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

cold outside. The room despite its hideousness was full of pleasant recollections to them both, for when Hulworth was not let Toffy had often assembled bachelor parties there, and it had always been a second home to Peter, where he had been wont to keep a couple of guns and some of his 'things.'

The actual journey to Argentine was not a matter demanding any courage on the part of either of the young men, but the result of the journey might have a grave effect on the fortune of Peter Ogilvie. Tomorrow was to have been his wedding-day; and this fact being persistently present to both men, they left the subject to the last. It was with an effort that Peter said, before they parted for the night, 'Whatever happens, we mean to try to be married when I come back. Jane is awfully plucky about it, but this confounded Court of Chancery does not seem to regard me with much favour at present.'

'It's only for a year,' said Toffy hopefully. 'Let's make a solemn covenant that we shall meet in this very room on the 25th of October 1911, with the wedding-day fixed for to-morrow again.'

'Where is your Bible?' said Peter. 'If you haven't one in your pocket or under your pillow, will it do if I kiss your account-book?'

'The whole thing can be just as we intended it to be,' said Toffy cheerfully. 'And this time next year Jane will be staying with Miss Abingdon, and old Wrot will be ironing out his surplice—at least Mrs. Wrot will, and he 'll look on and think he 's doing it. And I 'll be here, probably with a cold in my head as usual, and thereto I plight thee my troth!'

He fingered in his pocket the wedding-ring which Peter had given him for safe custody, and the care of which had seriously disturbed his slumbers at night. 'I 'll keep the ring until then, Peter, and place it on the third finger of Jane's left hand. No, no, you do that, by the way; and I shall have to wait until I get a wife of my own.'

'Here 's to her good health!' said Peter. And they endeavoured to be lively, as befits the subject of weddings; but Peter was thinking that perhaps his own wedding-day might be five years hence, and however they might plan that it should be the same as they had first intended, it was a long time to wait. And Toffy was wondering how long Horace Avory meant to live, and if Carrie would mind very much his going to Argentine, and whether she would write him one of those long tear-blistered letters in her indistinct handwriting, which he found so hard to read, and, suppose Horace Avory never died (as seemed quite likely), what would be the end of it all? Also, he wondered whether Carrie and Miss Sherard would get on well together if they were to meet, and he hoped with manly stupidity that they might be friends. But what he wondered more than anything else at present was whether Kitty Sherard would allow him to go and say good-bye to her. Toffy was feeling ill, and his vitality was low; in his weakness he thought with an insistence that was almost homesick in its intensity how beautiful it would be to see her in this ugly old house of his, in one of her rose-coloured gowns, and with her brown curls and her hopelessly baffling and bewildering manner of speech.

And each of the two young men, being absorbed in quite other subjects, talked cheerfully of the voyage, and speculated on what sort of sport they might incidentally get; and they discussed much more seriously the fishing flies and guns they should take with them than the possible finding of Peter's brother or Peter's own change of fortune.

Lydia, listening at the door before she went to bed, for no particular reason except that her aunt had forbidden it, decided that her master and Captain Ogilvie were planning a sporting expedition together—'which means dullness and aunt for me for a few months to come,' said Lydia, with a sniff.

CHAPTER X

So Peter went to London to collect his kit and to say good-bye to Jane Erskine, and Nigel Christopherson ordered a great many new boots of various designs, and some warlike weapons, and then there came the time when he had to write to Mrs. Avory to say that he was going away, and when in the solitude of his life at Hulworth he had time to sit down and wonder what she would think about it. He was not long left in doubt. A telegram came first, and then a letter. 'Dearest, dearest,' this ran, 'I cannot let you go away.' It was a horribly compromising letter, but it came from a poor little woman who had fought long odds, and who was often very tired, and who sat for the greater part of the day making blouses for which she was seldom paid. Mrs. Avory was not a strong woman, nor in any way a great-minded woman, but she was one who, in spite of weakness and a good deal of silliness, clung almost fiercely to the fact that she must be good, and who kept faithfully the promises she had made to a wholly unworthy person in the village church at home twelve years ago. Every word of the letter was an appeal to her dear, dear Nigel to stay in England and not leave her alone. She had so few friends and so little to look forward to except his Sunday visits. And then this poor tear-blotched letter which was neither very grammatical nor legibly written changed its tone suddenly, and Mrs. Avory said that perhaps it was better that he should go. Everything was very difficult, and it seemed that although his society was the one thing that she loved in the world, perhaps the fact of seeing him made things almost more difficult. Her husband, she heard, had been watching her movements lately; they said he wanted to marry some one else, so really and truly Nigel had better go, and if possible forget all about her for ever.

