love and of the way people declared their love, she would have supposed
that Harry Vibart was making fun of her. And yet something in the tone
of his voice forbade her to think that. Moreover, the way her own heart
was beating prevented her wanting to think that. So she stayed silent,
while he occupied himself with the cigar-lighter in case her eyes should
tell him what her tongue refused to speak. He managed at last to kindle
the wick, and holding the little instrument of revelation above his head
so that from the vastness of the gloom around he could conjure her
beloved countenance, he stood waiting for the answer. In the few seconds
that had fluttered past, Jasmine felt that she had grown up, and now
when she looked at the freckled young man, so obviously fearful of
having made a fool of himself, she felt several years older than he, so
much older that she was able to speak to him with what it seemed was a
weight of worldly knowledge behind her.
"I'm afraid you've been rather impetuous," she said austerely. "I could
never dream of asking you to give up anything on my account." Jasmine
gained eloquence from not meaning a word of what she said, and unaware
that she was trying to persuade herself rather than Harry of the
imprudence of his project, she grew more eloquent with every word she
uttered. "You must remember that I have not a penny in the world, and
that you cannot afford to marry a girl without a dowry. I know that in
England men do marry even quite ordinary girls without a dowry, but I
should never feel happy if I were married like that."
"What on earth have dowries got to do with being in love? Do you love
me? Do you think you could get to love me?"
"You've no right to ask me that," said Jasmine, "unless you are able to
marry me."
"Well, I told you I was L84 10s. up on the bookies this August. I should
have proposed in July, but I had rather a rotten Goodwood, and...."
"Yes, but you can't afford a wife with only that. Why, even if my uncle
went on allowing me L10 a quarter...."
"I told you there was a risk. I asked you if you would risk it," he
interrupted in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the point I want to get at
is this: do you or do you not care for me?"
"I like you very much," Jasmine admitted politely.
"Yes, well, that sounds rather as if I was a mutton chop. Look here, you
know, you're driving me into making a scene. When I first saw you at
York, I fell in love with you. I didn't mean to tell you that, because
it sounds ridiculous. But I did. Then when you were such a little sport
on that mackerel hunt, I loved you more than ever. And then you were
whisked off. I felt desperate, and I tried to kill my love. Please don't
laugh. I know it's almost impossible not to laugh if a chap talks like
this, and I should have laughed myself a year ago. But do you realize
that you've driven me into reading books? That's a pretty desperate
state of affairs. I can't pass a railway book-stall now without buying
armfuls of the most atrocious rot. And the worse it is, the more I enjoy
it. About fifty darlings a page is my style now. Where was I? Oh yes, I
tried to kill my love. You know, playing golf, and all that sort of
thing. But as soon as I heard where you were, I came to see you. Well,
it was bad luck to drop that brick over the old boy's malacca, and I
felt desperate. And then when I got your letter on top of the worst
Goodwood anybody ever had, I said to myself that, unless I was fifty
pounds up by the end of August, I'd go out to the Colonies and work
myself to death. Well, I made more than that fifty pounds, and here I
am. I'd got a lot of jolly things all ready to say to you, but now I'm
here I can't say anything. Jasmine, I'm as keen as mustard on you.
There!"
He had spoken with such vehemence that the cigar-lighter had long ago
been puffed out; in the darkness Jasmine felt her hand grasped.
"What a topping little hand," he murmured. "It's as soft as a puppy's
paw. Topping!"
Jasmine had an impulse to let herself sigh out her happiness upon his
shoulder; she knew somehow that his arms were open, and that the touch
of his tweeds would be as refreshing to her tired spirit as if she were
to fling herself into the sunburnt scented grass of a remote meadow; she
could not summon to her aid a single argument against letting herself
be folded in his embrace. Then, just as she was surrendering to the
moment, a clod of earth was flung through the ruined oriel of the tower,
and from down below came hoarse cries of "Cave! Cave! Edward's coming
down the path! You'd better bunk!"
"What's up?" asked Vibart, making fresh efforts to kindle his
cigar-lighter. "Who's Edward?"
"Oh, I knew this would happen! I knew this would happen!" Jasmine
exclaimed distractedly. "I told you not to come down here."
"But who's Edward?" Vibart persisted.
"It's my cousin. He's dreadfully in earnest, and he thinks he's in love
with me."
"Well, I'm not particularly afraid of Edward; but if it's the fashion
here to be afraid of him, I'll pretend to be afraid of him too, and the
best way of showing our terror is to sit here holding each other's hands
until the dangerous fellow passes on. The closer we keep together, the
less frightened we shall be."
