jan got up, had her bath,
dressed, and by half-past six she was on deck. The dark-blue curtain was
rolled up, and the scene set was the harbour of Bombay.
Such a gracious haven of strange multi-coloured craft, with its double
coast-line of misty hills on one side, and clear-cut, high-piled
buildings, domes and trees upon the other.
A gay white-and-gold launch, with its attendants in scarlet and white,
came for certain passengers, who were guests of the Governor. The police
launch, trim and business-like with its cheerful yellow-hatted sepoys,
came for others. Jan watched these favoured persons depart in stately
comfort, and went downstairs to get some breakfast. Then came the rush
of departure by the tender. So many had friends to meet them, and all
seemed full of pleasure in arrival. Jan was just beginning to feel
rather forlorn and anxious when the Purser, fussed and over-driven as he
always is at such times, came towards her, followed by a tall man
wearing a pith helmet and an overcoat.
"Mr. Ledgard has come to meet you, Miss Ross, so you'll be all right."
It was amazing how easy everything became. Mr. Ledgard's servants
collected Jan's cabin baggage and took it with them in the tender and,
on arrival, in a tikka-gharri--the little pony-carriage which is the
gondola of Bombay--and almost before she quite realised that the voyage
was over she found herself seated beside Peter in a comfortable
motor-car, with a cheerful little Hindu chauffeur at the steering-wheel,
sliding through wide, well-watered streets, still comparatively empty
because it was so early.
By mutual consent they turned to look at one another, and Jan noted that
Peter Ledgard _was_ thin and extremely yellow. That his eyes (hollow and
tired-looking as are the eyes of so many officials in the East) _were_
kind, and she thought she had never before beheld a firmer mouth or more
masterful jaw.
What Peter saw evidently satisfied him as to her common sense, for he
plunged _in medias res_ at once: "How much do you know of this
unfortunate affair?" he asked.
"Very little," she answered, "and that little extremely vague. Will you
tell me has Hugo come to total grief or not?"
"Officially, yes. He is finished, done for--may thank his lucky stars
he's not in gaol. It's well you should know this at the very beginning,
for of course he won't allow it, and poor Fay--Mrs. Tancred (I'm afraid
we're rather free-and-easy about Christian names in India)--doesn't know
the whole facts by a very long way. From what she tells me, I fear he
has made away with most of her money, too. Was any of it tied up?"
Jan shook her head. "We both got what money there was absolutely on my
father's death."
"Then," said Peter, "I fear you've got the whole of them on your hands,
Miss Ross."
"That's what I've come for," Jan said simply, "to take care of Fay and
the children."
Peter Ledgard looked straight in front of him.
"It's a lot to put on you," he said slowly, "and I'm afraid you'll find
it a bit more complicated than you expect. Will you remember that I'd
like to help you all I can?"
Jan looked at the stern profile beside her and felt vaguely comforted.
"I shall be most grateful for your advice," she said humbly. "I know I
shall need it."
The motor stopped, and as she stepped from it in front of the tall block
of buildings, Jan knew that the old easy, straightforward life was over.
Unconsciously she stiffened her back and squared her shoulders, and
looked very tall and straight as she stood beside Peter Ledgard in the
entrance. The pretty colour he had admired when he met her had faded
from her cheeks, and the face under the shady hat looked grave and
older.
Peter said something to the smiling lift-man in an extremely dirty dhoti
who stood salaaming in the entrance.
"I won't come up now," he said to Jan. "Please tell Mrs. Tancred I'll
look in about tea-time."
As Jan entered the lift and vanished from his sight, Peter reflected,
"So that's the much-talked-of Jan! Well, I'm not surprised Fay wanted
her."
The lift stopped. An elderly white-clad butler stood salaaming at an
open door, and Jan followed him.
A few steps through a rather narrow passage and she was in a large light
room opening on to a verandah, and in the centre stood her sister Fay,
with outstretched arms.
A pathetic, inarticulate, worn and faded Fay: her pretty freshness
dimmed. A Fay with dark circles round her hollow eyes and all the living
light gone from her abundant fair hair. It was as though her face was
covered by an impalpable grey mask.
There was no doubt about it. Fay looked desperately ill. Ill in a way
not to be accounted for by her condition.
Clinging together they sat down on an immense sofa, exchanging trivial
question and answer as to the matters ordinary happy folk discuss when
they first meet after a long absence. Jan asked for the children, who
had not yet returned from their early morning walk with the ayah. Fay
asked about the voyage and friends at home, and told Jan she had got
dreadfully grey; then kissed her and leant against her just as she used
to do when they were both children and she needed comfort.
Jan said nothing to Fay about _her_ looks, and neither of them so much
as mentioned Hugo Tancred. But Jan felt a wild desire to get away by
herself and cry and cry over this sad wraith of the young sister whose
serene and happy beauty had been the family pride.
And yet she was so essentially the same Fay, tender and loving and
inconsequent, and full of pretty cares for Jan's comfort.
The dining-room was behind the sitting-room, with only a curtain
between, and as they sat at breakfast Fay was so eager Jan should
eat--she ate nothing herself--so anxious lest she should not like the
Indian food, that poor Jan, with a lump in her throat that choked her at
every morsel, forced down the carefully thought-out breakfast and meekly
accepted everything presented by the grey-haired turbaned butler who
bent over her paternally and offered every dish much as one would tempt
a shy child with some amusing toy.
Presently Fay took her to see her room, large, bare and airy, with
little furniture save the bed with its clean white mosquito curtains
placed under the electric fan in the centre of the ceiling. Outside the
window was a narrow balcony, and Jan went there at once to look out; and
though her heart was so heavy she was fain to exclaim joyfully at the
beauty of the view.
Right opposite, across Back Bay, lay the wooded villa-crowned slopes of
Malabar Hill, flung like a garland on the bosom of a sea deeply blue and
smiling, smooth as a lake, while below her lay the pageant of the
street, with its ever-changing panorama of vivid life. The whole so
brilliant, so various, so wholly unlike any beautiful place she had ever
seen before that, artist's daughter she was, she cried eagerly to Fay,
"Oh, come and look! Did you ever see anything so lovely? How Dad would
have rejoiced in this!"
Fay followed slowly: "I thought you'd like it," she said, evidently
pleased by Jan's enthusiasm, "that's why I gave you this room. Look,
Jan! There are the children coming, those two over by the band-stand.
They see us. _Do_ wave to them."
The children were still a long way off. Jan could only see an ayah in
her white draperies pushing a little go-cart with a child in it, and a
small boy trotting by her side, but she waved as she was bidden.
The room had evidently at one time been used as a nursery, for inside
the stone balustrade was a high trellis of wood. Jan and Fay were both
tall women, but even on them the guarding trellis came right up to their
shoulders. Neither of them could really lean over, though Fay tried, in
her eagerness to attract the attention of the little group. Jan watched
her sister's face and again felt that cruel constriction of the throat
that holds back tears. Fay's tired eyes were so sad, so out of keeping
with the cheerful movement of her hand, so shadowed by some knowledge
she could not share.
"You mustn't stand here without a hat," she said, turning to go in. "The
sun is getting hot. You must get a topee this afternoon. Peter will take
you and help to choose it."
"Couldn't you come, if we took a little carriage? Does driving tire you
when it's cool?" Jan asked as she followed her sister back into the
room.
"I never go out," Fay said decidedly. "I never shall again ... I mean,"
she added, "till it's all over. I couldn't bear it just now--I might
meet someone I know."
"But, Fay, it's very bad for you to be always indoors. Surely, in the
early morning or the evening--you'll come out then?"
Fay shook her head. "Peter has taken me out in the motor once or twice
at night--but I don't really like it. It makes me so dreadfully tired.
Don't worry me about that, Jan. I get plenty of air in the verandah.
It's just as pretty there as in your balcony, and we can have
comfortable chairs. Let's go there now. _You_ shall go out as much as
you like. I'll send Lalkhan with you, or Ayah and the children; and
Peter will take you about all he can--he promised he would. Don't think
I want to be selfish and keep you here with me all the time."
The flat, weak voice, so nervous, so terrified lest her stronger sister
should force her to some course of action she dreaded, went to Jan's
heart.
"My dear," she said gently, "I haven't come here to rush about. I've
come to be with you. We'll do exactly what you like best."
Fay clung to her again and whispered, "Later on you'll understand
better--I'll be able to tell you things, and perhaps you'll understand
... though I'm not sure--you're not weak like me, you'd never go under
... you'd always fight...."
There was a pattering of small feet in the passage. Little high voices
called for "Mummy," and the children came in.
Tony, a grave-eyed, pale-faced child of five, came forward instantly,
with his hand held out far in front of him. Jan, who loved little
children, knew in a minute that he was afraid she would kiss him; so she
shook hands with gentlemanly stiffness. Little Fay, on the contrary, ran
forward, held up her arms "to be taken" and her adorably pretty little
face to be kissed. She was startlingly like her mother at the same age,
with bobbing curls of feathery gold, beseeching blue eyes and a
complexion delicately coloured as the pearly pink lining of certain
shells. She was, moreover, chubby, sturdy and robust--quite unlike Tony,
who looked nervous, bleached and delicate.
Tony went and leant against his mother, regarding Jan and his small
sister with dubious, questioning eyes.
Presently he remarked, "I wish she hadn't come."
"Oh, Tony," Fay exclaimed reproachfully, "you must both love Auntie Jan
very dearly. She has come such a long way to be good to us all."
"I wish she hadn't," Tony persisted.
"_I_ sall love Auntie Dzan," Fay remarked, virtuously.
It was pleasant to be cuddled by this friendly baby, and Jan laid her
cheek against the fluffy golden head; but all the time she was watching
Tony. He reminded her of someone, and she couldn't think who. He
maintained his aloof and unfriendly attitude till Ayah came to take the
children to their second breakfast. Little Fay, however, refused to
budge, and when the meekly salaaming ayah attempted to take her, made
her strong little body stiff, and screamed vigorously, clinging so
firmly to her aunt that Jan had herself to carry the obstreperous baby
to the nursery, where she left her lying on the floor, still yelling
with all the strength of her evidently healthy lungs.
When Jan returned, rather dishevelled--for her niece had seized a
handful of her hair in the final struggle not to be put down--Fay said
almost complacently, "You see, the dear little soul took a fancy to you
at once. Tony is much more reserved and not nearly so friendly. He's
very Scotch, is Tony."
"He does what he's told, anyway."
"Oh, not always," Fay said reassuringly, "only when he doesn't mind
doing it. They've both got very strong wills."
"So have I," said Jan.
Fay sighed. "It was time you came to keep them in order. I can't."
This was evident, for Fay had not attempted to interfere with her
daughter beyond saying, "I expect she's hungry, that's why she's so
fretty, poor dear."
That afternoon Peter went to the flat and was shown as usual into the
sitting-room.
Jan and the children were in the verandah, all with their backs to the
room, and did not notice his entrance as Jan was singing nursery-rhymes.
Fay sat on her knee, cuddled close as though there were no such thing as
tempers in the world. Tony sat on a little chair at her side, not very
near, but still near enough to manifest a more friendly spirit than in
the morning. Peter waited in the background while the song went on.
I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea,
And it was full of pretty things for Tony, Fay and me.
There was sugar in the cabin and kisses in the hold----
"Whose kisses?" Tony asked suspiciously.
"Mummy's kisses, of course," said Jan.
"Why doesn't it _say_ so, then?" Tony demanded.
"Mummy's kisses in the hold," Jan sang obediently--
The sails were made of silk and the masts were made of gold.
Gold, gold, the masts were made of gold.
"What nelse?" Fay asked before Jan could start the second verse.
There were four-and-twenty sailors a-skipping on the deck,
And they were little white mice with rings about their neck.
The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back,
And when the ship began to sail, the captain cried, "Quack! Quack!
Quack! Quack!" The captain cried, "Quack! Quack!"
"What nelse?" Fay asked again.
"There isn't any nelse, that's all."
"Adain," said Fay.
"Praps," Tony said thoughtfully, "there was _some_ auntie's kisses in
that hold ... just a few...."
"I'm sure there were," said a new voice, and Peter appeared on the
verandah.
The children greeted him with effusion, and when he sat down Tony sat on
his knee. He was never assailed by fears lest Peter should want to kiss
him. Peter was not that sort.
"Sing nunner song," little Fay commanded.
"Not now," Jan said; "we've got a visitor and must talk to him."
"Sing nunner song," little Fay repeated firmly, just as though she had
not heard.
"Not now; some other time," Jan said with equal firmness.
"Mack!" said the baby, and suited the action to the word by dealing her
aunt a good hard smack on the arm.
"You mustn't do that," said Jan; "it's not kind."
"Mack, mack, mack," in _crescendo_ with accompanying blows.
Jan caught the little hand, while Peter and Tony, interested spectators,
said nothing. She held it firmly. "Listen, little Fay," she said, very
gently. "If you do that again I shall take you to Ayah in the nursery.
Just once again, and you go."
Jan loosed the little hand, and instantly it dealt her a resounding slap
on the cheek.
It is of no avail to kick and scream and wriggle in the arms of a
strong, decided young aunt. For the second time that day, a vociferously
struggling baby was borne back to the nursery.
As the yells died away in the distance, Tony turned right round on
Peter's knee and faced him: "She does what she says," he remarked in an
awestruck whisper.
"And a jolly good thing too," answered Peter.
When Jan came back she brought her sister with her. Lalkhan brought tea,
and Tony went with him quite meekly to the nursery. They heard him
chattering to Lalkhan in Hindustani as they went along the passage.
Fay looked a thought less haggard than in the morning. She had slept
after tiffin; the fact that her sister was actually in the bungalow had
a calming effect upon her. She was quite cheerful and full of plans for
Jan's amusement; plans in which, of course, she proposed to take no part
herself. Jan listened in considerable dismay to arrangements which
appeared to her to make enormous inroads into Peter Ledgard's leisure
hours. He and his motor seemed to be quite at Fay's disposal, and Jan
found the situation both bewildering and embarrassing.
"What a nuisance for him," she reflected, "to have a young woman thrust
upon him in this fashion. It won't do to upset Fay, but I must tell him
at the first opportunity that none of these projects hold good."
Directly tea was over Fay almost hustled them out to go and buy a topee
for Jan, and suggested that, having accomplished this, they should look
in at the Yacht Club for an hour, "because it was band-night," and Jan
would like the Yacht Club lawn, with the sea and the boats and all the
cheerful people.
As the car slid into the crowded traffic of the Esplanade Road, Peter
pointed to a large building on the left, saying, "There's the Army and
Navy Stores, quite close to you, you see. You can always get anything
you want there. I'll give you my number ... not that it matters."
"I've belonged for years to the one at home," said Jan, "and I
understand the same number will do."
She felt she really could not be beholden to this strange young man for
everything, even a Stores number; and that she had better make the
situation clear at once that she had come to take care of Fay and not to
be an additional anxiety to him. At that moment she felt almost jealous
of Peter. Fay seemed to turn to him for everything.
When they reached the shop where topees were to be got, she heard a
familiar, booming voice. Had she been alone she would certainly have
turned and fled, deferring her purchase till Sir Langham Sykes had
concluded his, but she could hardly explain her rather complicated
reasons to Peter, who told the Eurasian assistant to bring topees for
her inspection.
Jan tried vainly to efface herself behind a tailor's dummy, but her back
was reflected in the very mirror which also reproduced Sir Langham in
the act of trying on a khaki-coloured topee. He saw her and at once
hurried in her direction, exclaiming:
"Ah, Miss Ross, run to earth! You slipped off this morning without
bidding me good-bye, and I've been wonderin' all day where we should
meet. Now let me advise you about your topee. _I'll_ choose it for you,
then you can't go wrong. Get a large one, mind, or the back of your nice
little neck will be burnt the colour of the toast they gave us on the
_Carnduff_--shockin' toast, wasn't it? No, not that shape, idiot ...
unless you're goin' to ride, are you? If so, you must have one of
each--a large one, I said--what the devil's the use of that? You must
wear it _well_ on your head, mind; you can't show much of that pretty
grey hair that puzzled us all so--eh, w'at?"
Jan had been white enough as she entered the shop, for she was beginning
to feel quite amazingly tired; but now the face under the overshadowing
topee was crimson and she was hopelessly confused and helpless in the
overpowering of Sir Langham, who, when he could for a moment detach his
mind from Jan, looked with considerable curiosity at Peter.
Peter stood there silent, aloof, detached; and he appeared quite cool.
Jan felt the atmosphere to be almost insufferably close, and heaved a
sigh of gratitude when he suddenly turned on an electric fan above her
head.
"I think this will do," she said, in a faint voice to the assistant,
though the crinkly green lining round the crown seemed searing her very
brain.
Peter intervened, asking: "Is it comfortable? No ..." as she took it
off. "I can see it isn't. It has marked your forehead already. Don't be
in a hurry. They'll probably need to alter the lining. Some women have
it taken out altogether. Pins keep it on all right."
Thus encouraged, she tried on others, and all the time Sir Langham held
forth at the top of his voice, interrupting his announcement that he was
dining at Government House that very night to swear at the assistant
when he brought topees that did not fit, and giving his opinion of her
appearance with the utmost frankness, till Jan found one that seemed
rather less uncomfortable than the rest. Then in desperation she
introduced Sir Langham to Peter.
"Your sister-in-law looks a bit tucked up," he remarked affably. "We'd
better take her to the Yacht Club and give her a peg--she seems to feel
the heat."
Jan cast one despairing, imploring glance at Peter, who rose to the
occasion nobly.
"You're quite right," he said. "This place is infernally stuffy. Come
on. They know where to send it. Good afternoon sir," and before she
realised what had happened Peter seized her by the arm and swept her out
of the shop and into the front seat of the car, stepped over her and
himself took the steering-wheel.
While Sir Langham's voice bayed forth a mixture of expostulation and
assignation at the Yacht Club later on.
"Now where shall we go?" asked Peter.
"Not the Yacht Club," Jan besought him. "He's coming there; he said so.
