do you? They're rather dusty, and I really think we've got enough. There
must be at least sixty left. Only it seems rather wasteful to leave a
lot of whiting in a road."
"Come along," Jasmine urged. "For goodness' sake let's leave them and
get back. Now, if you give me one end of the stick and take the other
yourself we can easily carry the rest between us."
Just as the clock struck two they reached Strathspey House. It seemed as
dead in the moonlight as a spent firework; and Jasmine's heart sank.
"It does look as if they were very angry indeed," she said.
"They'll soon cheer up when they see the whiting," Vibart prophesied.
"I'll ring."
He rang repeatedly, but there was no answer.
"Perhaps I'd better knock."
He knocked repeatedly; several windows in Balmoral were opened, and dim
heads stared down inquisitively; but Strathspey House remained mute.
"Why doesn't that beastly dog bark?" complained Vibart. "It barks all
day long. Perhaps I'd better shout."
"Oh no, don't shout."
"Will you ring the bell while I knock again?"
The orchestral effect achieved what the solo had failed to achieve. Sir
Hector put out his long neck and asked severely if that were his niece.
"We got slightly becalmed, sir," said Vibart. "But we had a splendid
catch. You'll be delighted when you see all the whiting we've brought
back for you. Between sixty and seventy. They're so fresh that you'll be
able to have them for breakfast both to-morrow and the day after."
But Sir Hector did not reply, and for nearly ten minutes Strathspey
House gave no further sign of recognition. Then the front door was
opened by Hargreaves, so completely dressed that it was hard to believe
that she had really been roused from bed by Sir Hector's method of
internal communication.
From a landing above Lady Grant's voice was heard. "You'd better go up
to bed at once, Jasmine, and we will talk about your escapade in the
morning."
"I'm afraid there's not much I can do," said Harry, somewhat abashed by
the discouraging reception. "But I'll get round as soon as I can in the
morning and explain that it was all my fault. You mustn't be angry with
Miss Grant, Lady Grant," he called up. "I'm the only person to blame.
Can you see our haul of whiting? You ought to have a look at them before
they're cooked."
The slamming of a distant door was Lady Grant's reply to this.
"Bit annoyed, I'm afraid," he said, shaking his head, and then, turning
to the parlourmaid, he asked her where she would like to put the fish.
The question was answered by the fish, because the main string broke,
and they went slithering all over the hall.
"I don't know, sir, I'm sure where they'd better be put," said
Hargreaves, looking rather frightened.
"Can't you get a dish or something from the kitchen?"
"No, sir, I'm afraid I can't. Cook always has her ladyship's orders to
take the key of the basement door up to bed with her, and she's rather
funny about being woke up."
"But look here," Vibart protested, "we can't leave all these splendid
fish to get trodden on. They're whiting! You know, those fish they
usually serve like kittens running after their tails. They won't have
any tails left if they're going to be walked over by everybody."
He looked round the hall, and his eye fell upon the card-tray.
"Here's the very thing," he cried, and emptying the cards into the
umbrella stand, he began to heap as many whiting as he could on the
tray. "Well, that's saved enough for breakfast. We'll put the rest in a
corner. Lend me your apron."
The prim Hargreaves was as much taken aback by this suggestion as her
colleague Hopkins had been taken aback by Jasmine's attempt to borrow a
chemise on the evening of her arrival. But mechanically she divested
herself, and the whiting were hung up in a bundle on the hat-rack.
"I'll be round very early," Harry promised Jasmine. "Sorry I've let you
in for trouble. I enjoyed myself--well, tremendously."
"So did I," she said. "Tremendously."
Hargreaves without her apron seemed scarcely willing to open the door
for him; but she managed to do it somehow, and Jasmine went slowly
upstairs to the sound of bolts being driven home, of chains clanking,
and latches clicking. It was like being taken back to prison.
Immediately after breakfast the next morning Lady Grant showed her sense
of the gravity of the occasion by postponing her household duties until
she had had what she called an explanation with her niece about her
behaviour last night. As soon as they were closeted in the drawing-room,
Jasmine, supposing that she really was anxious for an explanation, began
to give a perfectly straightforward account of the misadventure. Lady
Grant, however, cut her short before she had time even to explain the
accident by which she and Vibart were separated from the rest of the
party.