"It's nothing to joke about," she said. "He's evidently suspicious about
something, or he would never have come out into the garden to look for
me in the tower."
Jasmine was sure that the conspirators, in their desire for a more
dramatic climax than they might otherwise have secured, had conveyed a
mysterious warning to Edward, who, when she was nowhere to be found in
the house had, preserving his own dignity as far as possible, set out
upon a voyage of discovery.
Whatever the conspirators had done in the way of precipitating this
climax, they were now doing their best to deflect Edward from the path.
The methods they chose, however, were not sufficiently subtle, and they
only had the effect of putting their eldest brother in a very bad
temper, as was evident from the threats that were audible outside.
"Look here, young Edred, I'll give you the biggest thrashing you ever
had in your life if you fling any more of those toadstools at me. All
right, Edwy, I can recognize you, and you'll find out when you go
indoors again that you can't wear the pater's gaiters without trouble.
Where's Jasmine?"
And then, like the croak of a night-bird, Edwy's response was heard.
"Recreant knight, the maiden whom thou seekest is safe from thy lustful
arm. Beware of advancing another step."
"You young swine, I'll give you the biggest licking you ever had in your
life!" retorted Edward, still advancing in the direction of the door.
"Look here," Vibart whispered to Jasmine, "I think I ought to go out and
help those sportsmen."
At this moment Ethelred, who had retreated into the tower, came up the
ladder and told them not to worry, because he had invented something
that was going to put Edward out of action the moment he attempted to
advance beyond the first rung.
"No, please, Ethelred," Jasmine begged. "Don't make matters worse than
they are."
"No, really it's all right, I swear," Ethelred promised. "Don't get
excited. And if you want to elope to-night, Edwy's made all the
necessary arrangements. He's got the ladder hidden by the stable, and
the pony's harnessed, and if you're pursued, he's going to put people
off the scent by saying the house is on fire; or he may be trying to set
it on fire really, I can't remember; and he's only told Wilson"--Wilson
was one of the under-gardeners--"so you needn't be in a funk of being
found out. And look here," he added to Vibart, "you won't forget that
man-lifting kite, will you? Because Edwy's awfully keen to go up with
it."
"That's all right," Vibart promised. "You stave off Edward, and I'll
send you a kite that will lift an elephant."
"Don't encourage him," said Jasmine. "You don't understand how dreadful
all this is going to be for me."
By this time Edward, undeterred by the missiles of Edwy or Edred, had
reached the foot of the ladder, and was asking Jasmine in that academic
voice she so much disliked if she was in the tower.
"If those young brutes have been playing practical jokes on you,
_carissima_, just let me know and I'll give them a lesson they won't
forget."
"Will you, you stinking pig?" muttered Ethelred, bending over and
releasing a heavy weight on his brother's head.
"Heavens! What have you done?" Jasmine cried in apprehension.
"It's all right. It's only a bag of flour," Ethelred explained. "And I
think it hit him absolutely plum."
However it hit Edward, it had the effect of rousing him to fury; without
pausing to consider that the steps of the ladder were broken and that
the floor of the tower contained several holes and that his sense of
direction was considerably impeded by the flour in his eyes, he came
charging up the ladder. Just as he reached the top there was a crack of
giving wood, followed by a crash, a cry, a thud, and several groans.
"Great Scott! He's really damaged himself this time," said Vibart.
"I say, I didn't work that," Ethelred protested a little tremulously.
Edred and Edwy, who had followed in their brother's wake, were calling
up that he had broken his leg. Vibart's cigar-lighter refused to shed
even a momentary flicker on the scene, and there was nothing for it but
to send one of the boys below back to the house for help. Jasmine begged
Harry Vibart to escape if he could, but when he tried the floor with a
view to letting himself down, the rotten planking began to break off, so
that he had to draw back lest the whole floor of the room should
collapse and precipitate himself and Jasmine upon the prostrate and
groaning form of Edward underneath. He then attempted in response to
Jasmine's entreaties to escape from the oriel window, but no sooner had
he put himself into a position to make the drop than she begged him with
equal urgency to come back.
"You might break your leg too, and it would be so dreadfully
embarrassing to have you and Edward both in bed. My aunt would hate
looking after you, and I should never be allowed to look after you."
"Are you sure of that?" he asked.
"Sure, sure. But why do you ask?"