Isn't he dreadful? Did you mind very much being taken for my
brother-in-law? He has no idea who he really is, or I wouldn't have let
it pass ... but I felt I could never explain ... I'm so sorry...."
Her face was white enough now.
"It would have been absurd to explain, and it's I who should apologise
for the free-and-easy way I carried you off, but it was clearly a case
for strong measures, or he'd have insisted on coming with us. What an
awful little man! Did you have him all the voyage? No wonder you look
tired.... I hope he didn't sit at your table...."
Once out of doors, the delicious breeze from the sea that springs up
every evening in Bombay revived her. She forgot Sir Langham, for a few
minutes she even forgot Fay and her anxieties in sheer pleasure in the
prospect, as the car fell into its place in the crowded traffic of the
Queen's Road.
Jan never forgot that drive. He ran her out to Chowpatty, where the
road lies along the shore and the carriages of Mohammedan, Hindu and
Parsee gentlemen stand in serried rows while their picturesque occupants
"eat the air" in passive and contented Eastern fashion; then up to Ridge
Road on Malabar Hill, where he stopped that she might get out and walk
to the edge of the wooded cliff and look down at the sea and the great
city lying bathed in that clear golden light only to be found at sunset
in the East.
Peter enjoyed her evident appreciation of it all. She said very little,
but she looked fresh and rested again, and he was conscious of a quite
unusual pleasure in her mere presence as they stood together in the
green garden, got and kept by such infinite pains and care, that borders
the road running along the top of Malabar Hill.
Suddenly she turned. "We mustn't wait another minute," she said. "You,
doubtless, want to go to the club. It has been very good of you to spend
so much time with me. What makes it all so beautiful is that everywhere
one sees the sea. I will tell Fay how much I have enjoyed it."
Peter's eyes met hers and held them: "Try to think of me as a friend,
Miss Ross. I can see you are thoroughly capable and independent; but,
believe me, India is not like England, and a white woman needs a good
many things done for her here if she's to be at all comfortable. I don't
want to butt in and be a nuisance; but just remember I'm there when the
bell rings----"
"I am not likely to forget," said Jan.
Lights began to twinkle in the city below. The soft monotonous throb of
tom-toms came beating through the ambient air like a pulse of teeming
life; and when he left her at her sister's door the purple darkness of
an Eastern night had curtained off the sea.
CHAPTER IV
THE BEGINNING OF THE JOB
Fay was still lying on her long chair in the verandah when Jan got in.
She had turned on the electric light above her head and had, seemingly,
been working at some diminutive garment of nainsook and lace. She looked
up at Jan's step, asking eagerly, "Well, did you like it? Did you see
many people? Was the band good?"
Jan sat down beside her and explained that Peter had taken her for a
drive instead. She made her laugh over her encounter with Sir Langham,
and was enthusiastic about the view from Malabar Hill. Then Fay sent her
to say good night to the children, who were just getting ready for bed.
As she went down the long passage towards the nursery, she heard small
voices chattering in Hindustani, and as she opened the door little Fay
was in the act of stepping out of all her clothes.
Tony was already clad in pink pyjamas, which made him look paler than
ever.
Little Fay, naked as any shameless cherub on a Renaissance festoon,
danced across the tiled floor, and, pausing directly in front of her
aunt, announced:
"I sall mack Ayah as muts as I like."
The good-natured Goanese ayah salaamed and, beaming upon her charge,
murmured entire acquiescence.
Jan looked down at the absurd round atom who defied her, and, trying
hard not to laugh, said:
"Oh, no, you won't."
"I sall!" the baby declared even more emphatically, and, lifting up her
adorable, obstinate little face to look at Jan, nodded her curly head
vigorously.
"I think not," Jan remarked rather unsteadily, "because if you do,
people won't like you. We can none of us go about smacking innocent
folks just for the fun of it. Everybody would be shocked and horrified."
"Socked and hollified," echoed little Fay, delighted with the new words,
"socked and hollified!... What nelse?"
"What usually follows is that the disagreeable little girl gets smacked
herself."
"No," said Fay, but a thought doubtfully. "No," more firmly. Then with a
smile that was subtly compounded of pathos and confidence, "Nobody would
mack plitty little Fay ... 'cept ... plapse ... Auntie Dzan."
The stern aunt in question snatched up her niece to cover her with
kisses. Ayah escaped chastisement that evening, for, arrayed in a white
nighty, "plitty little Fay" sat good as gold on Jan's knee, absorbed in
the interest of "This little pig went to market," told on her own toes.
Even Tony, the aloof and unfriendly, consented to unbend to the extent
of being interested in the dialogue of "John Smith and Minnie Bowl, can
you shoe a little foal?" and actually thrust out his own bare feet that
Jan might make them take part in the drama of the "twa wee doggies who
went to the market," and came back "louper-scamper, louper-scamper."
At the end of every song or legend came the inevitable "What nelse?"
from little Fay--and Jan only escaped after the most solemn promises had
been exacted for a triple bill on the morrow.
When she had changed and went back to the sitting-room, dinner was
ready. Lalkhan again bent over her with fatherly solicitude as he
offered each course, and this time Jan, being really hungry, rather
enjoyed his ministrations. A boy assisted at the sideboard, and another
minion appeared to bring the dishes from the kitchen, for the butler and
the boy never left the room for an instant.
Fay looked like a tired ghost, and Jan could see that it was a great
effort to her to talk cheerfully and seem interested in the home news.
After dinner they went back to the sitting-room. Lalkhan brought coffee
and Fay lit a cigarette. Jan wandered round, looking at the photographs
and engravings on the walls.
"How is it," she asked, "that Mr. Ledgard seems to come in so many of
these groups? Did you rent the flat from a friend of his?"
"I didn't 'rent' the flat from anybody," Fay answered. "It's Peter's own
flat. He lent it to us."
Jan turned and stared at her sister. "Mr. Ledgard's flat!" she
repeated. "And what is he doing?"
"He's living at the club just now. He turned out when we came. Don't
look at me like that, Jan.... There was nothing else to be done."
Jan came back and sat on the edge of the big sofa. "But I understood
Hugo's letter to say...."
"Whatever Hugo said in his letter was probably lies. If Peter hadn't
lent us his flat, I should have had nowhere to lay my head. Who do you
suppose would let us a flat here, after all that has happened, unless we
paid in advance, and how could we do that without any ready money? Why,
a flat like this unfurnished costs over three hundred rupees a month. I
don't know what a furnished flat would be."
"But--isn't it ... taking a great deal from Mr. Ledgard?" Jan asked
timidly.
Fay stretched out her hand and suddenly switched off the lights, so that
they were left together on the big sofa in the soft darkness.
"Give me your hand, Jan. I shall be less afraid of you when I just feel
you and can't see you."
"Why should you be afraid of me?... Dear, dear Fay, you must remember
how little I really know. How can I understand?"
Fay leant against her sister and held her close. "Sometimes I feel as if
I couldn't understand it all myself. But you mustn't worry about Peter's
flat. We'll all go home the minute I can be moved. He doesn't mind,
really ... and there was nothing else to be done."
"Does Hugo know you are here?"
Fay laughed, a sad, bitter little laugh. "It was Hugo who asked Peter to
lend his flat."
"Then what about his servants? What has he done with them while you are
here?"
"These are his servants."
"But Hugo said...."
"Jan, dear, it is no use quoting Hugo to me. I can tell you the sort of
thing he would say.... Did he mention Peter at all?"
"Certainly not. He said you were 'installed in a most comfortable flat'
and had brought your own servants."
"I brought Ayah--naturally, Peter hadn't an ayah. But why do you object
to his servants? They're very good."
"But don't they think it ... a little odd?"
"Oh, you can't bother about what servants think in India. They think us
all mad anyway."
There was silence for a few minutes while Jan realised the fact that,
dislike it as she might, she seemed fated to be laid under considerable
obligation to Mr. Peter Ledgard.
"Where is Hugo?" she asked at last.
"My dear, you appear to have heard from Hugo since I have. As to his
whereabouts I haven't the remotest idea."
"Do you mean to say, Fay, that he hasn't let you know where he is?"
"He didn't come with us to the flat because he was afraid he'd be seized
for debts and things. We've only been here a fortnight. He's probably
on board ship somewhere--there hasn't been much time for him to let me
know...."
Fay spoke plaintively, as though Jan were rather hard on Hugo in
expecting him to give his wife any account of his movements.
Jan was glad it was dark. She felt bewildered and oppressed and very,
very angry with her brother-in-law, who seemed to have left his entire
household in the care of Peter Ledgard. Was Peter paying for their very
food, she wondered? She'd put a stop to that, anyhow.
"Jan"--she felt Fay lean a little closer--"don't be down on me. You've
no idea how hard it has all been. You're such a daylight person
yourself."
"Hard on you, my precious! I could never feel the least little bit hard.
Only it's all so puzzling. And what do you mean by a 'daylight person'?"
"You know, Jan, for three months now I've been a lot alone, and I've
done a deal of thinking--more than ever in all my life before; and it
seems to me that the world is divided into three kinds of people--the
daylight people, and the twilight people and the night people."
Fay paused. Jan stroked her hot, thin hand, but did not speak, and the
tired, whispering voice went on: "_We_ were daylight people--Daddie was
very daylight. There were never any mysteries; we all of us knew always
where each of us was, and there were no secrets and no queer people
coming for interviews, and it wouldn't have mattered very much if
anyone _had_ opened one of our letters. Oh, it's such an _easy_ life in
the daylight country...."
"And in the twilight country?" asked Jan.
"Ah, there it's very different. Everything is mysterious. You never know
where anyone has gone, and if he's away queer people--quite horrid
people--come and ask for him and won't go away, and sit in the verandah
and cheek the butler and the boy and insist on seeing the 'memsahib,'
and when she screws up her courage and goes to them, they ask for money,
and show dirty bits of paper and threaten, and it's all awful--till
somebody like Peter comes and kicks them out, and then they simply fly."
In spite of her irritation at being beholden to him, Jan began to feel
grateful to Peter.
"Sometimes," Fay continued, "I think it would be easier to be a night
person. They've no appearances to keep up. You see, what makes it so
difficult for the twilight people is that they _want_ to live in the
daylight, and it's too strong for them. All the night people whom they
know--and if you're twilight you know lots of 'em--come and drag them
back. _They_ don't care. They rather like to go right in among the
daylight folk and scare and shock them, and make them uncomfortable. You
_can't_ suffer in the same way when you've gone under altogether."
"But, Fay dear," Jan interposed, "you talk as though the twilight people
couldn't help it...."
"They can't--they truly can't."
"But surely there's right and wrong, straightness and crookedness, and
no one _need_ be crooked."
"People like you needn't--but everybody isn't strong like that. Hugo
says every man has his price, and every woman too--Peter says so, too."
"Then Peter ought to be ashamed of himself. Do you suppose _he_ has his
price?"
"No, not in that way. He'd think it silly to be pettifogging and
dishonest about money, or to go in for mad speculations run by shady
companies; but he wouldn't think it _extraordinary_ like you."
"I'm afraid my education has been neglected. A great many things seem
extraordinary to me."
"You think it funny I should be living in Peter's flat, waited on by
Peter's servants--but what else could I do?"
Jan smiled in the darkness. She saw where her niece had got "what
nelse?"
"Isn't it just a little--unusual?" she asked gently. "Is there no money
at all, Fay? What has become of all your own?"
"It's not all gone," Fay said eagerly. "I think there's nearly two
thousand pounds left, but Peter made me write home--that was at
Dariawarpur, before he came down here--and say no more was to be sent
out, not even if I wrote myself to ask for it--and _he_ wrote to Mr.
Davidson too----"
"I know somebody wrote. Mr. Davidson was very worried ... but what _can_
Hugo have done with eight thousand pounds in two years? Besides his
pay...."
"Eight thousand pounds doesn't go far when you've dealings with
money-lenders and mines in Peru--but _I_ don't understand it--don't ask
me. I believe he left me a little money--I don't know how much--at a
bank in Elphinstone Circle--but I haven't liked to write and find out,
lest it should be very little ... or none...."
"Mercy!" exclaimed Jan. "It surely would be better to know for certain."
"When you've lived in the twilight country as long as I have you'll not
want to know anything for certain. It's only when things are wrapped up
in a merciful haze of obscurity that life is tolerable at all. Do you
suppose I _wanted_ to find out that my husband was a rascal? I shut my
eyes to it as long as I could, and then Truth came with all her cruel
tools and pried them open. Oh, Jan, it did hurt so!"
If Fay had cried, if her voice had even broken or she had seemed deeply
moved, it would have been more bearable. It was the poor thing's
calm--almost indifference--that frightened Jan. For it proved that her
perceptions were numbed.
Fay had been tortured till she could feel nothing acutely any more. Jan
had the feeling that in some dreadful, inscrutable way her sister was
shut away from her in some prison-house of the mind.
And who shall break through those strange, intangible, impenetrable
walls of unshared experience?
Jan swallowed her tears and said cheerfully: "Well, it's all going to be
different now. You needn't worry about anything any more. If Hugo has
left no money we'll manage without. Mr. Davidson will let me have what I
want ... but we must be careful, because of the children."
"And you'll try not to mind living in Peter's flat?" Fay said, rubbing
her head against Jan's shoulder. "It's India, you know, and men are very
kind out here--much friendlier than they are at home."
"So it seems."
"You needn't think there's anything wrong, Jan. Peter isn't in love with
me now."
"Was he ever in love with you?"
"Oh, yes, a bit, once; when he first came to Dariawarpur ... lots of
them were then. I really was very pretty, and I had quite a little court
... but when the bad times came and people began to look shy at
Hugo--everybody was nice to me always--then Peter seemed different.
There was no more philandering, he was just ... Oh, Jan, he was just
such a daylight person, and might have been Daddie. I should have died
without him."
"Fay, tell me--I'll never ask again--was Hugo unkind to you?"
"No, Jan, truly not unkind. He shut me away from the greater part of his
life ... and there were other people ... not ladies"--Fay felt the
shoulder she leant against stiffen--"but I didn't know that for quite a
long time ... and he wasn't ever surly or cross or grudging. He always
wanted me to have everything very nice, and I really believe he always
hoped the mines and things would make lots of money.... You know, Jan,
I'd _rather_ believe in people. I daresay you think I'm weak and stupid
... but I can never understand wives who set detectives on their
husbands."
"It isn't done by the best people," Jan said with a laugh that was half
a sob. "Let's hope it isn't often necessary...."
Fay drew a little closer: "Oh, you are dear not to be stern and
scolding...."
"It's not you I feel like scolding."
"If you scolded him, he'd agree with every word, so that you simply
couldn't go on ... and then he'd go away and do just the same things
over again, and fondly hope you'd never hear of it. But he _was_ kind in
lots of ways. He didn't drink----"
"I don't see anything so very creditable in that," Jan interrupted.
"Well, it's one of the things he didn't do--and we had the nicest
bungalow in the station and by far the best motor--a much smarter motor
than the Resident. And it was only when I discovered that Hugo had made
out I was an heiress that I began to feel uncomfortable."
"Was he good to the children?"
"He hardly saw them. Children don't interest him much. He liked little
Fay because she's so pretty, but I don't think he cared a great deal for
Tony. Tony is queer and judging. Don't take a dislike to Tony, Jan; he
needs a long time, but once you've got him he stays for ever--will you
remember that?"
Again, Jan felt that cold hand laid on her heart, the hand of chill
foreboding. She had noticed many times already that when Fay was off her
guard she always talked as though, for her, everything were ended, and
she was only waiting for something. There seemed no permanence in her
relations with them all.
A shadowy white figure lifted the curtain between the two rooms and
stood salaaming.
Jan started violently. She was not yet accustomed to the soundless naked
feet of the servants whose presence might be betrayed by a rustle, never
by a step.
It was Ayah waiting to know if Fay would like to go to bed.
"Shall I go, Jan? Are you tired?"
Jan was, desperately tired, for she had had no sleep the night before,
but Fay's voice had in it a little tremor of fear that showed she
dreaded the night.
"Send her to bed, poor thing. I'll look after you, brush your hair and
tuck you up and all.... Fay, oughtn't you to have somebody in your room?
Couldn't my cot be put in there, just to sleep?"
"Oh, Jan, would you? Don't you mind?"
"Shall I help her to move it?" Jan said, getting up.
Fay pulled her down again. "You funny Jan, you can't do that sort of
thing here. The servants will do it."
She sat up, gave a rapid, eager order to Ayah, and in a few minutes Jan
heard her bed being wheeled down the passage. Every room had wide
double doors--like French rooms--and there was no difficulty.
Fay sank down again among her cushions with a great sigh of relief: "I
don't mind now how soon I go to bed. I shan't be frightened in the long
dark night any more. Oh, Jan, you _are_ a dear daylight person!"
CHAPTER V
THE CHILDREN
Jan made headway with Tony and little Fay. An aunt who carried one
pick-a-back; who trotted, galloped, or curvetted to command as an
animated steed; who provided spades and buckets, and herself, getting up
very early, took them and the children to an adorable sandy beach,
deserted save for two or three solitary horsemen; an aunt who dug holes
and built castles and was indirectly the means of thrilling rides upon a
real horse, when Peter was encountered as one of the mounted few taking
exercise before breakfast; such an aunt could not be regarded otherwise
than as an acquisition, even though she did at times exert authority and
insist upon obedience.
She got it, too; especially from little Fay, who, hitherto, had obeyed
nobody. Tony, less wilful and not so prone to be destructive, was
secretly still unwon, though outwardly quite friendly. He waited and
watched and weighed Jan in the balance of his small judgment. Tony was
never in any hurry to make up his mind.
One great hold Jan had was a seemingly inexhaustible supply of rhymes,
songs, and stories, and she was, moreover, of a telling disposition.