"I am sorry, my dear Jasmine, to find that your only object is to make
excuses for your behaviour. There is nothing I dislike so much as
excuses."
"But I haven't begun to excuse myself yet," Jasmine retorted.
Her aunt smiled patiently. "Perhaps you will allow me to say without
interruptions what I was going to say. I am willing to make every
allowance for you, remembering that you have been brought up in a wild
island in the south of Italy, and remembering that your poor father had
odd notions about the education of young girls. But you are old enough
to realize that Spaborough is not Sirene, and that to come back at two
o'clock in the morning after spending the whole night sailing about with
a young man on the open sea is not a very kind way of showing your
affection for your relations, who have been only too anxious to do
everything on their side to help you. You cannot complain of the warmth
of your welcome in England, and you must admit that your Uncle Hector
and I showed ourselves ready to do all we could to rescue you from the
condition in which you found yourself after your father's death. I do
not wish to say too much about Mr. Vibart's conduct. I can only express
my surprise that Sir John Vibart's nephew should so absolutely deceive
us in this way. And I blame Cousin Edith greatly. Please do not think
that I have not already spoken to her very severely for the part she
played in what I can only call a vulgar intrigue. She should, of course,
have let me know at once that you and this young man had made each
other's acquaintance at a railway station. The idea of it! I should have
thought that your natural nice-minded feelings, if not your conscience,
would have told you that casual conversation with young men at railway
stations is not the way in which young girls in your position behave."
"I don't see any difference between speaking to a young man at a railway
station and speaking to a young man at a golf club," Jasmine argued.
"Please do not add to your faults by being rude," Lady Grant begged.
"Your rudeness only shows that you are, as I suspected, insensible to
kindness. I have had so much ingratitude in the course of my various
charities from all sorts and conditions of people whom I have tried to
help that I no longer expect gratitude. But if I do not expect gratitude
I certainly do not expect rudeness. I do not wish to recapitulate what
your uncle has done for you; but I hope that when you come to yourself
and think over what he has done for you you will realize how much there
has been. Who was it sent you your fare from Sirene to Spaborough? Your
uncle. Who was it, when you lost your season ticket before you had even
used it once, bought you another one? Your uncle. Who was it that was so
glad to give you an opportunity of learning the typewriter? Your uncle.
Who was it that did his utmost to get us the best view of the fireworks
yesterday evening? Your uncle. Finally, who was it, when the servants
had gone to bed and the house was locked up, rang the bell in
Hargreaves' room? Your uncle. I shall not go on, Jasmine, because I see
by your face that you are hardening your heart. Well, luckily you have
other uncles and aunts who have come forward to help you. I have just
telegraphed to your Aunt Cuckoo at Hampstead to find out if she will be
ready to receive you to-morrow. And although I think that you deserve
that she should be told of your behaviour here, I am not going to tell
her anything about it. I am not going to say a single word to prejudice
your Aunt Cuckoo against you. But I most earnestly beg you, my dear
Jasmine, to behave a little differently in Hampstead. Your Uncle Hector
and I, who have daughters of our own, will always understand girls
better than your Uncle Eneas or your Aunt Cuckoo can. Frankly, I do not
think you will enjoy yourself as much in Hampstead as you have enjoyed
yourself here, or as you might have enjoyed yourself here, if you had
not displayed such a wilful spirit. What puzzles me is your
unwillingness to make friends with Lettice and Pamela. It cannot be
_their_ fault, because they are friends with everybody. Even Mr. Vibart,
who must be almost without any decent feelings of any kind whatsoever,
liked Lettice and Pamela. Well, I am glad we have had this little
explanation. When next you come to stay with us--for although at present
your uncle is so much annoyed at being woken up last night that he has
said quite positively that he will never have you to stay with us again,
I am sure, knowing his goodness as I do, that he will ask you--when next
you come to stay with us, I say, perhaps in London, I hope you won't go
sailing about with young men half through the night. Of course you would
not be able to do any actual sailing in London, but I mean the
equivalent of sailing, like riding about on the outside of omnibuses at
all hours. I fear that in your present hardened mood nothing can touch
you, but I think that at least you might express your sorrow at making
poor Spot so ill."