"Because, if I thought there was a chance of getting you as my nurse,
I'd break every bone in my body with the greatest pleasure."
The only one who escaped without damage moral or physical from that
evening was Ethelred. When the Dean and Mrs. Lightbody with Edgar and
Edmund, gardeners and lanterns and ladders, and an improvised stretcher,
arrived at the tower, Ethelred managed somehow to get back to the house
unperceived, and was able to claim, relying upon the loyalty of his
fellow-conspirators, that he had gone to bed immediately after dinner
with a bad headache. The rest of the family suffered in various degrees.
Edwy suffered from being caught wearing his father's best gaiters, Edred
from being caught wearing his father's best hat. The Dean suffered in
his character as owner of the gaiters and the hat. Mrs. Lightbody
suffered in her deepest feelings as a mother, as the wife of the Dean of
Silchester, and as an aunt. Harry Vibart suffered from the ridiculous
situation in which he found himself, and from the unpleasant situation
in which his imprudence had placed Jasmine. Edward suffered from a
broken leg, but derived some pleasure from the effort he had made to be
noble. His nobility of behaviour consisted in abstaining from any
comment on Vibart's presence in the tower, and the consciousness of his
nobility was so sharp that the pain of his fractured limb was dull in
comparison. Yet Jasmine was so unreasonable as to think him lacking in
generosity because he did not explain away Vibart's presence, explain
away his own accident, explain away the whole situation, in fact. She
even blamed him for what had occurred, ascribing the disaster to his
vanity in supposing that she would send him a message by the boys to
meet her in the tower. But then Jasmine had suffered most of anybody;
and it was she who was to discover that Aunt May at her worst was
angelic beside Aunt Ellen.
"I'm bound to say, Jasmine, that I did not imagine the existence of such
depravity. A servant would not behave like that. And what is so
lamentable is that the boys knew that you were up in the tower with that
young man. It seems to me almost criminal to put such ideas into their
little heads. I've been so strict with them. I've even wondered
sometimes if I could let them read the Bible to themselves. Your poor
uncle has aged twenty years in the last twenty-four hours."
What really had happened to Uncle Arnold was a bad cold from going out
in his slippers without a hat. But Aunt Ellen was enjoying herself too
much for accuracy. She was in the raptures of a grand improvisation.
Presently her fancy soared; she indulged in Gothic similes.
"It was like a witches' sabbath. And poor Edward! Not a word has he said
in blame of you. He lies there as patient as a martyr. And then I
suppose you'll go off this afternoon and confess to your priest down in
Bog Lane, and come back under the impression that you're as white as
driven snow. To me such a pretence of religion is disgusting."
"Perhaps you don't realize, Aunt Ellen," said Jasmine, "that Edward has
been making love to me for weeks, and that I've had to laugh at him to
prevent his doing something silly."
"What do you mean, doing something silly, you wicked and vulgar girl? I
cannot think where you got such a mind. A servant would not get such
disgusting ideas into her head. I suppose we must put it down to your
mother."
"Stop!" said Jasmine, white with anger. "Stop, will you? Or I shall
throw this inkpot at you." And when Aunt Ellen did stop, she was half
sorry, because she was hating her so much that she was really wanting to
throw the inkpot at her. However, she put it back on the table, rushed
from her aunt's presence up to her own room, where, after weeping for an
hour, she sat down and wrote to Harry Vibart.
_Dear Mr. Vibart,_
_I hope you realize by now that you acted abominably in coming down
here after what I said in my letter. I never want to see you
again. Please understand that I mean it this time. However, I'm
going back to Italy almost at once where people know how to behave
themselves. I hate England. I've been miserable here, and you've
made me more miserable than anybody._
Then she signed herself _Jasmine Grant_ and fiercely blotted him out of
her life.
_Chapter Nine_
After the scene with her aunt, Jasmine longed to leave the Deanery at
once, for she suffered torments of humiliation in having to stay on
there in a disgrace that was being published all over Silchester. The
Dean himself was kind, and perhaps it was because he understood the
difficulty of her position that he asked her to come and work with him.
But such an easy way out for Jasmine did not please his wife, who was
continually coming up to the study and worrying him with her fears about
the progress of Edward's fracture in order to impress both him and
Jasmine with their heartless conduct in thus working away regardless of
the martyr downstairs. The Dean was a kind-hearted man, but he
considered his work on pre-Norman Britain the most important thing in
life; finding it impossible to proceed under the stress of these
continual interruptions, he presently announced that he must go to
Oxford for a week or two and do some work in the Bodleian.
