Peter and Jane - Sarah Macnaughtan (novels for students .TXT) 📗

had come to his mother while he was far away; and by his will, which he made at this time, he secured an almost extravagant provision for Edward. He could well-nigh forgive his nephews now for their obtrusive existence in the world, and he settled down to enjoy his property with the happy knowledge that he had two fine sturdy boys to whom to leave it. He was still in the prime of life, and not all the dangers and privations which he had suffered seemed to have undermined his splendid constitution. But a drive home in an open dogcart, after; speaking in an overheated hall at a political meeting, brought on a chill and pneumonia of which very suddenly he died. His loss was sincerely and deeply regretted in a neighbourhood where he was both admired and loved for his many good qualities, and a monument in Culversham parish church tells of his excellence as a landlord and his intrepid courage as an explorer.

Mrs. Ogilvie's health being still precarious, she went abroad for the winter after her husband's death to look into some matters concerning her own property, and to try to court health in the sunny vine-growing country. And there, in a little remote Spanish village by the sea which she loved to visit, little Edward Ogilvie, the elder of the two children, died; and not until six years later did Mrs. Ogilvie return to England. To all outward seeming she was as emotionless and reserved as she had ever been, and she spoke no word of her double sorrow and her irreparable loss. Her love for her remaining child never showed itself in caresses, and was not even discernible in her speech; but in spite of her reserve there was an undefined feeling in most people's minds that Mrs. Ogilvie idolized her son. Of the two who were dead no one ever heard her speak. Whatever she thought of them seemed to be buried in her heart as deeply as though that heart had been their graves. And there remained only cheery, popular Peter Ogilvie, with his mind as open as the day, and not a secret upon his soul, and with as much reserve as a schoolboy, to inherit the fortune which a prince might have envied, and a property which was unique in a county rich in beautiful houses.

The gardens of Bowshott were the admiration of the countryside, and Mrs. Ogilvie rarely entered them. The picture gallery was visited by foreigners from every part of the world. Mrs. Ogilvie frequently showed the works of the great masters herself, strolling along the polished floor of the gallery, and telling the story of this picture and that with the inimitable grace of manner which was vaguely resented by her country neighbours, delighting the distinguished foreigners who came to see the pictures. She herself hardly ever glanced at the old masters for her own pleasure; although full of technical knowledge on the subject she had no love of art. It used to weary her when she had to listen to enthusiasm, generally only half-sincere, about her Botticellis or her Raphaels. Music never stirred her, and she regarded the society of the country neighbourhood where she lived with a sense of uncomprehension which she sometimes found difficult to conceal.

'Why were such people born?' she used to say to herself at the sight of some rural gathering. On the rare occasions when she went to a party she was always the first to leave; boredom seemed to overtake her before she had been anywhere very long. Entertainments, so-called, were horribly wearisome to her, and she never for an instant believed those people who professed to have enjoyed a pleasant party. Parties were all stupid, she thought; just as most people were stupid, and most food was badly cooked. Therefore, why meet in somebody else's most probably hideous room, and eat impossible dishes and talk to impossible people? Her own chef had been famous even in Paris, and every evening, according to the custom of the house, an extravagant menu was prepared, at which, when she was alone, she hardly glanced.

Mrs. Ogilvie discussed all things in heaven or earth with a baffling lightness, turned philosophy into a witty jest and made a sort of slang of classical terminology. Amongst a clever set in London she reigned supreme when she chose; but a false note or a pose offended her immediately, and the poseur or the insincere person would generally receive one of her exquisite snubs which cut like acid into tender skins. The pretentiousness of the so-called cultured set was a vulgarism in the eyes of this woman who could be rude with the air of a princess, and could give a snub as some people offer a compliment. Inferior persons sometimes wondered how she had a friend left. To be popular, they argued, one had to be civil, whereas Mrs. Ogilvie was often daringly disagreeable. There was indeed something almost fine in her splendid disdain of the civility of the so-called popular person. She could wound; but she did it with the grace of a duellist of old days, who wiped his rapier with a handkerchief of cambric and lace when he had killed his opponent, and would probably expect a man to die as he himself would die, with a jest on his lips and a light laugh at the flowing blood. Mrs. Ogilvie slew exquisitely, and she never hated her opponent. She smiled at enthusiasm and thought it bizarre and rather delightful; but towards vulgarity, especially in its pompous form, she presented her poniard-point sharply tipped and deadly. 'Why should people take themselves seriously?' she would say, with a shrug of her shoulders. 'Surely, we are a common enough species!' And then the green-grey eyes would narrow themselves in their shortsighted way, and Mrs. Ogilvie's voice, charmingly refined and well-bred, would with a few words lightly prick the falsely sentimental and self-inflated wind-bag of oratory that had presented its unprotected surface to her shaft.