Toffy finished reading the letter and groaned. 'Was she never to have a good time!' he wondered, thinking of the dull room and the half-finished blouses upon the table, the economical gas jets in the fireplace in lieu of the glow of a bright fire, and the dingy paper on the walls. The whole thing was too hard on her, he thought, and everything in the world seemed to be against her.

Long ago, when he was little more than a boy, he had met Horace Avory and his wife in an out-of-the-way fishing village in Wales. Avory's treatment of the small timid woman had roused pity and resentment in Toffy's mind. A student of character would have seen directly that a woman with more power and strength of mind—a woman with a bit of the bully in herself—who could have taken the upper hand with the big red-faced tyrant, might have made a very fairly good imitation of a gentleman, and perhaps even of a good husband, of Avory. But his wife—timid, and all too gentle—could only wince under the things he said, or let her big eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping and contradictory criticisms on the whole of her sex, one man finding in her a proof that all women are angels, and the next discovering as certainly that all women are fools.

Presently Avory left the fishing village on the plea of business and went back to London, leaving his wife and child in the little hotel by the sea. There had followed a whole beautiful sunlit month of peace and quiet for Mrs. Avory, while her little girl played on the sands and she worked and read, or walked and fished with Nigel, and the colour came back to her cheeks, and the vague look of terror left her eyes. And Toffy determined that Mrs. Avory should have a good time for once.

The years between boyhood and manhood had been bridged over by a sense that some one needed his care, and that he was a protection to a little woman who was weak and unhappy. And, whether it was love or not, the thing was honourable and straightforward as an English boy can make it. And then one night by the late post had come a letter from Horace Avory of a kind particularly calculated to wound. Mrs. Avory brought it to Toffy to read out on the sands; and she broke down suddenly and sobbed as though her heart would break; and Toffy to comfort her had told her that he loved her, and meant every word he said, and asked what on earth he could do for her, and said that she must really try not to cry or it would make her ill. He put his arm round the trembling form,—and Mrs. Avory took his hand in hers and clung to it; and then, comforted, she had dried her eyes at last, and gone back to the little hotel again. Toffy saw the whole scene quite plainly before him now. The little whitewashed inn with the hill behind it, the moonlit water of the bay, and the tide coming rolling in across the wet sands. When they met on the following day he told her with boyish chivalry that he would wait for her for years if need were, and that some day they should be happy together.

That had all happened long ago now, and during the years between they had hoped quite openly and candidly that it would all come right some day, although hardly saying even to themselves that the coming right was dependent upon Horace Avory's death.

Meanwhile Mrs. Avory worked hard at her unremunerative tasks, and trimmed parasols and cut out blouses, and worked hopefully, because she knew that it would all come right some day, and because Nigel had said that he loved her. And Nigel wrote regularly to her, and always went to see her on Sunday when he was in London. And every night of his life of late he had dreamed of a girl dressed in rose colour, who had given him her photograph to put on his writing-table.

He read Mrs. Avory's letter again (she wrote probably the worst hand in Christendom), and when he had spelt the ill-formed words once more, he discovered that the blotched and scrawled writing contained a postscript which he had not at first noticed. 'After all, you had better not come here,' it said, 'but I will run down and see you to-morrow. It is far the best and wisest plan, and I must say good-bye. Please expect me by the three o'clock train.' The letter, as usual, had not been posted in time to reach him in the morning, and Toffy realized almost with a sense of disaster that to-morrow was now to-day, and that it was too late to write and expostulate or to suggest to Mrs. Avory how unwise her visit would be. There was nothing for it but to order the motor-car and go to the station to meet her, and afterwards to give her tea in the library, and say to her all the comforting and consoling things he could think of.

Mrs. Avory appeared more than usually worn and thin this afternoon; and her eyes, so ready to brim with tears, looked pathetically large in her sallow little face. She had been sitting up late for many nights to finish her work, and there had been 'bothers' in her little household which