"Is Spot ill?" asked Jasmine.
"He is not ill any longer," said her aunt. "But you know how careful I
am about his diet. Apparently he found one of those fish which you left
lying about in the hall and was sick seven times this morning."
The explanation was over. The next morning Jasmine left Strathspey
House, and late that afternoon was met at King's Cross by her Aunt
Cuckoo. Cousin Edith shook her head a great deal at Jasmine's disgrace,
but she was so glad to see the last of her that she could not resist
waving her handkerchief to the departing car. As for Mr. Vibart, he
called five times during the day, and every time Hargreaves, thinking of
her apron, was glad to be authorized to inform him with cold politeness
that nobody was at home.
_Chapter Five_
Jasmine's first experience of being succoured by rich relatives might
have discouraged her from expecting a happy result from the second. Yet,
although the Eneas Grants would be as much her patrons as the Hector
Grants, there was something in the sound of 'Aunt Cuckoo' that suggested
to her mind the anticipation of a positively more congenial atmosphere.
It showed considerable elasticity to feel even subconsciously cheerful
on this journey, with the weather south of York becoming overcast and a
hundred miles of London breaking into a drench of rain, which turned to
dripping fog on the outskirts of the city and made King's Cross an
inferno of sodden gloom. In the first confusion of alighting from the
train, Jasmine felt like a twig precipitated toward the drain of a
gutter. In this din, in this damp and dusky chill made more obscure by
fog and engine smoke and human breath, it hardly seemed worth while to
have an opinion of one's own upon destination. Swept along toward the
exits, Jasmine would soon have found herself astray in the
phantasmagoria of the great squalid streets outside had she not been
rescued by a porter whose kindly interest and paternal manner persuaded
her to consider with due attention the advantages and disadvantages of
the various routes from King's Cross to Hampstead.
A complicated but economical itinerary had no sooner been settled than a
woman glided up to Jasmine with what in the press of the traffic seemed
an almost ghostly ease of movement and asked in an appropriately
toneless voice if she were her niece.
Jasmine, without thinking that amid the incalculable permutations and
combinations of city life it was at least as probable that she was not
this woman's niece as that she was, replied without hesitation that she
was.
"Then how do you do?" said Aunt Cuckoo, offering first her right hand,
then her left hand, and finally a cheek, the touch of which was like
menthol on Jasmine's warm lips.
"I'm very well, thank you," she assured her aunt, transforming the
conventional greeting into an important question by the gravity with
which she answered it.
"Yes, it's a pity you got a porter," Aunt Cuckoo continued. "A great
pity. Because I've got a porter as well. And it doesn't seem worth
while, does it, to have two porters?" Jasmine agreed helplessly. "Unless
your luggage is very heavy indeed," Aunt Cuckoo added, "and if it _is_
very heavy indeed, we can't take it back with us in the brougham, and
then I don't know what to do. Yes, it's a pity really you got a porter
so quickly. Aunt May wrote us that you were rather impulsive."
She sighed; the rival porters waiting for a decision sighed too. Finally
Jasmine took a shilling from her bag, presented it to her porter, and
said "Thank you very much."
"Thank _you_ very much, miss," said the porter, respectfully touching
his cap and retiring from the contest. Aunt Cuckoo without commenting
upon Jasmine's action, asked wearily if her luggage was in the back or
the front of the train. By good luck Jasmine did know this, because Sir
Hector's last bellowed words at Spaborough had been: "Don't forget that
your luggage will be in the back part of the train! You are in a through
carriage!"
By this time Jasmine's luggage had been reduced to one trunk. The crates
with her father's pictures had on her uncle's advice been left at
Strathspey House to be brought to London with the rest of the furniture
when the family moved. The carpet bag had been presented to Hopkins as a
parting gift, because Hopkins had once said how much it would appeal to
a little niece of hers in Battersea. The basket of prickly pears had
long ago been burnt, because Aunt May had supposed it capable of
introducing subtropical insects into Strathspey House. There was
therefore nothing left but her trunk, which Aunt Cuckoo decided was
neither too large nor too heavy for the brougham. In fact, as a piece of
luggage she made light of it altogether, and only gave her porter
twopence, at which he said: "I shan't argue about it, mum. It's not
worth arguing about."
