Jane, meanwhile, had walked over to Bowshott to see Mrs. Ogilvie and to
tell her the news of Toffy's motor-car accident, and to explain why
Peter was delayed. She came into the drawing-room, with its long
mirrors in their gilded frames, its satin couches and heaped-up
flowering plants, and huge windows looking on to the scrupulous gardens
and park. She walked in the shortest dress that a merciful fashion
allows, a loose shirt hung boy-like on her slender figure, and a
motor-cap, with the brim well pulled down over her eyes, covered her
head. She shook hands and regretted inwardly that Mrs. Ogilvie did not
like being kissed, although disclaiming even to herself that her
distaste in this respect had anything to do with rouge and powder. She
sat down on a low chair by the window with the fearlessness of one
whose complexion is not a matter of anxiety, and she told Mrs. Ogilvie
the story of the disaster.
'Toffy's so awfully unlucky,' said Jane, with genuine sympathy showing
in her eyes and voice; 'and the doctor says his hand will be bad for a
week at least.'
'Is there such a thing as bad luck?' said Mrs. Ogilvie, shrugging her
shoulders.
'You can't say Toffy gets his deserts!' pleaded Jane. 'He is always in
debt, and his horses always come to grief, and there ought to be a
syndicate formed to buy up all the shares that Toffy sells, because it
is certain to mean that the market is going up. I think he must have
been born under an unlucky star.'
'I used to get a lot of amusement from reading the _Iliad_ of Homer,'
said Mrs. Ogilvie. 'I know you cannot read or write, Jane, so I will
tell you about it. It is a tale of men "warring against folk for their
women's sake," and hindered often by the unscrupulous gods. Let us win
when we can. Fate, without intelligence, orders the things which we do
not order for ourselves, and it is very little use, but only a trifle
absurd to feel sorry for the opponent who is beaten.'
'I am always sorry for the man who is down,' said Jane.
Mrs. Ogilvie smiled and rang for tea.
'You are one of those who can say, "I am sorry." Now, I am never
sorry, and I consider that what is called repentance is the function of
an idiot. If I do a thing, I intend to do it. Regret is the most
weak-minded of all human emotions.'
'I 'm always regretting things,' said Jane, looking handsome and
delightful, and treating even penitence from a fresh, open-air
standpoint. 'But then I believe that as often as not I do the wrong
thing, which is a great bore at times!'
'Right and wrong,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, with a shrug, 'loving and not
loving, believing and not believing--only very young people ever make
use of such ridiculous terms. There is only one law, and it is the law
of expediency.'
Jane began to laugh, and exclaimed, 'That's quite beyond me! I know I
'm hopelessly stupid; but whenever people begin to talk about whys and
wherefores, and if it is any good saying their prayers, and whether
love is the real thing or not, I get fogged directly, and I always want
to go for a ride or a walk, or to see the horses, or even to descend to
the kitchen and make jam, to get rid of the feeling.'
'If you were in the fashion, Jane,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, smiling, 'you
would know not only with which portion of grey matter you say your
prayers, but you would also be able to show, scientifically, with which
ventricle of your heart you love and hate, or whether indeed love and
hate are things not of the heart at all but merely a microbial disease.
Will you have some tea?'
'Yes, please,' said Jane, 'and several lumps of sugar.'
'I like people,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, 'who still go to church and take
sugar in their tea. They are very refreshing.'
'I must go back now,' said Jane presently, 'for I promised not to be
long. By the by, we want to keep Peter to dinner. May we? Or will
you mind being alone?'
'I am alone say three hundred and thirty nights in the year,' said Mrs.
Ogilvie dryly.
'I wish we hadn't asked Peter to stay and amuse Toffy!' said Jane, with
compunction. There was a tired white look on Mrs. Ogilvie's face, and
an appearance of fatigue in her movements which neither her supreme art
of dressing nor the careful manipulation of light in the room wholly
concealed.
'Ah, now you are beginning to repent!' said Mrs. Ogilvie. Only her
good manners prevented her remark having a sneer in it. 'That will
spoil your evening, you foolish child, and it will not make mine more
amusing.'
'But I am thinking of you,' said Jane.
'Do not think of me,' said Mrs. Ogilvie, laying her hand for a moment
lightly upon the girl's shoulder.
Jane walked down the hillside and stopped at the edge of the wood to
see the young pheasants, and then went on again, swinging a crooked
walking-stick and singing in a voice clear and sweet, but somewhat out
of tune, snatches of songs which she had picked up from Peter, humming
the ridiculous words in a sort of unconscious happiness. She walked
with a raking grace which became her as wings become a bird or a long
swinging stride a racer. The twilit woods held no fears for her:
imagination never peopled Jane's world with bogies. The perfect poise
of her figure showed a latent energy and physical strength in spite of
her slender build, and her clear complexion and abundant brown hair and
white, even teeth lent an appearance of something essentially wholesome
to a face that at all times looked handsome and well-bred.
She called good night to the lodge-keeper as she passed through the
gates and found her way back to the high road, until, by a short-cut
down the hill, she reached her aunt's charming gardens, and the wide,
low house with its air of repose and comfort, and the long French
windows opening on to the quiet, smooth-shaven lawns.