Both children had a quite unusual passion for new words. Little Fay
would stop short in the midst of the angriest yells if anyone called her
conduct in question by some new term of opprobrium. Ayah's vocabulary
was limited, even in the vernacular, and nothing would have induced her
to return railing for railing to the children, however sorely they
abused her. But Jan occasionally freed her mind, and at such times her
speech was terse and incisive. Moreover, she quickly perceived her power
over her niece in this respect, and traded on the baby's quick ear and
interest.
One day there was a tremendous uproar in the nursery just after tiffin,
when poor Fay usually tried to get the sleep that would partially atone
for her restless night. Jan swept down the passage and into the room, to
find her niece netted in her cot, and bouncing up and down like a
newly-landed trout, while Ayah wrestled with a struggling Tony, who
tried to drown his sister's screams with angry cries of "Let me get at
her to box her," and, failing that, vigorously boxing Ayah.
Jan closed the door behind her and stood where she was, saying in the
quiet, compelling voice they had both already learned to respect: "It's
time for Mummy's sleep, and how can Mummy sleep in such a pandemonium?"
Little Fay paused in the very middle of a yell and her face twinkled
through the restraining net.
"Pandemolium," she echoed, joyously rolling it over on her tongue with
obvious gusto.
"Pandemolium."
"She kickened and fit with me," Tony cried angrily. "I _must_ box her."
"Pandemolium?" little Fay repeated inquiringly. "What nelse?"
"Yes," said Jan, trying hard not to laugh; "that's exactly what it was
... disgraceful."
"What nelse?" little Fay persisted. She had heard disgraceful before. It
lacked novelty.
"All sorts of horrid things," said Jan. "Selfish and odious and
ill-bred----"
"White bled, blown bled, ill-bled," the person under the net chanted.
"What nother bled?"
"There's well-bred," said Jan severely, "and that's what neither you nor
Tony are at the present moment."
"There's toas' too," said the voice from under the net, ignoring the
personal application. "Sall we have some?"
"Certainly not," Jan answered with great sternness. "People who riot and
brawl----"
"Don't like zose words," the netted one interrupted distastefully (R's
always stumped her), "naughty words."
"Not so naughty as the people who do it. Has Ayah had her dinner? No?
Then poor Ayah must go and have it, and I shall stay here and tell a
very soft, whispery story to people who are quiet and good, who lie in
their cots and don't quarrel----"
"Or blawl" came from the net in a small determined voice. She could not
let the new word pass after all.
"Exactly ... or brawl," Jan repeated in tones nothing like so firm.
"She kickened and fit me, she did," Tony mumbled moodily as he climbed
into his cot: "Can't I box her nor nothing?"
"Not now," Jan said, soothingly. Ayah salaamed and hurried away. She, at
all events, had cause to bless Jan, for now she got her meals with fair
regularity and in peace.
In a few minutes the room was as quiet as an empty church, save for a
low voice that related an interminable story about "Cockie-Lockie and
Henny-Penny going to tell the King the lift's fallen," till one, at all
events, of the "blawlers" was sound asleep.
The voice ceased and Tony's head appeared over the rail of his cot.
"Hush!" Jan whispered. "Sister's asleep. Just wait a few minutes till
Ayah comes, then I'll take you away with me."
Faithful Ayah didn't dawdle over her food. She returned, sat down on the
floor beside little Fay's cot and started her endless mending.
Jan carried Tony away with her along the passage and into the
drawing-room. The verandah was too hot in the early afternoon.
"Now what shall we do?" she asked, with a sigh, as she sat down on the
big sofa. "_I'd_ like to sleep, but I suppose you won't let me."
Tony got off her knee and looked at her gravely.
"You can," he said, magnanimously, "because you brought me. I hate bed.
I'll build a temple with my bricks and I won't knock it down. Not
loud."
And like his aunt he did what he said.
Jan put her feet up and lay very still. For a week now she had risen
early every morning to take the children out in the freshest part of the
day. She seldom got any rest in the afternoon, as she saw to it that
they should be quiet to let Fay sleep, and she went late to bed because
the cool nights in the verandah were the pleasant time for Fay.
Tony murmured to himself, but he made little noise with his stone
bricks. And presently Jan was sleeping almost as soundly as her
obstreperous niece.
Tony did not repeat new words aloud as did his sister. He turned them
over in his mind and treasured some simply because he liked the sound of
them.
There were two that he had carried in his memory for nearly half his
life; two that had for him a mysterious fascination, a vaguely agreeable
significance that he couldn't at all explain. One was "Piccadilly" and
the other "Coln St. Aldwyn's." He didn't even know that they were the
names of places at first, but he thought they had a most beautiful
sound. Gradually the fact that they were places filtered into his mind,
and for Tony Piccadilly seemed particularly rural. He connected it in
some way with the duck-slaying Mrs. Bond of the Baby's Opera, a book he
and Mummy used to sing from before she grew too tired and sad to sing.
Before she lay so many hours in her long chair, before the big man he
called Daddie became so furtive and disturbing. Then Mummy used to tell
him things about a place called Home, and though she never actually
mentioned Piccadilly he had heard the word very often in a song that
somebody sang in the drawing-room at Dariawarpur.
Theatricals had been towards and Mummy was acting, and people came to
practise their songs with her, for not only did she sing herself
delightfully, but she played accompaniments well for other people. The
play was a singing play, and the Assistant Superintendent of Police, a
small, fair young man with next to no voice and a very clear
enunciation, continually practised a song that described someone as
walking "down Piccadilly with a tulip or a lily in his mediæval hand."
Tony rather liked "mediæval" too, but not so much as Piccadilly. A
flowery way, he was sure, with real grass in it like the Resident's
garden. Besides, the "dilly" suggested "daffy-down dilly come up to town
in a yellow petticoat and a green gown."
But not even Piccadilly could compete with Coln St. Aldwyn's in Tony's
affections. There was something about that suggestive of exquisite peace
and loveliness, no mosquitoes and many friendly beasts. He had only
heard the word once by chance in connection with the mysterious place
called Home, in some casual conversation when no one thought he was
listening. He seized upon it instantly and it became a priceless
possession, comforting in times of stress, soothing at all times, a sort
of refuge from a real world that had lately been very puzzling for a
little boy.
He was certain that at Coln St. Aldwyn's there was a mighty forest
peopled by all the nicest animals. Dogs that were ever ready to extend a
welcoming paw, elephants and mild clumsy buffaloes that gave good milk
to the thirsty. Little grey squirrels frolicked in the branches of the
trees, and the tiny birds Mummy told him about that lived in the yew
hedge at Wren's End. Tony had himself been to Wren's End he was told,
but he was only one at the time, and beyond a feeling that he liked the
name and that it was a very green place his ideas about it were hazy.
Sometimes he wished it had been called "Wren St. Endwyn's," but after
mature reflection he decided it was but a poor imitation of the real
thing, so he kept the two names separate in his mind.
He had added two more names to his collection since he came to Bombay.
"Mahaluxmi," the road running beside the sea, where Peter sometimes took
them and Auntie Jan for a drive after tea when it was high tide; and
"Taraporevala," who owned a famous book-shop in Medow Street where he
had once been in a tikka-gharri with Auntie Jan to get some books for
Mummy. Peter had recommended the shop, and the name instantly seized
upon Tony's imagination and will remain with it evermore. He never for
one moment connected it with the urbane gentleman in eyeglasses and a
funny little round hat who owned the shop. For Tony "Taraporevala" will
always suggest endless vistas of halls, fitted with books, shelves, and
tall stacks of books, and counters laden with piles of books. It seemed
amazing to find anything so vast in such a narrow street. There was
something magic about it, like the name. Tony was sure that some day
when he should explore the forest of Coln St. Aldwyn he would come upon
a little solid door in a great rock. A little solid door studded with
heavy nails and leading to a magic cave full of unimaginable treasure.
This door should only open to the incantation of "Taraporevala." None of
your "abracadabras" for him.
And just as Mummy had talked much of "Wren's End" in happier days, so
now Auntie Jan told them endless stories about it and what they would
all do there when they went home. Some day, when he knew her better, he
would ask her about Coln St. Aldwyn's. He felt he didn't know her
intimately enough to do so yet, but he was gradually beginning to have
some faith in her. She was a well-instructed person, too, on the whole,
and she answered a straight question in a straight way.
It was one of the things Tony could never condone in the big man called
Daddie, that he could never answer the simplest question. He always
asked another in return, and there was derision of some sort concealed
in this circuitous answer. Doubtless he meant to be pleasant and
amusing--Tony was just enough to admit that--but he was, so Tony felt,
profoundly mistaken in the means he sought. He took liberties, too;
punching liberties that knocked the breath out of a small boy's body
without actually hurting much; and he never, never talked sense. Tony
resented this. Like the Preacher, he felt there was a time to jest and a
time to refrain from jesting, and it didn't amuse him a bit to be
punched and rumpled and told he was a surly little devil if he attempted
to punch back. In some vague way Tony felt that it wasn't playing the
game--if it was a game. Often, too, for the past year and more, he
connected the frequent disappearances of the big man with trouble for
Mummy. Tony understood Hindustani as well as and better than English.
His extensive vocabulary in the former would have astonished his
mother's friends had they been able to translate, and he understood a
good deal of the servants' talk. He felt no real affection for the big,
tiresome man, though he admired him, his size, his good looks, and a way
he had with grown-up people; but he decided quite dispassionately, on
evidence and without any rancour, that the big man was a "budmash," for
he, unlike Auntie Jan, never did anything he said he'd do. And when,
before they left Dariawarpur, the big man entirely disappeared, Tony
felt no sorrow, only some surprise that having said he was going he
actually had gone. Auntie Jan never mentioned him, Mummy had reminded
them both always to include him when they said their prayers, but
latterly Mummy had been too tired to come to hear prayers. Auntie Jan
came instead, and Tony, watching her face out of half-shut eyes, tried
leaving out "bless Daddie" to see if anything happened. Sure enough
something did; Auntie Jan looked startled. "Say 'Bless Daddie,' Tony,
'and please help him.'"
"To do what?" Tony asked. "Not to come back here?"
"I don't think he'll come back here just now," Auntie Jan said in a
frightened sort of whisper, "but he needs help badly."
Tony folded his hands devoutly and said, "Bless Daddie and please help
him--to stay away just now."
And low down under her breath Jan said, "Amen."
CHAPTER VI
THE SHADOW BEFORE
Jan had been a week in Bombay, and her grave anxiety about Fay was in no
way lessened. Rather did it increase and intensify, for not only did her
bodily strength seem to ebb from her almost visibly day by day, but her
mind seemed so detached and aloof from both present and future.
It was only when Jan talked about the past, about their happy girlhood
and their lovable comrade-father, that Fay seemed to take hold and
understand. All that had happened before his death seemed real and vital
to her. But when Jan tried to interest her in plans for the future, the
voyage home, the children, the baby that was due so soon, Fay looked at
her with tired, lack-lustre eyes and seemed at once to become
absent-minded and irrelevant.
She was ready enough to discuss the characters of the children, to
impress upon Jan the fact that Tony was not unloving, only cautious and
slow before he really gave his affection. That little Fay was exactly
what she appeared on the surface--affectionate, quick, wilful, and
already conscious of her own power through her charm.
"I defy anybody to quarrel with Fay when she is willing to make it up,"
her mother said. "Tony melts like wax before the warmth of her
advances. She may have behaved atrociously to him five minutes
before--Ayah lets her, and I am far too weak with her--but if _she_
wants to be friends Tony forgets and condones everything. Was I very
naughty to you, Jan, as a baby?"
"Not that I can remember. I think you were very biddable and good."
"And you?"
Jan laughed--"There you have me. I believe I was most naughty and
obstreperous, and have vivid recollections of being sent to bed for
various offences. You see, Mother was far too strong and wise to spoil
me as little Fay is spoilt. Father tried his best, but you remember
Hannah? Could you imagine Hannah submitting for one moment to the sort
of treatment that baby metes out to poor, patient Ayah every single
day?"
"By the way, how is Hannah?"
"Hannah is in her hardy usual. She is going strong, and has developed
all sorts of latent talent as a cook. She was with me in the furnished
flat I rented till the day I left (I only took it by the month), and
she'll be with us again when we all get back to Wren's End."
"But I thought Wren's End was let?"
"Only till March quarter-day, and I've cabled to the agent not to
entertain any other offer, as we want it ourselves."
"I like to think of the children at Wren's End," Fay said dreamily.
"Don't you like to think of yourself there, too? Would you like any
other place better?"
Jan's voice sounded constrained and a little hard. People sometimes
speak crossly when they are frightened, and just then Jan felt the cold,
skinny hands of some unnameable terror clutching her heart. Why did Fay
always exclude herself from all plans?
They were, as usual, sitting in the verandah after dinner, and Fay's
eyes were fixed on the deeply blue expanse of sky. She hardly seemed to
hear Jan, for she continued: "Do you remember the sketch Daddie did of
me against the yew hedge? I'd like Tony to have that some day if you'd
let him."
"Of course that picture is yours," Jan said, hastily. "We never divided
the pictures when he died. Some were sold and we shared the money, but
our pictures are at Wren's End."
"I remember that money," Fay interrupted. "Hugo was so pleased about it,
and gave me a diamond chain."
"Fay, where do you keep your jewellery?"
"There isn't any to keep now. He 'realised' it all long before we left
Dariawarpur."
"What do you mean, Fay? Has Hugo pawned it? All Mother's things, too?"
"I don't know what he did with it," Fay said, wearily. "He told me it
wasn't safe in Dariawarpur, as there were so many robbers about that hot
weather, and he took all the things in their cases to send to the bank.
And I never saw them again."
Jan said nothing, but she reflected rather ruefully that when Fay
married she had let her have nearly all their mother's ornaments, partly
because Fay loved jewels as jewels, and Jan cared little for them
except as associations. "If I'd kept more," Jan thought, "they'd have
come in for little Fay. Now there's nothing except what Daddie gave me."
"Are you sorry, Jan?" Fay asked, presently. "I suppose there again you
think I ought to have stood out, to have made inquiries and insisted on
getting a receipt from the bank. But I knew very well they were not
going to the bank. I don't think they fetched much, but Hugo looked a
little less harassed after he'd got them. I've nothing left now but my
wedding ring and the little enamel chain like yours, that Daddie gave us
the year he had that portrait of Meg in the Salon and took us over to
see it. Where is Meg? Has she come back yet?"
"Meg is still in Bremen with an odious German family, but she leaves at
the end of the Christmas holidays, as the girl is going to school, and
Meg will be utilised to bring her over. Then she's to have a rest for a
month or two, and I daresay she'd come to Wren's End and help us with
the babies when we get back."
Fay leant forward and said eagerly, "Try to get her, Jan. I'd love to
think she was there to help you."
"To help us," Jan repeated firmly.
Fay sighed. "I can never think of myself as of much use any more;
besides ... Oh, Jan, won't you face it? You who are so brave about
facing things ... I don't believe I shall come through--this time."
Jan got up and walked restlessly about the verandah. She tried to make
herself say, heard her own voice saying without any conviction, that it
was nonsense; that Fay was run down and depressed and no wonder; and
that she would feel quite different in a month or two. And all the time,
though her voice said these preposterously banal things, her brain
repeated the doctor's words after his last visit: "I wish there was a
little more stamina, Miss Ross. I don't like this complete inertia. It's
not natural. Can't you rouse her at all?"
"My sister has had a very trying time, you know. She seems thoroughly
worn out."
"I know, I know," the doctor had said. "A bad business and cruelly hard
on her; but I wish we could get her strength up a bit somehow. I don't
like it--this lack of interest in everything--I don't like it." And the
doctor's thin, clever face looked lined and worried as he left.
His words rang in Jan's ears, drowning her own spoken words that seemed
such a hollow sham.
She went and knelt by Fay's long chair. Fay touched her cheek very
gently (little Fay had the same adorable tender gestures). "It would
make it easier for both of us if you'd face it, my dear," she said. "I
could talk much more sensibly then and make plans, and perhaps really be
of some use. But I feel a wretched hypocrite to talk of sharing in
things when I know perfectly well I shan't be there."
"Don't you want to be there?" Jan asked, hoarsely.
[Illustration: "It would make it easier for both of us if you'd face it,
my dear."]
Fay shook her head. "I know it's mean to shuffle out of it all, but I
_am_ so tired. Do you think it very horrid of me, Jan?"
In silence Jan held her close; and in that moment she faced it.
The days went on, strange, quiet days of brilliant sunshine. Their daily
life shrouded from the outside world even as the verandah was shrouded
from the sun when Lalkhan let down the chicks every day after tiffin.
Peter was their only visitor besides the doctor, and Peter came
practically every day. He generally took Jan out after tea, sometimes
with the children, sometimes alone. He even went with her to the bank in
Elphinstone Circle, so like a bit of Edinburgh, with its solid stone
houses, and found that Hugo actually had lodged fifty pounds there in
Fay's name. The clerks looked curiously at Jan, for they thought she was
Mrs. Tancred. Every one in business or official circles in Bombay knew
about Hugo Tancred. His conduct had, for a while, even ousted the usual
topics of conversation--money, food, and woman--from the bazaars; and an
exhaustive discussion of it was only kept out of the Native Press by the
combined efforts of the Police and his own Department. Jan gained from
Peter a fairly clear idea of the _débâcle_ that had occurred in Hugo
Tancred's life. She no longer wondered that Fay refused to leave the
bungalow. She began to feel branded herself.
For Jan, Peter's visits had come to have something of the relief the
loosening of a too-tight bandage gives to a wounded man. He generally
came at tea-time when Fay was at her best, and he brought her news of
her little world at Dariawarpur. To her sister he seemed the one link
with reality. Without him the heavy dream would have gone on unbroken.
Fay was always most eager he should take Jan out, and, though at first
Jan had been unwilling, she gradually came to look upon such times as a
blessed break in the monotonous restraint of her day. With him she was
natural, said what she felt, expressed her fears, and never failed to
return comforted and more hopeful.
One night he took her to the Yacht Club, and Jan was glad she had gone,
because it gave her so much to tell Fay when she got back.