"Are you dissatisfied?" asked Aunt Cuckoo.
The porter called upon Heaven with upturned eyes to witness his
treatment and invited Aunt Cuckoo to keep her twopence.
"You want it more than I do, mum," he said.
The drive from King's Cross to Hampstead took a long time. No doubt the
horse and the coachman were both tired, for Aunt Cuckoo explained that
she had been shopping in London all day and that really she ought to
have gone home much earlier. The small brougham looked like one of those
commercial broughams in which old-fashioned travellers drive round to
exhibit their wares to old-fashioned firms. Nor did the coachman look
like a proper coachman, because he had a moustache, which somehow made
the cockade in his hat look like a moustache too. When he stood up to
push the trunk into place, Jasmine noticed that he was wearing baggy
trousers under his coat, and for a moment she wondered if it could
possibly be Uncle Eneas himself who was driving them. Afterward she
discovered that he was really the gardener who consented to drive the
brougham occasionally, because the horse was useful to his horticulture.
The climb up to the summit of the Heath seemed endless; Jasmine was glad
when they got on to level ground again and the cardboard boxes fell back
into place. Every time the rays of a passing lamp splashed the brougham
Jasmine felt that she ought to say something, but before she had time to
think of anything to say it was dark again; and the next splash of light
always came as a surprise, so that in the end she gave up trying to
think of anything to say and counted the lamp-posts instead. Driving in
a brougham with Aunt Cuckoo reminded her of playing hide-and-seek in a
wardrobe, when, although one was delighted to have found a good place in
which to hide, one hoped that the searchers would not be long in finding
it out.
Half-way down the tree-shaded slope of North End Road on the far side of
the Heath the brougham turned aside down a short drive and pulled up
before an irregular and what appeared in the darkness a rather
attractive house. When the door was opened by a sallow butler, Jasmine
perceived that the reason for her aunt's prolonged silence during the
drive back was a large black respirator, of which she unmuzzled herself
before she asked the butler something in a language which Jasmine did
not understand, but which she afterwards found was Greek. Then, turning
to her niece, she divulged as if it was a family secret that Uncle Eneas
had gone to dine at his club that night.
Jasmine was not sorry to be spared the anxiety of another introduction
so soon, and she eagerly accepted her aunt's proposal to dine earlier
than usual so that she could get a good night's rest after the tiring
journey.
"I've ordered _pilau_ for you," Aunt Cuckoo announced. Jasmine wondered
what this was and hoped it would not be too rich a dish. The oriental
hangings in the dining-room portended an exotic type of food, and she
had been rather shaken by the train.
"But it's just like our own _risotto_," she exclaimed when the heap of
well-greased rice sown with morsels of meat was put before her.
"Very likely," said Aunt Cuckoo, and the tone in which she accepted
Jasmine's comparison was so remote and vague that if Jasmine had likened
the _pilau_ to anything in the scale of edibility between Chinese birds'
nests and ordinary bread and butter, she would probably have assented
with the same toneless equanimity.
Jasmine liked her bedroom at The Cedars much better than her bedroom at
Strathspey House. Uncle Eneas' consular career had naturally set its
mark on his possessions. Strathspey House had been furnished first with
all the things that were not wanted in Harley Street and then with the
new and inexpensive suites that were considered appropriate to a holiday
house. Moreover, Strathspey House itself was a creation not much older
than Sir Hector's baronetcy. The Cedars was a century and a half years
old, a rambling irregular countrified house with a large garden leading
directly to the Heath; it possessed externally a colour and character of
its own which in combination with the oriental taste of Eneas Grant
produced an effect that Jasmine much esteemed after the newness of
Strathspey House. In this bedroom there were Turkish and Persian rugs,
thread-bare, but rich in hues; photographs with cypresses and minarets
along the sky-line; paintings on rice-paper of bashi-bazouks and many
other elaborate old Eastern costumes; and hanging by the fireplace a
horse's tail set in an ivory handle to whisk away the flies. The Cedars
was not Italy, but at least it seemed to recognize that somewhere there
was sunlight. Jasmine fell asleep almost happily, and coming down to
breakfast next morning after a struggle with punctuality she found to
her relief that breakfast at The Cedars consisted of the civilized
coffee taken in bed and that she alone was expected to devour eggs and
bacon at the unnatural hour of nine a.m. After this first breakfast she,
like her uncle and aunt, kept to her room.