As soon as he had gone, Aunt Ellen's treatment of her niece became
something like a persecution. She forbade the youngest boys to play with
her; she took a delight in making the most cruel remarks to her before
Edmund and Edgar; she was rude to her in front of the servants. Jasmine
was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and she was by now so
passionately anxious to leave Silchester that she was actually on the
verge of writing to Aunt May to ask if she could not come back to
London. She did write to Aunt Cuckoo, who wrote back a pleasant little
letter iced over with conventional expressions of affection like the
pink mottoes on a white birthday cake. She was sorry to hear that
Jasmine was unable to appreciate Aunt Ellen. She realized that the
atmosphere in the higher circles of the Church of England was
unsympathetic, _but_ Baboose had shown symptoms of croup. She hoped that
later in the autumn Jasmine could come and spend a week or two at The
Cedars, _but_ just now it was advisable to keep Baboose at Torquay.
Uncle Eneas sent his love, _but_ he was not very well, and Jasmine would
understand how difficult it was to fit an extra person in seaside
lodgings. She was sorry that Jasmine was unhappy, "_but_ our wonderful
religion will console you better than my poor self," she wound up.
"But! But!" Jasmine cried aloud. "Butter would be the right word."
Such was the state of affairs at the Deanery when one morning about a
fortnight after Edward broke his leg, Cherrill the butler announced a
visitor to see Jasmine. After what she had suffered from that ill-timed
visit of Harry Vibart, her heart sank, particularly as Cherrill did not
announce the visitor in a way that would have led anybody to suppose
that his news would be welcome.
"For me?" Jasmine repeated. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, miss," said Cherrill firmly. "This, er...." he hesitated for a
moment, "...elderly person wishes to speak with you for a moment on
behalf of Miss Butt."
"Miss Butt?" Jasmine repeated. "Who's she?" For a moment she thought
that her nervous condition was developing insanity and that the name was
something to do with her outburst against the 'buts' of Aunt Cuckoo.
"Perhaps if you would come down, miss," suggested Cherrill, "to
ascertain from the ... person more in full what exactly she does
require, you could enquire from her who Miss Butt is."
Jasmine asked if the visitor had given her own name, and when Cherrill
said that she had given the name of Mrs. Vokins she remembered that Mrs.
Vokins was Selina's friend at Catford. It was all very odd, and without
more ado she went downstairs.
In the dining-room a small thin woman with a long red nose came forward
to shake hands with Jasmine in the serious way in which people who are
not accustomed to shaking hands very often do.
"You've been sent here by Selina?" asked Jasmine impulsively. The
question seemed to take Mrs. Vokins aback; she had evidently been primed
with a good deal of formality to undertake her mission.
"I am Miss Butt's lady friend from Catford," she explained with an
assumption of tremendous dignity.
"I remember her talking about you very often."
"Yes, miss," sighed Mrs. Vokins, taking out her handkerchief and dabbing
the corners of her eyes. She evidently supposed that any reference to
her in conversation must have included the sorrows of her past life, and
she now put on the air of one to whom a response to sympathy is the most
familiar emotion.
"And you have a message for me from Selina?"
"No, not a message, a letter. Miss Butt was unwilling to put it in the
pillar-box for fear your aunt should look at it."
"My aunt?"
"That was how Miss Butt came to send me in place of the pillar-box. She
wanted me to put the letter in my stocking for safety, but suffering as
I do from vericlose veins, I asked Miss Butt to kindly permit of it
being put in my handbag. You must excuse it smelling slightly of salts,
but I'm very subject to headaches ever since my trouble."
Jasmine opened the letter, which was strongly perfumed with gin. The
negotiations being conducted in such a ladylike polite spirit, Jasmine
was not surprised to find Selina's letter couched in the same style.
_Dear Miss Grant,_
_This is to inform you that poor old Mr. Rouncivell has been took
very bad with inflammation of the bowls screaming and yelling
himself hoarse fit to frighten anybody. I don't want to say more
than I ought in a letter, but knowing what I know, I tell you you
ought to come back with my lady friend Mrs. Vokins at once and not
knowing if you have the money for your fare I take the liberty of
enclosing a postal order for two pounds. Mrs. Vokins has a
brother-in-law who is a fourwheeler and will drive you back to
Muswell Hill as per arrangement._
"This is all very mysterious," Jasmine commented.