It was a very odd experience for Jan, this tea on the crowded lawn of
the Yacht Club. She turned hot when people looked at her, and Jan had
always felt so sure of herself before, so proud to be a daughter of
brilliant, lovable Anthony Ross.
Here, she knew that her sole claim to notice was that she had the
misfortune to be Hugo Tancred's sister-in-law. Fay, too, had once been
joyfully proud and confident--and now!
Sometimes in the long, still days Jan wondered whether their father had
brought them up to expect too much from life, to take their happiness
too absolutely as a matter of course. Anthony Ross had fully subscribed
to the R.L.S. doctrine that happiness is a duty. When they were both
quite little girls he had loved to hear them repeat:
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain;
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take,
And stab my spirit broad awake.
Surely as young girls they had both shown a "glorious morning face." Who
more so than poor Fay? So gay and beautiful and kind. Why had this come
upon her, this cruel, numbing disgrace and sorrow? Jan was thoroughly
rebellious. Again she went over that time in Scotland six years before,
when, at a big shooting-box up in Sutherland, they met, among other
guests, handsome Hugo Tancred, home on leave. How he had, almost at
first sight, fallen violently in love with Fay. How he had singled her
out for every deferent and delicate attention; how she, young,
enthusiastic, happy and flattered, had fallen quite equally in love with
him. Jan recalled her father's rather comical dismay and astonishment.
His horror when they pressed an immediate marriage, so that Fay might go
out with Hugo in November. And his final giving-in to everything Fay
wanted because Fay wanted it.
Did her father really like Hugo Tancred? she wondered. And then came the
certainty that he wouldn't ever have liked anybody much who wanted to
marry either of them; but he was far too just and too imaginative to
stand in the way where, what seemed, the happiness of his daughter was
concerned.
"What a gamble it all is," thought Jan, and felt inclined to thank
heaven that she was neither so fascinating nor as susceptible as Fay.
How were they to help to set Hugo Tancred on his legs again, and
reconstruct something of a future for Fay? And then there always
sounded, like a knell, Fay's tired, pathetic voice: "Don't bother to
make plans for me, Jan. For the children, yes, as much as you like. You
are so clever and constructive--but leave me out, dear, for it's just a
waste of time."
And the dreadful part of it was that Jan felt a growing conviction that
Fay was right. And what was more, that Peter felt about it exactly as
Fay did, in spite of his matter-of-fact optimism at all such times as
Jan dared to express her dread.
Peter learned a good deal about the Ross family in those talks with Jan.
She was very frank about her affairs, told him what money she had and
how it was invested. That the old house in Gloucestershire was hers,
left directly to her and not to her father, by a curious freak on the
part of his aunt, one Janet Ross, who disapproved of Anthony's habit of
living up to whatever he made each year by his pictures, and saving
nothing that he earned.
"My little girls are safe, anyway," he always said. "Their mother's
money is tied up on them, though they don't get it except with my
sanction till my death. I can't touch the capital. Why, then, shouldn't
we have an occasional flutter when I have a good year, while we are all
young and can enjoy things?"
They had a great many flutters--for Anthony's pictures sold well among a
rather eclectic set. His portraits had a certain _cachet_ that gave them
a vogue. They were delicate, distinguished, and unlike other work. The
beauties without brains never succeeded in getting Anthony Ross to paint
them, bribed they never so. But the clever beauties were well satisfied,
and the clever who were not at all beautiful felt that Anthony Ross
painted their souls, so they were satisfied, too. Besides, he made their
sittings so delightful and flirted with them with such absolute
discretion always. The year that Hugo Tancred met Fay was a particularly
good year, and Anthony had bought a touring-car, and they all went up to
Scotland in it. The girls were always well dressed and went out a good
deal. Young as she was, Jan was already an excellent manager and a
pleasant hostess. She had been taking care of her father from the time
she was twelve years old, and knew exactly how to manage him. When there
was plenty of money she let him launch out; when it was spent she made
him draw in again, and he was always quite ready to do so. Money as
money had no charms for Anthony Ross, but the pleasures it could
provide, the kindnesses it enabled him to do, the easy travel and the
gracious life were precious to him. He abhorred debt in any form and
paid his way as he went; lavishly when he had it, justly and exactly
always.
On hearing all this Peter came to the conclusion that Hugo Tancred was
not altogether to blame if he had expected a good deal more financial
assistance from his father-in-law than he got. Anthony made no marriage
settlement on Fay. He allowed her two hundred a year for her personal
expenses and considered that Hugo Tancred should manage the running of
his own house out of his quite comfortable salary. He had, of course, no
smallest inkling of Hugo's debts or gambling propensities. And all might
have gone well if only Anthony Ross had made a new will when Fay
married; a will which tied up her mother's money and anything he might
leave her, so that she couldn't touch the capital. But nothing of the
kind was done.
It never occurred to Jan to think of wills.
Anthony Ross was strong and cheerful and so exceedingly young at
fifty-two that it seemed absurd that he should have grown-up daughters,
quite ludicrous that he should be a grandfather.
Many charming ladies would greatly like to have occupied the position of
stepmother to "those nice girls," but Anthony, universal lover as he was
within strictly platonic limits, showed no desire to give his girls
anything of the sort. Jan satisfied his craving for a gracious and
well-ordered comfort in all his surroundings. Fay gratified his æsthetic
appreciation of beauty and gentleness. What would he do with a third
woman who might introduce discord into these harmonies?
Fay came home for a short visit when Tony was six months old, as Hugo
had not got a very good station just then. She was prettier than ever,
seemed perfectly happy, and both Anthony and Jan rejoiced in her.
After she went out the Tancreds moved to Dariawarpur, which was
considered one of the best stations in their province, and there little
Fay was born, and it was arranged that Jan and her father were to visit
India and Fay during the next cold weather.
But early in the following November Anthony Ross got influenza,
recovered, went out too soon, got a fresh chill, and in two days
developed double pneumonia.
His heart gave out, and before his many friends had realised he was at
all seriously ill, he died.
Jan, stunned, bewildered, and heart-broken, yet contrived to keep her
head. She got rid of the big house in St. George's Square and most of
the servants, finally keeping only Hannah, her old Scottish nurse. She
paid everybody, rendered a full account of her stewardship to Fay and
Hugo, and then prepared to go out to India as had been arranged. Her
heart cried out for her only sister.
To her surprise this proposition met with but scant enthusiasm. It
seemed the Tancreds' plans were uncertain; perhaps it might be better
for Fay and the children to come home in spring instead of Jan going out
to them. Hugo's letters were ambiguous and rather cold; Fay's a curious
mixture of abandonment and restraint; but the prevailing note of both
was "would she please do nothing in a hurry, but wait."
So, of course, Jan waited.
She waited two years, growing more anxious and puzzled as time went on.
Her lawyer protested unavailingly at Hugo's perpetual demands (of
course, backed up by Fay) for more and more capital that he might
"re-invest" it. Fay's letters grew shorter and balder and more
constrained. At last, quite suddenly, came the imperative summons to go
out at once to be with Fay when the new baby should arrive.
And now after three weeks in Bombay Jan felt that she had never known
any other life, that she never would know any other life than this
curious dream-like existence, this silent, hopeless waiting for
something as afflicting as it was inevitable.
There had been a great fire in the cotton green towards Colaba. It had
blazed all night, and, in spite of the efforts of the Bombay firemen and
their engines, was still blazing at six o'clock the following evening.
Peter took Jan in his car out to see it. There was an immense crowd, so
they left the car on its outskirts and plunged into the throng on foot.
On either side of the road were tall, flimsy houses with a wooden
staircase outside; those curious tenements so characteristic of the
poorer parts of Bombay, and in such marked contrast to the "Fort," the
European quarter of the town. They were occupied chiefly by Eurasians
and very poor Europeans. That the road was a sea of mud, varied by quite
deep pools of water, seemed the only possible reason why such houses
were not also burning.
Jan splashed bravely through the mud, interested and excited by the
people and the leaping flames so dangerously near. It was growing dusk;
the air was full of the acrid smell of burnt cotton, and the red glow
from the sky was reflected on the grave brown faces watching the fire.
Any crowd in Bombay is always extremely varied, and Jan almost forgot
her anxieties in her enjoyment of the picturesque scene.
"I don't think the people ought to be allowed to throng on the top of
that staircase," Peter said suddenly. "They aren't built to hold a
number at once; there'll be an accident," and he left her side for a
moment to speak to an inspector of police.
Jan looked up at a tall house on her left, where sightseers were
collecting on the staircase to get a better view. Every window was
crowded with gazers, all but one. From one, quite at the top, a solitary
watcher looked out.
There was a sudden shout from the crowd below, a redder glow as more
piled cotton fell into the general furnace and blazed up, and in that
moment Jan saw that the solitary watcher was Hugo Tancred, and that he
recognised her. She gave a little gasp of horror, which Peter heard as
he joined her again. "What is it?" he said. "What has frightened you?"
Jan pointed upwards. "I've just seen Hugo," she whispered. "There, in
one of those windows--the empty one. Oh, what can he be doing in those
dreadful houses, and why is he in Bombay all this time and never a word
to Fay?"
Jan was trembling. Peter put his hand under her arm and walked on with
her.
"I knew he was in Bombay," he said, "but I didn't think the poor devil
was reduced to this."
"What is to be done?" Jan exclaimed. "If he comes and worries Fay for
money now, it will kill her. She thinks he is safely out of India. What
_is_ to be done?"
"Nothing," said Peter. "He'll go the very minute he can, and you may be
sure he'll raise the wind somehow. He's got all sorts of queer irons in
the fire. He daren't appear at the flat, or some of his creditors would
cop him for debt--it's watched day and night, I know. Just let it alone.
I'd no idea he was hiding in this region or I wouldn't have brought you.
We all want him to get clear. He might file his petition, but it would
only rake up all the old scandals, and they know pretty well there's
nothing to be got out of him."
"He looked so dreadful, so savage and miserable," Jan said with a
half-sob.
"Well--naturally," said Peter. "You'd feel savage and miserable if you
were in his shoes."
"But oughtn't I to help him? Send him money, I mean."
"Not one single anna. It'll take you all your time to get his family
home and keep them when you get there. Have you seen enough? Shall we go
back?"
"You don't think he'll molest Fay?"
"I'm certain of it."
"Please take me home. I shall never feel it safe to leave Fay again for
a minute."
"That's nonsense, you know," said Peter.
"It's what I feel," said Jan.
It was that night Tony's extempore prayer was echoed so earnestly by his
aunt.
CHAPTER VII
THE HUMAN TOUCH
Three days later Jan got a note from Peter telling her that Hugo Tancred
had left Bombay and was probably leaving India at once from one of the
smaller ports.
He had not attempted to communicate in person or by letter with either
Jan or his wife.
Early in the morning, just a week from the time Jan had seen Hugo
Tancred at the window of that tall house near the cotton green, Fay's
third child, a girl, was still-born; and Fay, herself, never recovered
consciousness all day. A most competent nurse had been in the house
nearly a week, the doctor had done all that human skill could do, but
Fay continued to sink rapidly.
About midnight the nurse, who had been standing by the bed with her
finger on Fay's pulse, moved suddenly and gently laid down the weak hand
she had been holding. She looked warningly across at Jan, who knelt at
the other side, her eyes fixed on the pale, beautiful face that looked
so wonderfully young and peaceful.
Suddenly Fay opened her eyes and smiled. She looked right past Jan,
exclaiming joyfully, "There you are at last, Daddie, and it's broad
daylight."
* * * * *
For Jan it was still the middle of the Indian night and very dark
indeed.
The servants were all asleep; the little motherless children safely
wrapped in happy unconsciousness in their nursery with Ayah.
The last sad offices had been done for Fay, and the nurse, tired out,
was also sleeping--on Jan's bed.
Jan, alone of all the household, kept watch, standing in the verandah, a
ghostly figure, still in the tumbled white muslin frock she had had no
time all day to change.
It was nearly one o'clock. Motors and carriages were beginning to come
back from Government House, where there was a reception. The motor-horns
and horses' hoofs sounded loud in the wide silent street, and the head
lights swept down the Queen's Road like fireflies in flight.
Jan turned on the light in the verandah. Peter would perhaps look up and
see her standing there, and realise why she kept watch. Perhaps he would
stop and come up.
She wanted Peter desperately.
Compassed about with many relatives and innumerable friends at home, out
here Jan was singularly alone. In all that great city she knew no one
save Peter, the doctor and the nurse. Some few women, knowing all the
circumstances, had called and were ready to be kind and helpful and
friendly, as women are all over India, but Fay would admit none but
Peter--even to see Jan; and always begged her not to return the calls
"till it was all over."
Well, it was all over now. Fay would never be timid and ashamed any
more.
Jan had not shed a tear. The longing to cry that had assailed her so
continuously in her first week had entirely left her. She felt
clear-headed and cold and bitterly resentful. She would like to have
made Hugo Tancred go in front of her into that quiet room and forced him
to look at the girlish figure on the bed--his handiwork. She wanted to
hurt him, to make him more wretched than he was already.
A car stopped in the street below. Jan went very quietly to the door of
the flat and listened at the top of the staircase.
Steps were on the stairs, but they stopped at one of the flats below.
Presently another car stopped. Again she went out and listened. The
steps came up and up and she switched on the light in the passage.
This time it was Peter.
He looked very tired.
"I thought you would come," Jan said. "She died at midnight."
Peter closed the outer door, and taking Jan by the arm led her back into
the sitting-room, where he put her in a corner of the big sofa and sat
down beside her.
He could not speak, and Jan saw that the tears she could not shed were
in his eyes, those large dark eyes that could appear so sombre and then
again so kind.
Jan watched him enviously. She was acutely conscious of trifling things.
She even noticed what very black eyebrows he had and how--as always,
when he was either angry or deeply moved--the veins in his forehead
stood out in a strongly-marked V.
"It was best, I think," Jan said, and even to herself her voice sounded
like the voice of a stranger. "She would have been very unhappy if she
had lived."
Peter started at the cool, hard tones, and looked at her. Then, simply
and naturally, like a child, he took her hand and held it; and there was
that in the human contact, in the firm, comfortable clasp, that seemed
to break something down in Jan, and all at once she felt weak and faint
and trembling. She leaned her head against the pillows piled high in the
corner where Fay had always rested. The electric light in the verandah
seemed suddenly to recede to an immense distance and became a tiny
luminous pin-head, like a far lone star.
She heard Peter moving about in the dining-room behind and clinking
things, but she felt quite incapable of going to see what he was doing
or of trying to be hospitable--besides, it was his house, he knew where
things were, and she was so tired.
And then he was standing over her, holding a tumbler against her
chattering teeth.
"Drink it," he said, and, though his voice sounded far away, it was firm
and authoritative. "Quick; don't pretend you can't swallow, for you
can."
He tipped the glass, and something wet and cold ran over her chin:
anything was better than that, and she tried to drink. As she did so
she realised she was thirsty, drank it all eagerly and gasped.
"Have you had anything to eat all day?" the dominating voice went on; it
sounded much nearer now.
"I can't remember," she said, feebly. "Oh, why did you give me all that
brandy, it's made me so muzzy and confused, and there's so much I ought
to see to."
"You rest a bit first--you'll be all right presently."
Someone lifted her by the knees and put the whole of her on the sofa. It
was very comfortable; she was not so cold now. She lay quite still and
closed her eyes. She had not had a real night's sleep since she reached
Bombay. Fay was always restless and nervous, and Jan had not had her
clothes off for forty-eight hours. The long strain was over, there was
nothing to watch and wait for now. She would do as that voice said, rest
for a few minutes.
There was a white chuddah shawl folded on the end of the sofa. Fay had
liked it spread over her knees, for she was nearly always chilly.
Peter opened it and laid it very lightly over Jan, who never stirred.
Then he sat down in a comfortable chair some distance off, where she
would see him if she woke, and reviewed the situation, which was
unconventional, certainly.
He had sent his car away when he arrived, as it was but a step to the
Yacht Club where he slept. Now, he felt he couldn't leave, for if Jan
woke suddenly she would feel confused and probably frightened.
"I never thought so little brandy could have had such an effect," Peter
reflected half ruefully. "I suppose it's because she'd had nothing to
eat. It's about the best thing that could have happened, but I never
meant to hocus her like this."
There she lay, a long white mound under the shawl. She had slipped her
hand under her cheek and looked pathetically young and helpless.
"I wonder what I'd better do," thought Peter.
Mrs. Grundy commanded him to go at once. Common humanity bade him stay.
Peter was very human, and he stayed.
About half-past five Jan woke. She was certainly confused, but not in
the least frightened. It was light, not brilliantly light as it would be
a little later on, but clear and opalescent, as though the sun were
shining through fold upon fold of grey-blue gauze.
The electric light in the verandah and the one over Peter's head were
still burning and looked garish and wan, and Jan's first coherent
thought was, "How dreadfully wasteful to have had them on all
night--Peter's electric light, too"--and then she saw him.
His body was crumpled up in the big chair; his legs were thrust out
stiffly in front of him. He looked a heartrending interpretation of
discomfort in his evening clothes, for he hadn't even loosened the
collar. He had thought of it, but felt it might be disrespectful to Jan.
Besides, there was something of the chaperon about that collar.
Jan's tears that had refused to soften sorrow during the anguish of the
night came now, hot and springing, to blur that absurd, pathetic figure
looped sideways in the big chair.
It was so plain why he was there.
She sniffed helplessly (of course, she had lost her handkerchief), and
thrust her knuckles into her eyes like any schoolboy.
When she could see again she noticed how thin was the queer, irregular
face, with dark hollows round the eyes.
"I wonder if they feed him properly at that Yacht Club," thought Jan.
"And here are we using his house and his cook and everything."
She swung her feet off the sofa and disentangled them from the shawl,
folded it neatly and sat looking at Peter, who opened his eyes.
For a full minute they stared at each other in silence, then he
stretched himself and rose.
"I say, have you slept?" he asked.
"Till a minute ago ... Mr. Ledgard ... why did you stay? It was angelic
of you, but you must be so dreadfully tired. I feel absolutely rested
and, oh, so grateful--but so ashamed...."