Eneas Grant was obviously the brother of Sir Hector; and when Jasmine
found that there was a tendency among her relatives to insist upon the
importance and value of this family likeness, so much so indeed that it
was crystallized into a phrase: 'A Grant! Oh yes, he's obviously a
Grant,' she realized that her father had probably alienated himself from
the esteem of his family as much by his outward dissimilarity as by the
divergence of his tastes. Eneas was tall and thin; but neither his
tallness nor his thinness ever reached the impressive ungainliness of
angularity that was Sir Hector's outstanding characteristic. Eneas, like
his brother, was intensely proud of his good health, and in the
contemptuous way he alluded to anybody who lacked good-health he
suggested that the ill-health was due to a moral lapse. He was a
non-smoker and a teetotaller, and to both abstentions he attributed the
moral value that so many ascetics attribute to any abstention from
life's minor comforts. He was good enough, however, to allow as much to
human weakness as not to condemn any man for moderate indulgence in
either nicotine or alcohol, although to any man who fell a prey to the
major human failings, like women or cards, he was merciless.
"I see no reason why a man should run after women," Uncle Eneas used to
declare; and there hung about Mrs. Grant after twenty years of married
life such an aura of antique virginity that one felt quite sure he was
speaking the truth. Like many men who boast of their immunity from all
the fleshly attacks of the tempter, Eneas Grant was greedy; indeed he
was more than greedy, he was a glutton. A dish of curried prawns roused
the glow of concupiscence in his milky blue eyes. Jasmine found it
embarrassing at first to watch her uncle's tongue rubescent with all
that vaunted good-health titillate itself in anticipation along the
sparse hairs of his grey moustache, just as Spot titillated his back
upon the leaves of shrubberies. Uncle Hector had been greedy with the
frank greed of a man who at the beginning of a meal sharpens his knife
upon the steel with a preliminary bravura and gusto. This greed of Uncle
Eneas was colubrine. It really did seem as if he actually were
fascinating the new dish; as if the curried prawns would presently rise
of their own accord and abjectly, one after another, jump into his
mouth. Jasmine would look up apprehensively to see if Niko the butler
were not observing contemptuously this display of greed. But Niko seemed
to encourage his master; one felt that, if the curried prawns should
presume to show the slightest hesitation at coming forward to be
devoured, Niko would complete with his fingers what his master's snakish
eyes had failed to effect.
Like most teetotallers and non-smokers Eneas was a ruthless talker. He
had innumerable stories of his career which, to do him justice, were at
a first hearing entertaining enough; but after one had wandered with him
on his famous expedition to negotiate with the Mirdite clan in Albania,
had watched the eagles soaring above the gorges of the Black Drin or the
passes of the Brseshda, had noticed curiously the mediaeval costumes of
the inhabitants, had been regaled with gigantic feasts by hospitable
chieftains, and had heard mass said by moustachioed priests whose rifles
were leaning against the altar, one tired of Albania; at the third time
of hearing one became as it were mentally saddle-sore and yearned to be
back home. It was entertaining, for the first time, to hear him tell how
once, in the old days, while walking like God in his garden at Salonika,
inhaling the perfumed breeze of the Balkan dusk, there had suddenly
fallen at his feet, flung over the garden wall, a matchbox which when
opened was discovered to contain a human ear. That story, heard for the
first time, provided a genuine shudder. But when one had heard it six or
seven or eight or nine times one was stifled by the preliminary
perfumes, dazzled by the preliminary sunset, and prayed for some change
in the weather and some new bit of anatomy in the matchbox, a human eye
or a human finger--anything rather than a human ear.
"A perfectly ordinary matchbox," Mr. Grant used to say. "I just stooped
down to open it and found inside a human ear. You of course see the
point of that?"
The first time Jasmine had not seen the point, and had been interested
to be told that the ear belonged to some British subject under the
protection of her uncle who had refused to pay his ransom to the
brigands that held him captive on Mount Olympus. But once the point had
been seized, and repetition gave the poor gentleman as many ears as the
breasts of the Ephesian Diana, the story became grindingly,
exasperatingly tiresome.