Towards religion her attitude was the well-bred one. She took off her hat to it, as a gentleman removes his hat in church whatever his creed may be. Her own beliefs were as daring and as nearly as possible uninfluenced by outward opinion or by the accepted systems as it is possible for a creed to be. She never tried to force them upon any one else; possibly she did not believe in them herself sufficiently to wish to do so; but like her queer gowns and her dyed red hair her creed suited Mrs. Ogilvie. There was a congruous incongruity about her which set many people puzzling to find out her real character. Pompous persons and snobs detested her. Stupid or vapid people saw nothing in her, or saw merely that she dyed her hair and was dressed by Paquin. Narrow-minded people disapproved of her, and clever people considered her one of the most striking, if not one of the most agreeable personalities of the day. Women hardly ever understood her; but they respected any one who dressed as well as she did, and they had an undeclared admiration for a woman who could hold so lightly possessions which they believed to be all-important, and which Mrs. Ogilvie seemed to find so trivial.

The house and its gardens were open once a week to visitors, and the country neighbours brought their guests and strangers to see it, their pleasure in showing off Mrs. Ogilvie's possessions being somewhat tempered by timidity; while those who came to pay a call on the chance of finding her at home would sometimes say with an air of courage and independence to a friend, 'Mrs. Ogilvie is considered rather alarming, you know, but it really is only her manner.' She played her part as country neighbour conscientiously. Once a year she gave a sumptuous garden-party, all other garden-parties in the neighbourhood being dated by it. And when Peter was a little boy there were children asked to the house to play games with him, and later there were dances and balls.

Peter accepted his mother, his property, and his position on what he himself would probably have called their most cheery side. He valued Bowshott because there was excellent hunting to be got there; just as he loved his place in Scotland because of the stalking and the fishing and the shooting, but that they were magnificent or enviable never entered his head. Fate had dealt very kindly with him, and its kindliness had provoked a charming geniality in the character of the young man whom it had treated with such lavish good fortune. Taking it all round, Peter considered this world an excellent one, and most of the people in it very good sorts indeed. He accepted his mother as he accepted everything else, with a simple-heartedness which never looked below the surface nor concerned itself with motives; and if any one had suggested to him that she was inexplicable he would have considered such a judgment quite unintelligible. He enjoyed a visit to her more than almost anything else in the world. She had always been devoted to him ever since he was a boy, and for the life of him he could not see that she was difficult to understand.

It was the fashion to say that Mrs. Ogilvie had altered greatly since the death of Colonel Ogilvie and the little boy. People who remembered all the circumstances of that sad time thought always that in her own way Mrs. Ogilvie was the victim of remorse for not having loved her dead child better. But, after all, there was nothing that a child of three or four years old could have felt seriously in his mother's conduct, and his father's affection must have consoled him for any coldness on her part. After the colonel's death there were those who said it would have been better if Mrs. Ogilvie had married again, or even if she had had a daughter—some one who would have been always at home, and who, to use the common phrase, might have taken Mrs. Ogilvie out of herself. Peter was too much away from home to be a real companion to his mother, and there were never guests at Bowshott unless he was there. It would surely have been in reason if the widow had taken a fancy to some nice girl and had had her to live in the house. But Mrs. Ogilvie did not take fancies to nice girls. She loved Jane Erskine, but disguised the feeling under a sort of whimsical indifference. And the friendship seemed incongruous enough if one came to think of it. Jane, with her wholesome love of outdoor life, her fresh beauty, her heedlessness of learning and ignorance of books—what had Jane in common with Mrs. Ogilvie in her Parisian gowns and with her dyed hair, sitting in the vast drawing-room at Bowshott reading the Court Journal and thinking on the lines of the speculative philosophers?

And even to Jane Erskine her manner was cold. Her chilling philosophy would soon have quenched a less happy and impulsive nature. No one but Jane would have bothered her head about Mrs. Ogilvie, the kindly neighbours said, envying, nevertheless, the girl's intimacy at the great house. But as a matter of fact Jane expended a wealth of honest affection on Mrs. Ogilvie, and not only thought her the cleverest woman she had ever met, but had even been heard to affirm that her hair was not dyed. She called her 'such a really good sort'; and the words were as inappropriate as the words of Peter Ogilvie and Jane Erskine usually were.

CHAPTER II

Jane Erskine was at the present time at that interesting period when her friends and relatives, having just discovered the unexpected fact that she was grown up, subjected her to mildly severe criticism, while believing that to have reached womanhood at all showed a considerable amount of