"Then you must have some tea," said Peter, inconsequently. "I'll go and
rouse up Lalkhan and the cook. We can't get any ourselves, for he locks
up the whole show every blessed night."
* * * * *
In the East burial follows death with the greatest possible speed. Peter
and the doctor and the nurse arranged everything. A friend of Peter's
who had little children sent for Ayah and Tony and little Fay to spend
the day, and Jan was grateful.
Fay and her baby were laid in the English cemetery, and Jan was left to
face the children as best she could.
They had been happy, Ayah said, with the kind lady and her children.
Tony went straight to his mother's room, the room that had been closed
to him for three whole days.
He came back to Jan and stood in front of her, searching her face with
his grave, judging gaze.
"What have you done with my Mummy?" he asked. "Have you carried her away
and put her somewhere like you do Fay when she's naughty? You're strong
enough."
"Oh, Tony!" Jan whispered piteously. "I would have kept her if I could,
but I wasn't strong enough for that."
"Who has taken her, then?" Tony persisted. "Where is she? I've been
everywhere, and she isn't in the bungalow."
"God has taken her, Tony."
"What for?"
"I think," Jan said, timidly, "it was because she was very tired and ill
and unhappy----"
"But is she happier now and better?"
"I hope so, I believe she is ... quite happy and well."
"You're sure?" And Tony's eyes searched Jan's face. "You're sure _you_
haven't put her somewhere?"
"Tony, I want Mummy every bit as much as you do. Be a little good to
me, sonny, for I'm dreadfully sad."
Jan held out her hand and Tony took it doubtfully. She drew him nearer.
"Try to be good to me, Tony, and love me a little ... it's all so hard."
"I'll be good," he said, gravely, "because I promised Mummy ... but I
can't love you yet--because--" here Tony sighed deeply, "I don't seem to
feel like it."
"Never mind," said Jan, lifting him on to her knee. "Never mind. I'll
love you an extra lot to make up."
"And Fay?" he asked.
"And Fay--we must both love Fay more than ever now."
"I do love Fay," Tony said, "because I'm used to her. She's been here a
long time...."
Suddenly his mouth went down at the corners and he leant against Jan's
shoulder to hide his face. "I do want Mummy so," he whispered, as the
slow, difficult tears welled over and fell. "I like so much to look at
her."
* * * * *
It was early afternoon, the hot part of the day. The children were
asleep and Jan sat on the big sofa, finishing a warm jersey for little
Fay to wear towards the end of the voyage. Peter, by means of every
scrap of interest he possessed, had managed to secure her a three-berth
cabin in a mail boat due to leave within the next fortnight. He insisted
that she must take Ayah, who was more than eager to go, and that Ayah
could easily get a passage back almost directly with people he knew who
were coming out soon after Jan got home. He had written to them, and
they would write to meet the boat at Aden.
There was nothing Peter did not seem able to arrange.
In the flat below a lady was singing the "Indian Love Lyrics" from the
"Garden of Khama." She had a powerful voice and sang with considerable
passion.
Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel,
Less than the rust that never stained thy sword.
Jan frowned and fidgeted.
The song went on, finished, and then the lady sang it all over again.
Jan turned on the electric fan, for it was extremely hot, and the strong
contralto voice made her feel even hotter. The whirr of the fan in no
way drowned the voice, which now went on to proclaim with much _brio_
that the temple bells were ringing and the month of marriages was
drawing near. And then, very slowly and solemnly, but quite as loudly as
before, came "When I am dying, lean over me tenderly----"
Jan got up and stamped. Then she went swiftly for her topee and gloves
and parasol, and fled from the bungalow.
Lalkhan rushed after her to ask if she wanted a "tikka-gharri." He
strongly disapproved of her walking in the streets alone, but Jan shook
her head. The lift-man was equally eager to procure one, but again Jan
defeated his desire and walked out into the hot street. Somehow she
couldn't bear "The Garden of Khama" just then. It was Hugo Tancred's
favourite verse, and was among the few books Fay appeared to possess,
Fay who was lying in the English cemetery, and so glad to be there ...
at twenty-five.
What was the good of life and love, if that was all it led to? In spite
of the heat Jan walked feverishly and fast, down the shady side of the
Mayo Road into Esplanade Road, where the big shops were, and, just then,
no shade at all.
The hot dust seemed to rise straight out of the pavement and strike her
in the face, and all the air was full of the fat yellow smell that
prevails in India when its own inhabitants have taken their mid-day
meal.
Each bare-legged gharri-man slumbered on the little box of his carriage,
hanging on in that amazingly precarious fashion in which natives of the
East seem able to sleep anywhere.
On Jan went, anywhere, anywhere away from the garden of Khama and that
travesty of love, as she conceived it. She remembered the day when she
thought them such charming songs and thrilled in sympathy with Fay when
Hugo sang them. Oh, why did that woman sing them to-day? Would she ever
get the sound out of her ears?
She had reached Churchgate Street, which was deserted and deep in shade.
She turned down and presently came to the Cathedral standing in its trim
garden bright with English flowers. The main door was open and Jan went
in.
Here the haunting love-lyrics were hushed. It was so still, not even a
sweeper to break the blessed peace.
Restlessly, Jan walked round the outer aisles, reading the inscriptions
on marble tablets and brasses, many of them dating back to the later
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Men died young out in India
in those days; hardly any seemed to live beyond forty-two, many died in
the twenties. On nearly all the tablets the words "zeal" or "zealous"
regularly appeared. With regard to their performance of their duties
these dead and gone men who had helped to make the India of to-day had
evidently had a very definite notion as to their own purpose in life.
The remarks were guarded and remarkably free from exaggerated tributes
to the virtues they celebrated. One Major-General Bellasis was described
as "that very respectable Officer--who departed this life while he was
in the meritorious discharge of his duty presiding at the Military
Board." Others died "from exposure to the sun"; nearly all seemed to
have displayed "unremitting" or "characteristic zeal" in the discharge
of their duties.
Jan sat down, and gradually it seemed as though the spirits and souls of
those departed men, those ordinary everyday men--whose descendants might
probably be met any day in the Yacht Club now--seemed to surround her in
a great company, all pointing in one direction and with one voice
declaring, "This is the WAY."
Jan fell on her knees and prayed that her stumbling feet might be
guided upon it, that she should in no wise turn aside, however steep and
stony it might prove.
And as she knelt there came upon her the conviction that here was the
true meaning of life as lived upon the earth; just this, that each
should do his job.
CHAPTER VIII
THE END OF THE DREAM
She walked back rather slowly. It was a little cooler, but dusty, and
the hot pavements made her feet ache. She was just wondering whether she
would take a gharri when a motor stopped at the curb and Peter got out.
"What are you doing?" he asked crossly. "Why are you walking in all this
heat? You can't play these games in India. Get in."
He held the door open for her.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Ledgard," Jan said, sweetly. "Is it worth while for
such a little way?"
"Get in," Peter said again, and Jan meekly got in.
"I was just coming to see you, and I could have taken you anywhere you
wanted to go, if only you'd waited. Why didn't you take a gharri?"
"Since you must know," Jan said, smiling at the angry Peter, "I went out
because I wanted to go out. And I walked because I wanted to walk."
"You can't do things just because you want to do 'em in this infernal
country--you must consider whether it's a suitable time."
Jan made no answer, and silence reigned till they reached the bungalow.
Peter followed her in.
"Where did you go?" he asked. "And why?"
"I went to the Cathedral, and my reason was that I simply couldn't stay
in the bungalow because the lady below was singing 'Less than the
dust.'"
"I know," Peter said grimly. "Just the sort of thing she would sing."
"She sang very well," Jan owned honestly, "but when Fay was first
engaged she and Hugo used to sing those songs to each other--it seemed
all day long--and this afternoon I couldn't bear it. It seemed such a
sham somehow--so false and unreal, if it only led--to this."
"It's real enough while it lasts, you know," Peter remarked in the
detached, elderly tone he sometimes adopted. "That sort of thing's all
right for an episode, but it's a bit too thin for marriage."
"But surely episodes often end in marriage?"
"Not that sort, and if they do it's generally pretty disastrous. A woman
who felt she was less than the dust and rust and weeds and all that rot
wouldn't be much good to a man who had to do his job, for she wouldn't
do hers, you know."
"Then you, too, think that's the main thing--to do your job?"
"It seems to me it's the only thing that justifies one's existence.
Anyway, to try to do it decently."
"And you don't think one ought to expect to be happy and have things go
smoothly?"
"Well, they won't always, you know, whether you expect it or not; but
the job remains, so it's just as well to make up your mind to it."
"I suppose," Jan said thoughtfully, "that's a religion."
"It pans out as well as most," said Peter.
The days that had gone so slowly went quickly enough now. Jan had much
to arrange and no word came from Hugo. She succeeded in getting the
monthly bills from the cook, and paid them, and very timidly she asked
Peter if she might pay the wages for the time his servants had waited
upon them; but Peter was so huffy and cross she never dared to mention
it again.
The night before they all sailed Peter dined with her, and, after
dinner, took her for one last drive over Malabar Hill. The moon was
full, and when they reached Ridge Road he stopped the car and they got
out and stood on the cliff, looking over the city just as they had done
on her first evening in Bombay.
Some scented tree was in bloom and the air was full of its soft
fragrance.
For some minutes they stood in silence, then Jan broke it by asking:
"Mr. Ledgard, could Hugo take the children from me?"
"He could, of course, legally--but I don't for a minute imagine he will,
for he couldn't keep them. What about his people? Will they want to
interfere?"
"I don't think so; from the little he told us they are not very well
off. They live in Guernsey. His father was something in salt, I think,
out here. We've none of us seen them. They didn't come to Fay's
wedding. I gather they are very strict in their views--both his father
and mother--and there are two sisters. But Fay said Hugo hardly ever
wrote--or heard from them."
"There's just one thing you must face, Miss Ross," and Peter felt a
brute as he looked at Jan pale and startled in the bright moonlight.
"Hugo Tancred might marry again."
"Oh, surely no one would marry him after all this!"
"Whoever did would probably know nothing of 'all this.' Remember Hugo
Tancred has a way with women; he's a fascinating chap when he likes,
he's good-looking and plausible, and always has an excellent reason for
all his misfortunes. If he does marry again he'll marry money, and
_then_ he might demand the children."
"Perhaps she wouldn't want them."
"We'll hope not."
"And I can do nothing--nothing to make them safe?"
"I fear--nothing--only your best for them."
"I'll do that," said Jan.
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the scented stillness of the night.
The shadows were black and sharp in the bright moonlight and the
tom-toms throbbed in the city below.
"I wonder," Jan said presently, "if I shall ever be able to do anything
for you, Mr. Ledgard. You have done everything for us out here."
"Would you really like to do something?" Peter asked eagerly. "I
wouldn't have mentioned it if you hadn't said that just now. Would you
write pretty often? You see, I've no people of my very own. Aunts and
uncles and cousins don't keep in touch with one out here. They're kind,
awfully kind when I go home on leave, but it takes a man's own folk to
remember to write every mail."
"I'll write every mail," Jan promised eagerly, "and when you take your
next leave, remember we expect you at Wren's End."
"I'll remember," said Peter, "and it may be sooner than you think."
They sailed next day. Jan had spent six weeks in Bombay, and the whole
thing seemed a dream.
The voyage back was very different from the voyage out. The boat was
crowded, and nearly all were Service people going home on leave. Jan
found them very kind and friendly, and the children, with plenty of
others to play with, were for the most part happy and good.
The journey across France was rather horrid. Little Fay was as
obstreperous as Tony was disagreeably silent and aloof. Jan thanked
heaven when the crowded train steamed into Charing Cross.
There, at the very door of their compartment, a girl was waiting. A girl
so small, she might have been a child except for a certain decision and
capability about everything she did. She seized Jan, kissed her
hurriedly and announced that she had got a nice little furnished flat
for them till they should go to the country, and that Hannah had tea
ready; this young person, herself, helped to carry their smaller
baggage to a taxi, packed them in, demanded Jan's keys and announced
that she would bring the luggage in another taxi. She gave the address
to the man, and a written slip to Jan, and vanished to collect their
cabin baggage.
It was all done so briskly and efficiently that it left Ayah and the
children quite breathless, accustomed as they were to the leisurely
methods of the East.
"Who is vat mem?" asked little Fay, as the taxi door was slammed by this
energetic young person.
"Is she quite a mem?" suggested the accurate Tony. "Is she old enough or
big enough?"
"Who is vat mem?" little Fay repeated.
"That," said Jan with considerable satisfaction in her voice, "is Meg."
CHAPTER IX
MEG
It was inevitable as the refrain of a _rondeau_ that when Jan said
"that's Meg" little Fay should demand "What nelse?"
Now there was a good deal of "nelse" about Meg, and she requires some
explanation, going back several years.
Like most Scots, Anthony Ross had been faithful to his relations whether
he felt affection for them or not; sometimes even when they had not a
thought in common with him and he rather disliked them than otherwise.
And this was so in the case of one Amelia Ross, his first cousin, who
was head-mistress of a flourishing and well-established school for
"young ladies," in the Regent's Park district.
She had been a head-mistress for many years, and was well over fifty
when she married a meek, small, nothingly man who had what Thackeray
calls "a little patent place." And it appeared that she added the
husband to the school in much the same spirit as she would have
increased the number of chairs in her dining-room, and with no more
appreciable result in her life. On her marriage she became Mrs.
Ross-Morton, and Mr. Morton went in and out of the front door,
breakfasted and dined at Ribston Hall, caught his bus at the North Gate
and went daily to his meek little work. It is presumed that he lived on
terms of affectionate intimacy with his wife, but no one who saw them
together could have gathered this.
Now Anthony Ross disliked his cousin Amelia. He detested her school,
which he considered was one of the worst examples of a bad old period.
He suspected her of being hard and grasping, he knew she was dull, and
her husband bored him--not to tears, but to profanity. Yet since she was
his cousin and a hard-working, upright woman, and since they had played
together as children in Scotland and her father and mother had been kind
to him then, he could never bring himself to drop Amelia. Not for worlds
would he have allowed Jan or Fay to go to her school, but he did allow
them, or rather he humbly entreated them, to visit it occasionally when
invited to some function or other. Jan's education after her mother's
death had been the thinnest scrape sandwiched between many household
cares and much attendance upon her father's whims. Fay was allowed
classes and visiting governesses, but their father could never bring
himself to spare either of them to the regular discipline of school, and
Cousin Amelia bewailed the desultory training of Anthony's children.
In 1905, Jan and Fay had been to a party at Ribston Hall: tea in the
garden followed by a pastoral play. Anthony was sitting in the balcony,
smoking, when the girls came back. He saw their hansom and ran
downstairs to meet them, as he always did. They were a family who went
in for affectionate greetings.
"Daddie," cried Fay, seizing her father by the arm, "one of the seven
wonders of the world has happened. We have found an interesting person
at Ribston Hall."
Jan took the other arm. "We can't possibly tell you all about it under
an hour, so we'd better go and sit in the balcony." And they gently
propelled him towards the staircase.
"Not if you're going to discuss Cousin Amelia," Anthony protested. "You
have carrying voices, both of you."
"Cousin Amelia is only incidental," Jan said, when they were all three
seated in the balcony. "The main theme is concerned with a queer little
pixie creature called Meg Morton. She's a pupil-governess, and she's
sixteen and a half--just the same age as Fay."
"She doesn't reach up to Jan's elbow," Fay added, "and she chaperons the
girls for music and singing, and sits in the drawing-class because the
master can't be quite seventy yet."
"She's the wee-est thing you ever saw, and they dress her in Cousin
Amelia's discarded Sunday frocks."
"That's impossible," Anthony interrupted. "Amelia is so massive and
square; if the girl's so small she'd look like 'the Marchioness.'"
"She does, she does!" Jan cried delightedly. "Of course the garments are
'made down,' but in the most elderly way possible. Daddie, can you
picture a Botticelli angel of sixteen, with masses of Titian-red hair,
clad in a queer plush garment once worn by Cousin Amelia, that retains
all its ancient frumpiness of line. And it's not only her appearance
that's so quaint, _she_ is quaint inside."
"We were attracted by her hair," Fay went on "(You'll go down like a
ninepin before that hair), and we got her in a corner and hemmed her in
and declared it was her duty to attend to us because we were strangers
and shy, and in three minutes we were friends. Sixteen, Daddie! And a
governess-pupil in Cousin Amelia's school. She's a niece of the little
husband, and Cousin Amelia is preening herself like anything because she
takes her for nothing and makes her work like ten people."
"Did the little girl say so?"
"Of course not," Jan answered indignantly, "but Cousin Amelia did. Oh,
how thankful I am she is _your_ cousin, dear, and once-removed from us!"
"How many generations will it take to remove her altogether?" Fay asked.
"However," she added, "if we can have the pixie out and give her a good
time I shan't mind the relationship so much. We _must_ do something,
Daddie. What shall it be?"
Anthony Ross smoked thoughtfully and said very little. Perhaps he did
not even listen with marked attention, because he was enjoying his
girls. Just to see them healthy and happy; to know that they were
naturally kind and gay; to hear them frank and eager and
loquacious--sometimes gave him a sensation of almost physical pleasure.
He was like an idler basking in the sun, conscious of nothing but just
the warmth and comfort of it.
Whatever those girls wanted they always got. Anthony's diplomacy was
requisitioned and was, as usual, successful; for, in spite of her
disapproval, Mrs. Ross-Morton could never resist her cousin's charm.
This time the result was that one Saturday afternoon in the middle of
June little Meg Morton, bearing a battered leather portmanteau and clad
in the most-recently-converted plush abomination, appeared at the tall
house in St. George's Square to stay over the week-end.
It was the mid-term holiday, and from the first moment to the last the
visit was one almost delirious orgy of pleasure to the little
pupil-governess.
It was also a revelation.
It would be hard to conceive of anything odder than the appearance of
Meg Morton at this time. She just touched five feet in height, and was
very slenderly and delicately made, with absurd, tiny hands and feet.