"Yes, miss, so it is, I'm sure," Mrs. Vokins agreed. "But then, as my
friend Miss Butt says, life's very mysterious. And I said, answering
her, 'Yes, Miss Butt, and death's very mysterious.' And she said,
'You're right, Mrs. Vokins, it is.' Miss Butt's very worried. Oh yes, I
can tell you she's very worried, because she's given up the kitchen
which I was using for her three times a week. If I might presume to give
advice as a married woman, which I was before my poor husband died, I'd
advise you to pack up your box and come along with me by the afternoon
train, which my brother-in-law will meet with his cab. You need have no
fear of familiarity, miss, because he was a coachman before he was a
cabman, and was hounded out of his job by one of these motor-cars.
Inventions of the Devil, as I call them."
"But does Selina want me to help her look after my poor uncle?"
"I'm sorry, miss, to appear stand-offish, and it's through no wish of
mine, I'm sure, but Miss Butt's last words to me was: 'Keep your mouth
shut, Mrs. Vokins.'"
Jasmine was too deeply moved by the thought of the poor old gentleman
lying in pain at Rouncivell Lodge, and too much touched by Selina's
kindly thought in enclosing her fare, to delay a moment in answering her
request. In any case it was obvious that she would have to leave the
Deanery almost at once, and it seemed an interposition of providence
that she should have such a splendid excuse to escape from the
ridiculous and humiliating position in which Edward's folly and Harry
Vibart's thoughtlessness had placed her.
It was dark when the cab pulled up a hundred yards away from the gates
of Rouncivell Lodge, and Jasmine hoped that the necessity for all this
caution would soon be finished, because she was finding the gin-scented
hushes of Mrs. Vokins that filled the interior of the dank old cab
trying to her fatigued and hungry condition. However, there was not long
to wait before Selina's voice, which always sounded to Jasmine as if the
housekeeper had been eating a lot of stale biscuits without being able
to obtain a drink of water after them, greeted her.
"Such goings on!" she snapped, and then turning to the cabman went on in
her dry voice: "Perhaps, Mr. Vokins, you'll have the goodness to carry
Miss Grant's trunk round to the back entrance without ringing."
"I suppose the horse will stand all right?" said the cabman doubtfully.
"Of course the horse will stand all right," said Selina. "My father was
a coachman before you knew the difference between a horse and a donkey,
Mr. Vokins."
"William," supplemented his sister-in-law, "remember what I told you on
your doorstep first thing this morning."
Mr. Vokins without another word went off to leave Jasmine's trunk where
he had been told to leave it. While he was gone, the conversation was
kept strictly to the minor incidents of Mrs. Vokins' mission.
"You got off then quite comfortably, Mrs. Vokins?" Selina enquired.
"Yes, Miss Butt, thank you. I had no trouble. Or I should say none but
what come from me being so silly as to break my smelling salts in my bag
by not noticing I had put my bag _under_ me on the seat instead of
_beside_ me as I had the intention of. Oh yes, when anyone makes up
their mind to it, you can get about nowadays and no mistake."
"And you gave Miss Grant the postal order all right, Mrs. Vokins?"
enquired Selina sharply.
"We haven't known each other all these years, Miss Butt," replied her
friend with elaborate haughtiness, "for you to have any need to ask me
_sech_ a question _now_."
"It was so kind of you, Selina, to think of that," said Jasmine, putting
out her hand to touch the yellow-faced housekeeper's arm. Selina blew
her nose violently, and then observed that a little quietness from
everybody would not come amiss.
It was not until the two Vokins had disappeared into the December night
and Selina had conducted Jasmine with the most elaborate caution along
the gloomy path known as the Tradesmen's Entrance and had seen her
safely seated by the kitchen fire that she allowed herself the luxury
of a complete explanation; and even then she broke off just when she had
gathered her skirts together before sitting down to observe that Jasmine
was looking very pale, and to ask if she was hungry.
"I haven't had any dinner," Jasmine explained.
"Well, there's nothing but muffins; but I suppose you wouldn't object to
muffins. If a Frenchman who isn't hungry can eat frogs and snails, you
can eat muffins when you are."
"I should love some muffins," said Jasmine, and she ate four while
Selina sat back and stared hard at her all the time. As soon as she had
finished, the narrative opened.
"Well, it's best to begin at the beginning, as they say, and when you
got into trouble over Her walking-stick, that there Pamela planted
herself down here. And now perhaps you'll understand why I said nothing
in front of Mrs. Vokins?"
Jasmine looked bewildered.