Peter was waiting for her on the doorstep and was endeavouring not to
fuss; if only he had known by which path Jane would return he would
have liked to go and meet her, and the fact of having missed a walk
with her made him impatient. 'I thought you must be lost,' he said;
'what kept you, Jane? Why did you stay so long?'
When Jane Erskine was away people were apt to ask on her return why she
had stayed so long. Miss Abingdon and General Erskine, who divided her
time between them, were jealous if even a day of their fair share of
Jane was deducted by one or the other. There had been times when Miss
Abingdon had unscrupulously pleaded illness as a means of keeping the
girl a little longer with her, and she would doubtless have continued
her deceptions had not General Erskine adopted the plan of faithfully
paying himself back all the days that were owed to him by his niece.
'My mother says she is going to give a ball,' announced Peter at dinner.
'When?' said Jane, breathless with interest. 'Peter, we 'll have both
houses as full as they can be, and I 'll ask Aunt Mary to stay here,
and you shall ask your mother to stay at Bowshott for it.'
'Jane,' said Miss Abingdon, 'you are very absurd, and just at present
you are making the most extraordinary grimaces.'
'I got caught in the rain to-day,' said Jane, 'and had to walk with it
in my face. I 'm quite sure rain must be a skin-tightener like those
things you see in advertisements.'
'It's given you an awfully jolly colour,' said Peter.
'Has it?' said Jane.
Perhaps a compliment had been given and received, Miss Abingdon did not
know. Beauty itself was almost at a discount nowadays. Even feminine
vanity, so long accepted as the mainspring of feminine action, had lost
its force. Pale cheeks were not in vogue, and frankness had superseded
sentiment.
'What souvenir would they give each other if they had to part?' thought
Miss Abingdon--'a terrier dog, or a gun, or a walking-stick, most
likely!' Faded flowers were quite out of the fashion, and old letters
no longer had the scent of dried rose leaves about them. Was perfect
healthiness ever very interesting, and must sentiment always be
connected with an embroidery frame, a narrow chest, and round shoulders?
Jane obliterated the _menu_ from the porcelain tablet in front of her
by rubbing it with a damask table-napkin, and, having moistened a
pencil, she began to write a list of names of those people who were to
be asked to stay for the dance. 'Kitty Sherard certainly,' she said,
and put the name down on the tablet.
'She 's some one's niece, isn't she?' said Peter.
'She 's every one's niece, I think,' replied Jane.
'Rather rough luck on Miss Sherard,' said Peter.
'It's a fact, though,' Jane went on. 'Really and truly, Aunt Mary,
each of her relations married about ten times, and then the next
generation married each other. And they send problems to the puzzle
column of newspapers to find out how they are related to each other.
Kitty's father is his own great-grandmother, or something complicated
of that sort!'
'It must give one an immense respect for oneself,' said Peter, 'to
discover such a relationship. One would always be taking care of
oneself, and not allowing one's feet to get wet, and thinking what one
owed to one's position, and whether one were being treated with
respect.'
'There are fillets of beef coming, and ducks,' interpolated Miss
Abingdon. 'I let you know this, Peter, as Jane seems to have erased
our only _menu_. What will Sir Nigel have, do you think?' she went on.
'I don't think he is at all well; he was reading his Bible in bed, and
I 'm not sure that we ought not to send for some of his people.'
'Poor Toffy never had any people,' said Peter. 'They were all just as
unlucky as he is, and most of them died violent deaths when they were
young; and one of them, I know, founded some sort of queer religion, so
perhaps Toffy takes after him in his Biblical researches.'
At this moment Sir Nigel Christopherson walked into the room looking as
white as any ghost.
'Toffy, you lunatic!' said Peter, 'why can't you lie still?'
Sir Nigel apologized for being late and declined to have anything
brought back for him.
'How are the Amalekites and Hittites and Girgashites?' said Peter,
making room for his friend at the table.
'I don't like the Bible joked about,' said Miss Abingdon severely.
'Toffy should have been a parson,' said Peter; 'even at Eton he was
always wondering why Cain was afraid that all men should kill him when
he had only a father and mother and perhaps two or three little
brothers and sisters in the world. And he used to fret himself into a
fever wondering if the sun really stood still in Ajalon and what Selah
meant in the Psalms.'
'I think,' said Miss Abingdon, 'that such discussions are best left for
Sundays.'
'We will go on with our dance-list,' said Jane; 'Mrs. Wrottesley can
let us have several rooms at the vicarage, or, if the worst comes to
the worst, we might have tents in the garden.'
'The canon is always so good-natured!' said Miss Abingdon, who believed
that a man's house belonged to himself, and whose mind always reverted
with a sense of peaceful orthodoxy to thoughts of the vicar. She
decided mentally that he must not be asked to receive any of the guests
for the Bowshott ball, believing that visitors must always be more or
less disturbing to a host. She accepted as part of her gentle creed
that a man's writing-table must never be disturbed, that his dinner
must never be kept waiting, and that his special armchair must not be
appropriated by any one else. Canon Wrottesley always read the morning
paper before any other person in the house had seen it, and then
imparted pieces of intelligence to his relations with a certain air of
self-congratulation, as though conveying news which could only possibly
be known to himself; and it was in this way that Miss Abingdon loved to
have the items of interest retailed to her with instructive comments
upon politics.