Yet there was a finish about the thin little body that proclaimed her
fully grown. Her eyes, with their thick, dark lashes, looked overlarge
in the pale little pointed face; strange eyes and sombre, with big,
bright pupil, and curious dark-blue iris flecked with brown. Her
features were regular, and her mouth would have been pretty had the lips
not lacked colour. As it was, all the colour about Meg seemed
concentrated in her hair; red as a flame and rippled as a river under a
fresh breeze. There was so much of it, too, the little head seemed bowed
in apology beneath its weight.
Yet for the time being Meg forgot to be apologetic about her hair, for
Anthony and his girls frankly admired it.
These adorable, kind, amusing people actually admired it, and said so.
Hitherto Meg's experience had been that it was a thing to be slurred
over, like a deformity. If mentioned, it was to be deprecated. In the
strictly Evangelical circles where hitherto her lot had been cast, they
even tried vainly to explain it away.
She had, of course, heard of artists, but she never expected to meet
any. That sort of thing lay outside the lives of those who had to make
their living as quickly as possible in beaten tracks; tracks so
well-beaten, in fact, that all the flowers had been trodden underfoot
and exterminated.
Meg, at sixteen, had received so little from life that her expectations
were of the humblest. And as she stood before the glass in a pretty
bedroom, fastening her one evening dress (of shiny black silk that
crackled, made with the narrow V in front affected by Mrs. Ross-Morton),
preparatory to going to the play for the first time in her life, she
could have exclaimed, like the little old woman of the story, "This be
never I!"
Anthony Ross was wholly surprising to Meg.
This handsome, merry gentleman with thick, brown hair as crinkly as her
own; who was domineered over and palpably adored by these two, to her,
equally amazing girls--seemed so very, very young to be anybody's
father.
He frankly owned to enjoying things.
Now, according to Meg's experience, grown-up people--elderly
people--seldom enjoyed anything; above all, never alluded to their
enjoyment.
Life was a thing to be endured with fortitude, its sorrows borne with
Christian resignation; its joys, if there were any joys, discreetly
slurred over. Joys were insidious, dangerous things that might lead to
the leaving undone of obvious duties. To seek joy and insure its being
shared by others, bravely and honestly believing it to be an excellent
thing, was to Meg an entirely unknown frame of mind.
After the play, in Meg's room the three girls were brushing their hair
together; to be accurate, Jan was brushing Fay's and Meg admiring the
process.
"Have you any sisters?" Jan asked. She was always interested in people's
relations.
"No," said Meg. "There are, mercifully, only three of us, my two
brothers and me. If there had been any more I don't know what my poor
little Papa would have done."
"Why do you call him your 'poor little papa'?" Fay asked curiously.
"Because he is poor--dreadfully--and little, and very melancholy. He
suffers so from depression."
"Why?" asked the downright Jan.
"Partly because he has indigestion, _constant_ indigestion, and then
there's us, and boys are so expensive, they will grow so. It upsets him
dreadfully."
"But they can't help growing," Fay objected.
"It wouldn't matter so much if they didn't both do it at once. But you
see, there's only a year between them, and they're just about the same
size. If only one had been smaller, he could have worn the outgrown
things. As it is, it's always new clothes for both of them. Papa's are
no sort of use, and even the cheapest suits cost a lot, and boots are
perfectly awful."
Meg looked so serious that Fay and Jan, who were like the lilies of the
field, and expected new and pretty frocks at reasonable intervals as a
matter of course, looked serious too; for the first time confronted by a
problem whose possibility they had never even considered before.
"He must be pleased with you," Jan said, encouragingly. "_You're_ not
too big."
"Yes, but then I'm not a boy. Papa's clothes would have made down for me
beautifully if I'd been a boy; as it is, they're no use." Meg sighed,
then added more cheerfully. "But I cost less in other ways, and several
relations send old clothes to me. They are never too small."
"Do you like the relations' clothes?" Fay asked.
"Of course not," said Meg, simply. "They are generally hideous; but,
after all, they cover me and save expense."
The spoiled daughters of Anthony Ross gazed at Meg with horror-stricken
eyes. To them this seemed a most tragic state of things.
"Do they all," Fay asked timidly, "wear such ... rich materials--like
Cousin Amelia?"
"They're fond of plush, as a rule, but there's velveteen as well, and
sometimes a cloth dress. One was mustard-coloured, and embittered my
life for a whole year."
Jan suddenly ceased to brush Fay's hair and went and sat on the bed
beside Meg and put her arm round her. Fay's pretty face, framed in
fluffy masses of fair hair, was solemn in excess of sympathy.
"I shouldn't care a bit if only the boys were through Sandhurst and
safely into the Indian Army--but I do hate them having to go without
nearly everything. Trevor's a King's Cadet, but they wouldn't give us
two cadetships ... Still," she added, more cheerfully, "it's cheaper
than anything else for a soldier's son."
"Is your father a soldier?" asked Jan.
"Oh, yes, a major in the Westshires; but he had to leave the Army
because of his health, and his pension is very small, and mother had so
little money. I sometimes think it killed her trying to do everything on
nothing."
"Were you quite small when she died?" Fay asked in a sympathetic
whisper.
"Oh, no; I was nearly twelve, and quite as big as I am now. Then I kept
house while the boys were at Bedford, but when they went to Sandhurst
poor little Papa thought I'd better get some education, too, and Uncle
John's wife offered to take me for nothing, so here I am. HERE, it's too
wonderful. Who could have dreamed that Ribston Hall would lead to this?"
And Meg snuggled down in Jan's kind embrace, her red hair spread around
her like a veil.
"Are some of the richly-dressed relations nice?" Jan asked hopefully.
"I don't know if you'd think them nice--you seem to expect such a lot
from people--but they're quite kind--only it's a different sort of
kindness from yours here. They don't laugh and expect you to enjoy
yourself, like _your_ father. My brothers say they are dull ... they
call them--I'm afraid it's very ungrateful--the weariful rich. But I
expect we're weariful to them too. I suppose poor relations _are_ boring
if you're well-off yourself. But we get pretty tired, too, when they
talk us over."
"But do you mean to say they talk you over _to_ you?"
"Always," Meg said firmly. "How badly we manage, how improvident we are,
how Papa ought to rouse himself and I ought to manage better, and how
foolish it is to let the boys go into the Army instead of banks and
things ... And yet, you know, it hasn't cost much for Trevor, and once
he's in he'll be able to manage, and Jo said he'd enlist if there was
any more talk of banks, and poor little Papa had to give in--so there it
is."
"How much older are they than you?" Jan asked.
"Trevor's nineteen and Jo's eighteen, and they are the greatest darlings
in the world. They always lifted the heavy saucepans for me at Bedford,
and filled the buckets and did the outsides of the windows, and carried
up the coals to Papa's sitting-room before they went to school in the
morning, and they very seldom grumbled at my cooking...."
"But where were the servants?" Fay asked innocently.
Meg laughed. "Oh, we couldn't have any servants. A woman came in the
morning. Papa dined at his club, and I managed for the boys and me. But,
oh dear, they do eat a lot, and joints are so dear. Sheep's heads and
things pall if you have them more than once a week. They're such a mixty
sort of meat, so gummy."
"_I_ can cook," Jan announced, then added humbly, "at least, I've been
to classes, but I don't get much practice. Cook isn't at all fond of
having me messing in her kitchen."
"It isn't the cooking that's so difficult," said Meg; "it's getting
things to cook. It's all very well for the books to say 'Take' this and
that. My experience is that you can never 'take' anything. You have to
buy every single ingredient, and there's never anything like enough. We
tried being fruitarians and living on dates and figs and nuts all
squashed together, but it didn't seem to come a bit cheaper, for the
boys were hungry again directly and said it was hog-wash."
"Was your papa a fruitarian too?" Fay asked.
"Oh, no, he can't play those tricks; he has to be most careful. He never
had his meals with us. Our meals would have been too rough for him. I
got him breakfast and afternoon tea. He generally went out for the
others."
Jan and Fay looked thoughtful.
* * * * *
Amelia Ross-Morton was a fair judge of character. When she consented to
take her husband's niece as a governess-pupil she had been dubious as to
the result. She very soon discovered, however, that the small red-haired
girl was absolutely trustworthy, that she had a power of keeping order
quite disproportionate to her size, that she got through a perfectly
amazing amount of work, and did whatever she was asked as a matter of
course. Thus she became a valuable factor in the school, receiving
nothing in return save her food and such clothes as Mrs. Ross-Morton
considered too shabby for her own wear.
At the end of the first year Meg ceased to receive any lessons. Her day
was fully occupied in teaching the younger and chaperoning the elder
girls. Only one stipulation did she make at the beginning of each
term--that she should be allowed to accept, on all reasonable occasions,
the invitations of Anthony Ross and his daughters, and she made this
condition with so much firmness that Anthony's cousin knew better than
to be unreasonably domineering, as was her usual habit. Moreover, though
it was against her principles to do anything to further the enjoyment
of persons in a subordinate position, she was, in a way, flattered that
Anthony and his girls should thus single out her "niece by marriage" and
appear to enjoy her society.
Thus it came about that Meg went a good deal to St. George's Square and
nearly always spent part of each holiday with Fay and Jan wherever they
happened to be.
The queer clothes were kept for wear at Ribston Hall, and by
degrees--although she never had any money--she became possessed of
garments more suitable to her age and colouring.
Again and again Anthony painted her. She sat for him with untiring
patience and devotion. She was always entirely at her ease with him, and
prattled away quite simply of the life that seemed to him so
inexpressibly hard and dreary.
Only once had he interfered on her behalf at Ribston Hall, and then
sorely against Meg's will. She was sitting for him one day, with her
veil of flaming hair spread round her, when she said, suddenly, "I
wonder why it is incorrect to send invitations by post to people living
in the same town?"
"But it isn't," Anthony objected. "Everybody does it."
"Not in schools," Meg said firmly. "Mrs. Ross-Morton will never send
invitations to people living in London through the post--she says it
isn't polite. They must go by hand."
"I never heard such nonsense," Anthony exclaimed crossly. "If she
doesn't send 'em by post, how _does_ she send them?"
"I take them generally, in the evening, after school, and deliver them
at all the houses. Some are fairly near, of course--a lot of her friends
live in Regent's Park--but sometimes I have to go quite a long way by
bus. I don't mind that in summer, when it's light, but in winter it's
horrid going about the lonely roads ... People speak to one...."
Anthony Ross stepped from behind his easel.
"And what do you do?" he asked.
"I run," Meg said simply, "and I can generally run much faster than they
do ... but it's a little bit frightening."
"It's infernal," Anthony said furiously. "I shall speak to Amelia at
once. You are never to do it again."
In vain did Meg plead, almost with tears, that he would do nothing of
the kind. He was roused and firm.
He did "speak to Amelia." He astonished that good lady as much as he
annoyed her. Nevertheless Mrs. Ross-Morton used the penny post for her
invitations as long as Meg remained at Ribston Hall.
At the end of two years Major Morton, who had removed from Bedford to
Cheltenham, wrote a long, querulous letter to his sister-in-law to the
effect that if--like the majority of girls nowadays--his daughter chose
to spend her life far from his sheltering care, it was time she earned
something.
Mrs. Ross-Morton replied that only now was Meg beginning to repay all
the expense incurred on her behalf in the way of board, clothing and
tuition; and it was most unreasonable to expect any salary for quite
another year.
Major Morton decided to remove Meg from Ribston Hall.
Many acrimonious letters passed between her aunt and her father before
this was finally accomplished, and Meg left "under a cloud."
To her great astonishment, her meek little uncle appeared at Paddington
to see her off. Just as the train was starting he thrust an envelope
into her hand.
"It hasn't been fair," he almost shouted--for the train was already
beginning to move. "You worked hard, you deserved some pay ... a little
present ... but please don't mention it to your aunt ... She is so
decided in her views...."
When Meg opened the envelope she found three ten-pound notes. She had
never seen so much money before, and burst into tears; but it was not
because of the magnitude of the gift. She felt she had never properly
appreciated her poor little uncle, and her conscience smote her.
This was at Christmas.
The weariful rich sat in conclave over Meg, and it was decided that she
should in March go as companion and secretary to a certain Mrs. Trent
slightly known to one of them.
Mrs. Trent was kindly, careless, and quite generous as regards money.
She had grown-up daughters, and they lived in one of the Home Counties
where there are many country-houses and plenty of sport. Meg proved to
be exceedingly useful, did whatever she was asked to do, and a great
many things no one had ever done before. She shared in the fun, and for
the first time since her mother died was not overworked.
Her employer was as keen on every form of pleasure as her own daughters.
She exercised the very smallest supervision over them and none at all
over the "quite useful" little companion.
Many men came to the easy-going, lavish house, and Meg, with pretty
frocks, abundant leisure and deliriously prim Ribston-Hallish manners,
came in for her full share of admiration.
It happened that at the end of July Anthony Ross came up to London in
the afternoon to attend and speak at a dinner in aid of some artists'
charity. He and Jan were staying with friends at Teddington; Fay, an
aunt and the servants were already at Wren's End--all but Hannah, the
severe Scottish housemaid, who remained in charge. She was grim and
gaunt and plain, with a thick, black moustache, and Anthony liked her
less than he could have wished. But she had been Jan's nurse, and was
faithful and trustworthy beyond words. He would never let Jan go to the
country ahead of him, for without her he always left behind everything
most vital to his happiness, so she was to join him next day and see
that his painting-tackle was all packed.
The house in St. George's Square was nominally shut up and shrouded in
dust-sheets, but Hannah had "opened up" the dining-room on Anthony's
behalf, and there he sat and slumbered till she should choose to bring
him some tea.
He was awakened by an opening door and Hannah's voice announcing, not
tea, but:
"Miss Morton to see you, sir."
There seemed a thousand "r's" in both the Morton and the sir, and
Anthony, who felt that there was something ominous and arresting in
Hannah's voice, was wide-awake before she could shut the door again.
Sure enough it was Meg, clad in a long grey dust-cloak and motor bonnet,
the grey veil flung back from a very pale face.
Meg, looking a wispy little shadow of woe.
Anthony came forward with outstretched hands.
"Meg, my child, what good wind has blown you here this afternoon? I
thought you were having ever such a gay time down in the country."
But Meg made no effort to grasp the greeting hands. On the contrary, she
moved so that the whole width of the dining-room table was between them.
"Wait," she said, "you mustn't shake hands with me till I tell you what
I've done ... perhaps you won't want to then."
And Anthony saw that she was trembling.
"Come and sit down," he said. "Something's wrong, I can see. What is
it?"
But she stood where she was, looking at him with large, tragic eyes;
laid down a leather despatch-case she was carrying, and seized the edge
of the table as if for support.
"I'd rather not sit down yet," she said. "Perhaps when you've heard what
I've got to tell you, you'll never want me to sit down in your house
again ... and yet ... I did pray so you'd be here ... I knew it was most
unlikely ... but I did pray so ... And you _are_ here."
Anthony was puzzled. Meg was not given to making scenes or going into
heroics.
It was evident that something had happened to shake her out of her usual
almost cynical calm.
"You'd be much better to sit down," he said, soothingly. "You see, if
you stand, so must I, and it's such an uncomfortable way of talking."
She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, took off her gloves,
and two absurd small thumbs appeared above its edge, the knuckles white
and tense with the strength of her grip.
Anthony seated himself in a deep chair beside the fireplace. He was in
shadow. Meg faced the light, and he was shocked at the appearance of the
little smitten face.
"Now tell me," he said gently, "just as little or as much as you like."
"This morning," she said hoarsely, "I ran away with a man ... in a
motor-car."
Anthony was certainly startled, but all he said was, "That being the
case, why are you here, my dear, and what have you done with him?"
"He was married...."
"Have you only just found that out?"
"No, I knew it all along. His wife is hard and disagreeable and older
than he is ... and he's thirty-five ... and they can't live together,
and she won't divorce him and he can't divorce her ... and I loved him
so much and thought how beautiful it would be to give up everything and
make it up to him."
"Yes?" said Anthony, for Meg paused as though unable to go on.
"And it seemed very wonderful and noble to do this, and I forgot my poor
little Papa and those boys in India, and you and Jan and Fay and ... I
was very mad and very happy ... till this morning, when we actually went
off in his car."
"But where," Anthony asked in a voice studiously even and quiet, "_are_
he and his car?"
"I don't know," Meg said hopelessly, "unless they're still at the place
where we had lunch ... and I don't suppose he'd stay there all this
time...."
Anthony felt a great desire to laugh, but Meg looked so woebegone and
desperately serious that he restrained the impulse and said very kindly:
"I don't yet understand how, having embarked upon such an enterprise,
you happen to be here ... alone. Did you quarrel at lunch, or what?"
"We didn't _have_ lunch," Meg exclaimed with a sob. "At least, I didn't
... it was the lunch that did it."
"Did what?"
"Made me realise what I had done, and go away."
"Meg dear," said Anthony, striving desperately to keep his voice steady,
"was it a very bad lunch?"
"I don't know," she answered with the utmost seriousness. "We hadn't
begun; we were just going to, when I noticed his hands, and his nails
were dirty, and they looked horrid, and suddenly it came over me that if
I stayed ... those hands...."
She let go of the table, put her elbows upon it and hid her face in her
hands.
Anthony made no sound, and presently, still with hidden face, she went
on again:
"And in that minute I saw what I was doing, and that I could never be
the same again, and I remembered my poor little dyspeptic Papa, and my
dear, dear brothers so far away in India ... and you and Jan and
Fay--_all_ the special people I pray for every single night and
morning--and I felt that if I didn't get away that minute I should
die...."
"And how did you get away?"
"It was quite simple. There was something wrong with the car (that's how
he got his hands so dirty), and he'd sent for a mechanic, and just as we
were sitting down to lunch, the waiter said the motor-man had come ...
and he went out to the garage to speak to him...."
"Yes?" Anthony remarked, for again Meg paused.
"So I just walked out of the front door. No one saw me, and the station
was across the road, and I went right in and asked when there was a
train to London, and there _was_ one going in five minutes; so I took a
ticket and came straight here, for I knew somehow, even if you were all
away, Hannah would let me stay ... just to-night. I knew she would ..."
and Meg began to sob feebly.
And, as if in response to the mention of her name, Hannah appeared,
bearing a tray with tea upon it. Hannah was short and square; she
stumped as she walked, and she carried a tray very high and stately, as
though it were a sacrifice. As she came in Meg rose and hastily moved to
the window, standing there with her back to the room.
"I thocht," said Hannah, as though challenging somebody to contradict
her, "that Miss Morton would be the better for an egg to her tea. She
looks just like a bit soap after a hard day's washing."
"I had no lunch," said a muffled, apologetic voice from the window.
"Come away, then, and take yer tea," Hannah said sharply. "Young leddies
should have more sense than go fasting so many hours."
As it was evident that Hannah had no intention of leaving the room till
she saw Meg sitting at the table, the girl came back and sat down.
"See that she gets her tea, sir," she said in a low, admonitory voice to
Anthony. "She's pretty far through."
The tray was set at the end of the table. Anthony came and sat down
behind it.
"I'll pour out," he said, "and until you've drunk one cup of tea, eaten
one piece of bread-and-butter and one egg, you're not to speak one word.
_I_ will talk."
He tried to, disjointedly and for the most part nonsense. Meg drank her
tea, and to her own amazement ate up her egg and several pieces of
bread-and-butter with the utmost relish.
As the meal proceeded, Anthony noted that she grew less haggard. The
tears still hung on her eyelashes, but the eyes themselves were a
thought less tragic.
When Hannah came for the tray she gave a grunt of satisfaction at the
sight of the egg-shell and the empty plates.
"Now," said Anthony, "we must thresh this subject out and settle what's
to be done. I suppose you left a message for the Trents. What did you
tell them?"
"Lies," said Meg. "He said we must have a good start. His yacht was at
Southampton. And I left a note that I'd been suddenly summoned to Papa,
and would write from there. They'd all gone for a picnic, you know--and
it was arranged I was to have a headache that morning ... I've got it
now with a vengeance ... It seemed rather fun when we were planning it.
Now it all looks so mean and horrid ... Besides, lots of people saw us
in his motor ... and people always know me again because of my hair.
Everyone knew him ... the whole county made a fuss of him, and it seemed
so wonderful ... that he should care like that for me...."
"Doubtless it did," said Anthony drily. "But we must consider what is to
be done now. If you said you were going to your father, perhaps the best
thing you can do is to go to him, and write to the Trents from there. I
hope you didn't inform _him_ of your intention?"
"No," she faltered. "I was to write to him just before we sailed ... But
you may be perfectly sure the Trents will find out ... He will probably
go back there to look for me ... I expect he is awfully puzzled."
"I expect he is, and I hope," Anthony added vindictively, "the fellow is
terrified out of his life as well. He ought to be horsewhipped, and I'd
like to do it. A babe like you!"
"No," said Meg, firmly; "there you're wrong. I'm not a babe ... I knew
what I was doing; but up to to-day it seemed worth it ... I never seemed
to see till to-day how it would hurt other people. Even if he grew tired
of me--and I had faced that--there would have been some awfully happy
months ... and so long as it was only me, it didn't seem to matter. And
when you've had rather a mouldy life...."
"It can never be a case of 'only me.' As society is constituted, other
people are always involved."
"Yet there was Marian Evans ... he told me about her ... she did it, and
everyone came round to think it was very fine of her really. She wrote,
or something, didn't she?"
"She did," said Anthony, "and in several other respects her case was
not at all analogous to yours. She was a middle-aged woman--you are a
child...."
"Perhaps, but I'm not an ignorant child...."
"Oh, Meg!" Anthony protested.
"I daresay about books and things I am, but I mean I haven't been
wrapped in cotton-wool, and taken care of all my life, like Jan and Fay
... I know about things. Oh dear, oh dear, will you forbid Jan ever to
speak to me again?"
"Jan!" Anthony repeated. "Jan! Why, she's the person of all others we
want. We'll do nothing till she's here. Let's get her." And he pushed
back his chair and rushed to the bell.
Meg rushed after him: "You'll let her see me? You'll let her talk to me?
Oh, are you sure?"
The little hands clutched his arm, her ravaged, wistful face was raised
imploringly to his.
Anthony stooped and kissed the little face.
"It's just people like Jan who are put into the world to straighten
things out for the rest of us. We've wasted three-quarters of an hour
already. Now we'll get her."
"Is she on the telephone?" asked the practical Meg. "Not far off?"
* * * * *
Jan was quite used to being summoned to her father in a tremendous
hurry. She was back in St. George's Square before he started for the
dinner. Meg was lying down in one of the dismantled bedrooms, and when
Jan arrived she went straight to her father in his dressing-room.
She found him on his knees, pursuing a refractory collar-stud under the
wash-stand.
"It's well you've come," he said as he got up. "I can't fasten my collar
or my tie. I've had a devil of a time. My fingers are all thumbs and I'm
most detestably sticky."
He told Jan about Meg. She fastened his collar and arranged his tie in
the neatest of bows. Then she kissed him on both cheeks and told him not
to worry.
"How can one refrain from worrying when the works of the devil and the
selfishness of man are made manifest as they have been to-day? But for
the infinite mercy of God, where would that poor silly child have been?"
"It's just because the infinite mercy of God is so much stronger than
the works of the devil or the selfishness of man, that you needn't
worry," said Jan.
Anthony put his hands on Jan's shoulders and held her away from him.
"Do you know," he said, "I shall always like Hannah better after this.
In spite of her moustache and her grimness, that child was sure Hannah
would take her in, whether any of us were here or not. Now, how did she
know?"
"Because," said Jan, "things are revealed to babes like Meg that are
hidden from men of the world like you. Hannah is all right--you don't
appreciate Hannah, and you are rather jealous of her moustache."
Anthony leant forward and kissed his tall young daughter: "You are a
great comfort, Jan," he said. "How do you do it?"
Jan nodded at him. "It will all straighten out--don't you worry," she
said.
All the same, there was plenty of worry for everybody. The man, after
his fashion, was very much in love with Meg. He was horribly alarmed by
her sudden and mysterious disappearance. No one had seen her go, no one
had noticed her.
He got into a panic, and motored back to the Trents', arriving there
just before dinner. Mrs. Trent, tired and cross after a wet picnic, had,
of course, read Meg's note, thought it very casual of the girl and was
justly incensed.
On finding they knew no more of Meg's movements than he did himself, the
man--one Walter Brooke--lost his head and confessed the truth to Mrs.
Trent, who was much shocked and not a little frightened.
Later in the evening she received a telegram from Jan announcing Meg's
whereabouts.
Jan had insisted on this, lest the Trents should suspect anything and
wire to Major Morton.
Mrs. Trent, quite naturally, refused to have anything further to do with
Meg. She talked of serpents, and was very much upset. She wrote a
dignified letter to Major Morton, explaining her reasons for Meg's
dismissal. She also wrote to their relative among the weariful rich,
through whom she had heard of Meg.
Meg was more under a cloud than when she left Ribston Hall.
But for Jan and Anthony she might have gone under altogether; but they
took her down to Wren's End and kept guard over her. Anthony Ross dealt
faithfully with the man, who went yachting at once.
Meg recovered her poise, searched the advertisements of the scholastic
papers industriously, and secured a post in a school for little boys, as
Anthony forced his cousin Amelia to give her a testimonial.
Here she worked hard and was a great success, for she could keep order,
and that quality, where small boys are concerned, is much more valuable
than learning. She stayed there for some years, and then her frail
little ill-nourished body gave out, and she was gravely ill.
When she recovered, she went as English governess to a rich German
family in Bremen. The arrangement was only for one year, and at its
termination she was free to offer to meet Jan and her charges.
CHAPTER X
PLANS
"Now, chicks, this is London, the friendly town," Jan announced, as the
taxi drove away from Charing Cross station.
"Flendly little London, dirty little London," her niece rejoined, as she
bounced up and down on Jan's knee. She had slept during the very good
crossing and was full of conversation and ready to be pleased with all
she saw.
Tony was very quiet. He had suffered far more in the swift journey
across France than during the whole of the voyage, and it was difficult
to decide whether he or Ayah were the more extraordinary colour.
Greenish-white and miserable he sat beside his aunt, silent and
observing.
"Here's dear old Piccadilly," Jan exclaimed, as the taxi turned out of
St. James's Street. "Doesn't it look jolly in the sunshine?"
Tony turned even greener than before, and gasped:
"This! Piccadilly!"
This not very wide street with shops and great houses towering above
them, the endless streams of traffic in the road and on the crowded
pavements!
"Did Mrs. Bond live in one of those houses?" he wondered, "and if so,
where did she keep her ducks? And where, oh, where, were the tulips and
the lilies of his dream?"
He uttered no sound, but his mind kept exclaiming, "This! Piccadilly?"
"See," said Jan, oblivious of Tony and intent on keeping her lively
niece upon her knee. "There's the Green Park."
Tony breathed more freely.
After all, there _were_ trees and grass; good grass, and more of it than
in the Resident's garden. He took heart a little and summoned up courage
to inquire: "But where are the tulips?"
"It's too early for tulips yet," Jan answered. "By and by there will be
quantities. How did you know about them? Did dear Mummy tell you? But
they're in Hyde Park, not here."
Tony made no answer. He was, as usual, weighing and considering and
making up his mind.
Presently he spoke. "It's different," he said, slowly, "but I rather
like to look at it."
Tony never said whether he thought things were pretty or ugly. All he
knew was that certain people and places, pictures and words, sometimes
filled him with an exquisite sense of pleasure, while others merely
bored or exasperated or were positively painful.
His highest praise was "I like to look at it." When he didn't like to
look at it, he had found it wiser to express no opinion at all, except
in moments of confidential expansion, and these were rare with Tony.
Meg had found them a nice little furnished flat on the fifth floor in
one of the blocks behind Kensington High Street, and Hannah must surely
have been waiting behind the door, so instantaneously was it opened,
when Jan and her party left the lift.
There were tears in Hannah's eyes and her nose was red as she welcomed
"Miss Fay's motherless bairns." She was rather shocked that there was no
sign of mourning about any of them except Jan, who wore--mainly as a
concession to Hannah's prejudices--a thin black coat and skirt she had
got just before she left Bombay.
Tony stared stonily at Hannah and decided he did not like to look at
her. She was as surprising as the newly-found Piccadilly, but she
gratified no sensuous perception whatsoever.
Ayah might not be exactly beautiful, but she was harmonious. Her body
was well proportioned, her sari fell in gracious flowing lines, and she
moved with dignity. Without knowing why, Tony felt that there was
something pleasing to the eye in Ayah. Hannah, on the contrary, was the
reverse of graceful; stumpy and heavy-footed, she gave an impression of
abrupt terminations. Everything about her seemed too short except her
caps, which were unusually tall and white and starchy. Her afternoon
aprons, too, were stiffer and whiter and more voluminous than those of
other folk. She did not regard these things as vain adornings of her
person, rather were they the outward and visible sign of her office as
housekeeper to Miss Ross. They were a partial expression of the dignity
of that office, just as a minister's gown is the badge of his.
By the time everyone was washed and brushed Meg returned with the
luggage and Hannah brought in tea.
"I thought you'd like to give the bairns their tea yourself the first
day, Miss Jan. Will that Hindu body have hers in the nursery?"
"That would be best," Jan said hastily. "And Hannah, you mustn't be
surprised if she sits on the floor. Indian servants always do."
"_Nothing_ she can do will surprise me," Hannah announced loftily. "I've
not forgotten the body that came back with Mrs. Tancred, with a ring
through her nose and a red wafer on her forehead."
Jan, herself, went with Ayah to the nursery, where she found that in
spite of her disparaging sniffs, Hannah had put out everything poor Ayah
could possibly want.
The children were hungry and tea was a lengthy meal. It was not until
they had departed with Ayah for more washings that Jan found time to
say: "Why don't you take off your hat, Meg dear? I can't see you
properly in that extinguisher. Is it the latest fashion?"
"The very latest."
Meg looked queerly at Jan as she slowly took off her hat.
"There!" she said.
Her hair was cropped as short as a boy's, except for the soft, tawny
rings that framed her face.
"Meg!" Jan cried. "Why on earth have you cut off your hair?"
"Chill penury's the cause. I've turned it into good hard cash. It
happens to be the fashionable colour just now."
"Did you really need to? I thought you were getting quite a good salary
with those Hoffmeyers."
"No English governess gets a _good_ salary in Bremen, and mine was but a
modest remuneration, so I wanted more. Do you remember Lady Penelope
Pottinger?"
"Hazily. She was pretty, wasn't she ... and very smart?"
"She was and is ... smarter than ever now--mind, I put you on your
honour never to mention it--_she's_ got my hair."
"Do you mean she asked you to sell it?"
"No, my child. I offered it for sale and she was all over me with
eagerness to purchase. Hair's the defective wire in her lighting
apparatus. Her own, at the best, is skimpy and straight, though very
much my colour, and what with permanent waving and instantaneous hair
colouring it was positively dwindling away."
"I wish you had let it dwindle."
"No, I rather like her--so I suggested she should give her own poor
locks a rest and have an artistic _postiche_ made with mine; it made
two, one to come and one to go--to the hairdresser. She looks perfectly
charming. I'd no idea my hair was so decent till I saw it on her head."
"I hope _I_ never shall," Jan said gloomily. "I think it was silly of
you, for it makes you look younger and more irresponsible than ever; and
what about posts?"
"I've got a post in view where it won't matter if only I can run things
my own way."
"Will you have to go at once? I thought, perhaps----"
"I wish to take this post at once," Meg interposed quickly, "but it
depends on you whether I get it."
"On me?"
"On no one else. Look here, Jan, will you take me on as nurse to Fay's
children? A real nurse, mind, none of your fine lady arrangements; only
you must pay me forty pounds a year. I can't manage with less if I'm to
give my poor little Papa any chirps ... I suppose that's a frightful lot
for a nurse?"
"Not for a good nurse ... But, Meg, you got eighty when you taught the
little boys, and I know they'd jump at you again in that school, hair or
no hair."
"Listen, Jan." Meg put her elbows on the table and leaned her sharp
little chin on her two hands while she held Jan's eyes with hers. "For
nine long years, except that time with the Trents, I've been teaching,
teaching, teaching, and I'm sick of teaching. I'd rather sweep a
crossing."
"Yet you teach so well; you know the little boys adored you."
"I love children and they usually like me. If you take me to look after
Tony and little Fay, I'll do it thoroughly, I can promise you. I won't
teach them, mind, not a thing--I'll make them happy and well-mannered;
and, Jan, listen, do you suppose there's anybody, even the most
superior of elderly nurses, who would take the trouble for Fay's
children that I should? If you let me come you won't regret it, I
promise you."
Meg's eyes, those curious eyes with the large pupil and blue iris
flecked with brown, were very bright, her voice was earnest, and when it
ceased it left a sense of tension in the very air.
Jan put out her hand across the table, and Meg, releasing her sharp
little chin, clasped it with hers.
"So that's settled," Meg announced triumphantly.
"No." Jan's voice was husky but firm. "It's not settled. I don't think
you're strong enough; but, even so, if I could pay you the salary you
ought to have, I'd jump at you ... but, my dear, I can't at present. I
haven't the least idea what it will all cost, but the fares and things
have made such a hole in this year's money I'll need to be awfully
careful."
"That's exactly why I want to come; you've no idea of being careful and
doing things in a small way. I've done it all my life. You'll be far
more economical with me than without me."
"Don't tempt me," Jan besought her. "I see all that, but why should I be
comfortable at your expense? I want you more than I can say. Fay wanted
it too--she said so."
"Did Fay actually say so? Did she?"
"Yes, she did--not that you should be their nurse, we neither of us ever
thought of that; but she did want you to be there to help me with the
children. We used to talk about it."
"Then I'm coming. I must. Don't you see how it is, Jan? Don't you
realise that nearly all the happiness in my life--_all_ the happiness
since the boys left--has come to me through Mr. Ross and Fay and you?
And now when there's a chance for me to do perhaps a little something in
return ... If you don't let me, it's you who are mean and grudging. I
shall be perfectly strong, if I haven't got to teach--mind, I won't do
that, not so much as A.B.C."
"I know it's wrong," Jan sighed, "just because it would be so heavenly
to have you."
Meg loosed the hand she held and stood up. She lifted her thin arms
above her head, as though invoking some invisible power, stretched
herself, and ran round the table to kiss Jan.
"And do you never think, you dear, slow-witted thing, that it will be
rather lovely for _me_ to be with you? To be with somebody who is kind
without being patronising, who treats one as a human being and not a
machine, who sees the funny side of things and isn't condescending or
improving if she doesn't happen to be cross?"
"I'm often cross," Jan said.
"Well, and what if you are? Can't I be cross back? I'm not afraid of
your crossness. You never hit below the belt. Now, promise me you'll
give me a trial. Promise!"
Meg's arms were round her neck, Meg's absurd cropped head was rubbing
against hers. Jan was very lonely and hungry for affection just then,
timid and anxious about the future. Even in that moment of time it
flashed upon her what a tower of strength this small, determined
creature would be, and how infinitely hard it was to turn Meg from any
course she had determined on.
"For a little while, then," so Jan salved her conscience. "Just till we
all shake down ... and your hair begins to grow."
Meg stood up very straight and shook her finger at Jan. "Remember, I'm
to be a real, proper nurse with authority, and a clinical thermometer
... and a uniform."
"If you like, and it's a pretty uniform."
Meg danced gleefully round the table.
"It will be lovely, it is lovely. I've got it all ready; green linen
frocks, big _well_-fitting aprons, and such beautiful caps."
"Not caps, Meg!" Jan expostulated. "Please not caps."
"Certainly caps. How otherwise am I to cover up my head? I can't wear
hats all the time. And how could I ever inspire those children with
respect with a head like this? When I get into my uniform you'll see
what a very superior nurse I look."
"You'll look much more like musical comedy than sober service."
"You mistake the situation altogether," Meg said loftily. "I take my
position very seriously."
"But you can't go about Wren's End in caps. Everybody knows you down
there."
"They'll find out they don't know me as well as they thought, that's
all."
"Meg, tell me, what did Hannah say when she saw your poor shorn head?"
"Hannah, as usual, referred to my Maker, and said that had He intended
me to have short hair He would either have caused it not to grow or
afflicted me with some disease which necessitated shearing; and she
added that such havers are just flying in the face of Providence."
"So they are."
"All the more reason to cover them up, and I wish to impress the
children."
"Those children will be sadly browbeaten, I can see, and as for their
poor aunt, she won't be able to call her soul her own."
"That," Meg said, triumphantly, "is precisely why I'm so eager to come.
When you've been an underling all your life you can't imagine what a joy
it is to be top dog occasionally."
"In that respect," Jan said firmly, "it must be turn and turn about. I
won't let you come unless you promise--swear, here and now--that when I
consider you are looking fagged--'a wispy wraith,' as Daddie used to
say--if I command you to take a day in bed, in bed you will stay till I
give you leave to get up. Unless you promise me this, the contract is
off."
"I'll promise anything you like. The idea of being _pressed_ to remain
in bed strikes me as merely comic. You have evidently no notion how
persons in a subordinate position ought to be treated. Bed, indeed!"
"I think you might have waited till I got back before you parted with
your hair." Jan's tone was decidedly huffy.
"Now don't nag. That subject is closed. What about _your_ hair. Do you
know it is almost white?"
"And what more suitable for a maiden aunt? As that is to be my _rôle_
for the future I may as well look the part."
"But you don't--that's what I complain of. The whiter your hair grows
the younger your face gets. You're a contradiction, a paradox, you
provoke conjecture, you're indecently noticeable. Mr. Ross would have
loved to paint you."
Jan shook her head. "No, Daddie never wanted to paint anything about me
except my arms."
"He'd want to paint you now," Meg insisted obstinately. "_I_ know the
sort of person he liked to paint."
"He never would paint people unless he _did_ like them," Jan said,
smiling as at some recollection. "Do you remember how he utterly refused
to paint that rich Mr. Withells down at Amber Guiting?"
"I remember," and Meg laughed. "He said Mr. Withells was puffy and
stippled."
* * * * *
Tony had been cold ever since he reached the Gulf of Lyons, and he
wondered what could be the matter with him, for he never remembered to
have felt like this before. He wondered miserably what could be the
reason why he felt so torpid and shivery, disinclined to move, and yet
so uncomfortable when he sat still.
After his bath, on that first night in London, tucked into a little bed
with a nice warm eiderdown over him, he still felt that horrid little
trickle of ice-cold water down his spine and could not sleep.
His cot was in Auntie Jan's room with a tall screen round it. The rooms
in the flat were small, tiny they seemed to Tony, after the lofty
spaciousness of the bungalow in Bombay, but that didn't seem to make it
any warmer, because Auntie Jan's window was wide open as it would
go--top and bottom--and chilly gusts seemed to blow round his head in
spite of the screen. Ayah and little Fay were in the nursery across the
passage, where there was a fire. There was no fire in this wind-swept
chamber of Auntie Jan's.
Tony dozed and woke and woke and dozed, getting colder and more forlorn
and miserable with each change of position. The sheets seemed made of
ice, so slippery were they, so unkind and unyielding and unembracing.
Presently he saw a dim light. Auntie Jan had come to bed, carrying a
candle. He heard her say good night to the little mem who had met them
at the station, and the door was shut.
In spite of her passion for fresh air, Jan shivered herself as she
undressed. She made a somewhat hasty toilet, said her prayers, peeped
round the screen to see that Tony was all right, and hopped into bed,
where a hot-water bottle put in by the thoughtful Hannah was most
comforting.
Presently she heard a faint, attenuated sniff. Again it came, this time
accompanied by the ghost of something like a groan.
Jan sat up in bed and listened. Immediately all was perfectly still.
She lay down again, and again came that sad little sniff, and
undoubtedly it was from behind the screen that it came.
Had Tony got cold?
Jan leapt out of bed, switched on the light and tore away the screen
from around his bed.
Yes; his doleful little face was tear-stained.
"Tony, Tony darling, what is the matter?"
"I don't know," he sobbed. "I feel so funny."
Jan put her hand on his forehead--far from being hot, the little face
was stone-cold. In a moment she had him out of bed and in her warm arms.
As she took him she felt the chill of the stiff, unyielding small body.
"My precious boy, you're cold as charity! Why didn't you call me long
ago? Why didn't you tell Auntie Jan?"
"I didn't ... know ... what it was," he sobbed.
In no time Tony was put into the big bed, the bed so warm from Auntie
Jan's body, with a lovely podgy magic something at his feet that
radiated heat. Auntie Jan slammed down the window at the bottom, and
then more fairness! She struck a match, there was a curious sort of
"plop," and a little fire started in the grate, an amazing little fire
that grew redder and redder every minute. Auntie Jan put on a blue
dressing-gown over the long white garment that she wore, and bustled
about. Tony decided that he "liked to look at her" in this blue robe,
with her hair in a great rope hanging down. She was very quick; she
fetched a little saucepan and he heard talking in the passage outside,
but no one else came in, only Auntie Jan.
Presently she gave him milk, warm and sweet, in a blue cup. He drank it
and began to feel much happier, drowsy too, and contented. Presently
there was no light save the red glow of the fairy fire, and Auntie Jan
got into bed beside him.
She put her arm about him and drew him so that his head rested against
her warm shoulder. He did not repulse her, he did not speak, but lay
stiff and straight with his feet glued against that genial podgy
something that was so infinitely comforting.
"You are kind," Tony said suddenly. "I believe you."
The stiff little body relaxed and lay against hers in confiding
abandonment, and soon he was sound asleep.
What a curious thing to say! Jan lay awake puzzling. Tragedy lay behind
it. Only five years old, and yet, to Tony, belief was a more important
thing than love. She thought of Fay, hectic and haggard, and again she
seemed to hear her say in her tired voice, trying to explain Tony: "He's
not a cuddly child; he's queer and reserved and silent, but if he once
trusts you it's for always; he'll love you then and never change."
Jan could just see, in the red glow from the fire, the little head that
lay so confidingly against her shoulder, the wide forehead, the
peacefully closed eyes. And suddenly she realised that the elusive
resemblance to somebody that had always evaded her was a likeness to
that face she saw in the glass every time she did her hair. She kissed
him very softly, praying the while that she might never fail him; that
he might always have reason to trust her.
CHAPTER XI
THE STATE OF PETER
Meanwhile Peter was making discoveries about himself. He went back to
his flat on the evening of the day Jan and the children sailed. Swept
and garnished and exceedingly tidy, it appeared to have grown larger
during his absence and seemed rather empty. There was a sense of
unfilled spaces that caused him to feel lonely.
That very evening he decided he must get a friend to chum with him. The
bungalow was much too big for one person.
This had never struck him before.
In spite of their excessive neatness there remained traces of Jan and
the children in the rooms. The flowers on the dinner-table proclaimed
that they had been arranged by another hand than Lalkhan's. He was
certain of that without Lalkhan's assurance that the Miss-Sahib had done
them herself before she sailed that very morning.
When he went to his desk after dinner--never before or after did Peter
possess such an orderly bureau--he found a letter lying on the
blotting-pad, and on each side of the heavy brass inkstand were placed a
leaden member of a camel-corps and an India-rubber ball with a face
painted upon it, which, when squeezed, expressed every variety of
emotion. These, Lalkhan explained, were parting gifts from the young
sahib and little Fay respectively, and had been so arranged by them just
before they sailed.
The day before Jan had told the children that all this time they had
been living in Peter's house and that she was sure Mummy would want them
to be very grateful (she was careful to talk a great deal about Mummy to
the children lest they should forget her); that he had been very kind to
them all, and she asked if there was anything of their very own they
would like to leave for Peter as a remembrance.
Tony instantly fetched the camel-corps soldier that kept guard on a
chair by his cot every night; that Ayah had not been permitted to pack
because it must accompany him on the voyage. It was, Jan knew, his most
precious possession, and she assured him that Peter would be
particularly gratified by such a gift.
Not to be outdone by her brother, little Fay demanded her beloved ball,
which was already packed for the voyage in Jan's suit-case.
Peter sat at his desk staring at the absurd little toys with very kind
eyes. He understood. Then he opened Jan's letter and read it through
quite a number of times.
"Dear Mr. Ledgard," it ran.
"Whatever Mr. Kipling may say of the Celt, the lowland Scot finds it
very difficult to express strong feeling in words. If I had tried to
tell you, face to face, how sensible I am of your kindness and
consideration for us during the last sad weeks--I should have cried. You
would have been desperately uncomfortable and I--miserably ashamed of
myself. So I can only try to write something of my gratitude.
"We have been your guests so long and your hospitality has been so
untiring in circumstances sad and strange enough to try the patience of
the kindest host, that I simply cannot express my sense of obligation;
an obligation in no wise burdensome because you have always contrived to
make me feel that you took pleasure in doing all you have done.
"I wish there had been something belonging to my sister that I could
have begged you to accept as a remembrance of her; but everything she
had of the smallest value has disappeared--even her books. When I get
home I hope to give you one of my father's many portraits of her, but I
will not send it till I know whether you are coming home this summer.
Please remember, should you do so, as I sincerely hope you will, that
nowhere can there be a warmer welcome for you than at Wren's End. It
would be the greatest possible pleasure for the children and me to see
you there, and it is a good place to slack in and get strong. And there
I hope to challenge you to the round of golf we never managed during my
time in India.
"Please try to realise, dear Mr. Ledgard, that my sense of your kindness
is deep and abiding, and, believe me, yours, in most true gratitude,
"JANET ROSS."
For a long time Peter sat very still, staring at the cheerful,
highly-coloured face painted on Fay's ball. Cigarette after cigarette
did he smoke as he reviewed the experience of the last six weeks.
For the first time since he became a man he had been constantly in the
society of a woman younger than himself who appeared too busy and too
absorbed in other things to remember that she was a woman and he a man.
Peter was ordinarily susceptible, and he was rather a favourite with
women because of his good manners; and his real good-nature made him
ready to help either in any social project that happened to be towards
or in times of domestic stress. Yet never until lately had he seen so
much of any woman not frankly middle-aged without being conscious that
he _was_ a man and she a woman, and this added, at all events, a certain
piquancy to the situation.
Yet he had never felt this with Jan.
Quite a number of times in the course of his thirty years he had fallen
in love in an agreeably surface sort of way without ever being deeply
stirred. Love-making was the pleasantest game in the world, but he had
not yet felt the smallest desire to marry. He was a shrewd young man,
and knew that marriage, even in the twentieth century, at all events
starts with the idea of permanence; and, like many others who show no
inclination to judge the matrimonial complications of their
acquaintance, he would greatly have disliked any sort of scandal that
involved himself or his belongings.
He was quite as sensitive to criticism as other men in his service, and
he knew that he challenged it in lending his flat to Mrs. Tancred. But
here he felt that the necessities of the case far outweighed the
possibilities of misconception, and after Jan came he thought no more
about it.
Yet in a young man with his somewhat cynical knowledge of the world, it
was surprising that the thought of his name being coupled with Jan's
never crossed his mind. He forgot that none of his friends knew Jan at
all, but that almost every evening they did see her with him in the
car--sometimes, it is true, accompanied by the children, but quite as
often alone--and that during her visit his spare time was so much
occupied in looking after the Tancred household that his friends saw
comparatively little of him, and Peter was, as a rule, a very sociable
person.
Therefore it came upon him as a real shock when people began to ask him
point-blank whether he was engaged to Jan, and if so, what they were
going to do about Tancred's children. Rightly or wrongly, he discerned
in the question some veiled reflection upon Jan, some implied slur upon
her conduct. He was consequently very short and huffy with these
inquisitive ones, and when he was no longer present they would shake
their heads and declare that "poor old Peter had got it in the neck."
If so, poor old Peter was, as yet, quite unconscious of anything of the
kind.
Nevertheless he found himself constantly thinking about her. Everything,
even the familiar streets and roads, served to remind him of her, and
when he went to bed he nearly always dreamed about her. Absurd,
inconsequent, unsatisfactory dreams they were; for in them she was
always too busy to pay any attention to him at all; she was wholly
absorbed by what it is to be feared Peter sometimes called "those
confounded children." Though even in his dream world he was careful to
keep his opinion to himself.
Why on earth should he always dream of Jan during the first part of the
night?
Lalkhan could have thrown some light upon the subject. But naturally
Peter did not confide his obsession to Lalkhan.
Just before she left Jan asked Lalkhan where the sahib's linen was kept,
and on being shown the cupboard which contained the rather untidy little
piles of sheets, pillow-cases, and towels that formed Peter's modest
store of house linen, she rearranged it and brought sundry flat, square
muslin bags filled with dried lavender. Lace-edged bags with
lavender-coloured ribbon run through insertion and tied in bows at the
two corners. These bags she placed among the sheets, much to the wonder
of Lalkhan, who, however, decided that it was kindly meant and therefore
did not interfere.
The odour was not one that commended itself to him. It was far too faint
and elusive. He could understand a liking for attar of roses, of
jessamine, of musk, or of any of the strong scents beloved by the native
of India. Yet had she proposed to sprinkle the sheets with any of these
essences he would have felt obliged to interfere, as the sahib swore
violently and became exceedingly hot and angry did any member of his
household venture into his presence thus perfumed. Even as it was he
fully expected that his master would irritably demand the cause of the
infernal smell that pervaded his bed; so keen are the noses of the
sahibs. Whereupon Lalkhan, strong in rectitude, would relate exactly
what had happened, produce one of the Jan-incriminating muslin bags,
escape further censure, and doubtless be commanded to burn it and its
fellows in the kitchen stove. But nothing of the kind occurred, and, as
it is always easier to leave a thing where it has been placed than to
remove it, the lavender remained among the sheets in humble obscurity.
The old garden at Wren's End abounded in great lavender bushes, and
every year since it became her property Jan made lavender sachets which
she kept in every possible place. Her own clothes always held a faint
savour of lavender, and she had packed these bags as much as a matter of
course as she packed her stockings. It seemed a shame, though, to take
them home again when she could get plenty more next summer, so she left
them in the bungalow linen cupboard. They reproduced her atmosphere;
therefore did Peter dream of Jan.
A fortnight passed, and on their way to catch the homeward mail came
Thomas Crosbie and his wife from Dariawarpur to stay the night. Next
morning at breakfast Mrs. Crosbie, young, pretty and enthusiastic,
expatiated on the comfort of her room, finally exclaiming: "And how,
Mr. Ledgard, do you manage to have your sheets so deliciously scented
with lavender--d'you get it sent out from home every year?"
"Lavender?" Peter repeated. "I've got no lavender. My people never sent
me any, and I've certainly never come across any in India."
"But I'm convinced everything smelt of lavender. It made me think of
home so. If I hadn't been just going I'd have been too homesick for
words. I'm certain of it. Think! You must have got some from somewhere
and forgotten it."
Peter shook his head. "I've never noticed it myself--you really must be
mistaken. What would I be doing with lavender?"
"It was there all the same," Mrs. Crosbie continued. "I'm certain of it.
You must have got some from somewhere. Do find out--I'm sure I'm not
wrong. Ask your boy."
Peter said something to Lalkhan, who explained volubly. Tom Crosbie
grinned; he understood even fluent Hindustani. His wife did not. Peter
looked a little uncomfortable. Lalkhan salaamed and left the room.
"Well?" Mrs. Crosbie asked.
"It seems," Peter said slowly, "there _is_ something among the sheets.
I've sent Lalkhan to get it."
Lalkhan returned, bearing a salver, and laid on the salver was one of
Jan's lavender bags. He presented it solemnly to his master, who with
almost equal solemnity handed it to Mrs. Crosbie.
"There!" she said. "Of course I knew I couldn't be mistaken. Now where
did you get it?"
"It was, I suppose, put among the things when poor Mrs. Tancred had the
flat. I never noticed, of course--it's such an unobtrusive sort of
smell...."
"Hadn't she a sister?" Mrs. Crosbie asked, curiously, holding the little
sachet against her soft cheek and looking very hard at Peter.
"She had. It was she who took the children home, you know."
"Older or younger than Mrs. Tancred?"
"Older."
"How much older?"
"I really don't know," said the mendacious Peter.
"Was she awfully pretty, too?"
"Again, I really don't know. I never thought about her looks ... she had
grey hair...."
"Oh!" Mrs. Crosbie exclaimed--a deeply disappointed "Oh." "Probably much
older, then. That explains the lavender bags."
Silent Thomas Crosbie looked from his wife to Peter with considerable
amusement. He realised, if she didn't, that Peter was most successfully
putting her off the scent of more than lavender; but men are generally
loyal to each other in these matters, and he suddenly took his part in
the conversation and changed the subject.
Among Peter's orders to his butler that morning was one to the effect
that nothing the Miss-Sahib had arranged in the bungalow was to be
disturbed, and the lavender bag was returned to rejoin its fellows in
the cupboard.
It was four years since Peter had had any leave, and it appeared that
the lavender had the same effect upon him as upon Mrs. Crosbie. He felt
homesick--and applied for leave in May.
CHAPTER XII
"THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES"
Peter had been as good as his word, and had found a family returning to
India who were glad to take Ayah back to Bombay. And she, though sorry
to leave Jan and the children, acquiesced in all arrangements made for
her with the philosophic patience of the East. March was a cold month,
and she was often rather miserable, in spite of her pride in her shoes
and stockings and the warm clothes Jan had provided for her.
Before she left Jan interviewed her new mistress and found her kind and
sensible, and an old campaigner who had made the voyage innumerable
ti
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