Peter and Jane, Sarah Macnaughtan [read ebook pdf .txt] 📗

care for each other or not. Had I been Jane I would have sat in the arbour this morning, with a pretty, cool white dress on, reading poetry or some light romance, or working at my embroidery till my lover came, instead of being found covered with paint and with the footman's baize apron on.'

The two ladies moved closer to the window and watched the young man crossing the lawn. He was well-built and not many inches above Jane's own height; and perhaps when one has said that he was fair with that Saxon fairness which suggests an almost immaculate cleanliness, and looked like a gentleman, there is not much more to be stated about his external appearance.

Jane rose from her recumbent position on the turf and shook off some blades of short grass from her apron, and waved a brush filled with green paint in the air.

'Don't touch it, Peter!' she cried. 'Isn't it lovely?'

'Good morning, Jane,' said Peter, lifting his cap. Whatever else might be said of them, it would have to be admitted that there was a fundamental sense of courtesy and good-breeding underlying the regrettably frank manner of these young people. 'If you wave your brush about in that triumphant way you 'll splash me with green paint.'

'I have sacrificed two dresses already,' answered Jane; 'but real Art is worth that!'

'The hutch looks ripping,' said Peter; 'but I should feel safer if you would put down that brush.'

'I couldn't resist painting the inside,' said Jane, surveying her work ecstatically. 'Do you think the rabbits will lick on the paint and be sick, Peter?'

'Probably,' said Peter.

'Of course we don't know,' said Jane gravely, 'that it isn't their favourite food. Rabbits may flourish on green paint just as we flourish on roast mutton.'

'It would be beastly to have a green inside!' said Peter.

'I wonder what they are talking about,' said Miss Abingdon, glancing with an apprehensive eye from the drawing-room window. 'Perhaps, after all, they are making love to each other; and if they are, I certainly ought to go out and sit with them.'

Miss Abingdon had antiquated notions of a chaperon's duties.

'I suppose there would be no objection to the match if they do care for each other,' said Mrs. Wrottesley, in a manner that was often called brusque and had served to make her unpopular. 'Jane is rich——'

'Jane has money,' corrected Miss Abingdon, who saw a well-defined difference between the two statements. 'She is a ward in Chancery, you know, and she will not come of age until she is twenty-five. Peter, of course, has a very large fortune. Still, one would not like to be responsible for a marriage, even if it is suitable, and I should not like the Erskines to think I had not looked after Jane properly.'

That nothing should happen always seemed to Miss Abingdon the height of safety and of peace. She mistrusted events of any kind, and had probably remained single owing to her inability to make up her mind to such a momentous decision as is necessarily involved by matrimony. She had never been out of England, and now could seldom be got to leave home; whenever she quitted her own house something was sure to happen, and Miss Abingdon disapproved of happenings. She believed in the essential respectability of monotony, and loved routine. But alas for routine and respectability and a peaceful and serene existence! Even elderly ladies, who dress in black satin and pay their bills weekly, and whose most stimulating and exciting morning is the one spent in scolding the gardener, may be touched with sorrows for which they are not responsible, and shaken by tragedies such as they never dreamed would come near them.

The young couple on the lawn left the unfinished rabbit-hutch and paint-pots and strolled towards a garden-seat. All the gates and seats on Miss Abingdon's small property were painted white once a year, and their trim spotlessness gave an air of homely opulence to the place. The bench which her young relatives sought was placed beneath a beneficent cedar tree that stretched out long, kindly branches, and looked as though it were wrought of stitch-work in deep blue satin. Jane wiped her fingers upon the baize apron, and Peter lighted a cigarette.

'Have you seen Toffy's new motor-car yet?' he asked.

Had any one demanded of Peter or Jane what they meant by the art of conversation, they would probably have replied that it had something to do with Ollendorf's method.

'How 's Toffy going to afford a motor?' said Jane, with interest. 'Is it going to be "the cheapest thing in the end," like all Toffy's extravagances?'

Finance, one of the forbidden topics of 1850, was discussed to-day with a frankness which Miss Abingdon thought positively indelicate.

'He says he 'll save railway fares,' said Peter, 'and as they are the only thing for which Toffy has paid ready money for years, I suppose there is something to be said for the motor.'

'Is he going to drive it himself?'

'He says so, and the motor is to be run on the strictest lines of economy. I am not sure that he is not going to water the petrol to make it go farther.'

'I don't quite see Toffy steering anything,' said Jane, laughing with great enjoyment at the recollection of Toffy's mad riding; 'he can never take his horse through a gate without scraping his leg against it.'

'So Toffy generally goes over the gates,' said Peter, laughing also; 'and probably he 'll try the same sort of thing with the motor-car.'

'Toffy is an ass!' said Jane affectionately.

'I am sure it is time I should go and mount guard,' said Miss Abingdon anxiously, from her post by the window. 'Why should they sit together under the cedar tree like that unless they are making love?' She stepped out on to the lawn with a garden-hat placed above her cap and a sun-umbrella held over her head.

'Aunt Mary,' said Jane, 'Toffy's got a new motor! Isn't it fearfully exciting! We are going for a serpentine run with him, and our next-of-kin are going to divide Peter's and my insurance between them if we never come back again. Be sure you claim all you can get if I depart in pieces!'

Miss Abingdon laughed. She knew she was weak even where she disapproved of her niece. Jane never kept anything from her, and she would tell her aunt ridiculous items of sporting intelligence which were as Greek to that excellent lady, and would talk to her as to any other really good friend. Miss Abingdon was conscious of the charm of this treatment, but the disciplining of youth was important, and Jane required both training and guidance.

'I can't think why,' she said severely, 'you should call a young man Toffy. It is a name I should hardly liked to have called a dog when I was a girl.'

Peter raised his fair eyebrows and looked distressed. 'I don't see what else you could call a man named Christopherson,' he said. 'You couldn't call him Nigel—that's Toffy's front name—and I 'm afraid he hasn't got any other. I believe fathers and mothers think you must be going to die young when they give you a name like that, and that it will look well on a tombstone.'

'You shouldn't joke about death, Peter,' said Miss Abingdon. She felt almost as though she saw an ally approaching when she perceived the Reverend Canon Wrottesley come up the drive to call for his wife on the way to the vicarage. Miss Abingdon had long ago accepted with thankfulness St. Paul's recommendation to use the Church as a final court of appeal.

'How-do-you-do, Peter, how-do-you-do?' said the canon cordially, as Peter went across the lawn to meet him. 'Got leave again, have you? I don't believe you know what hard work is!' The vicar had pottered about a small parish for thirty years and had given his five sons an excellent education on the handsome fortune which his wife had brought him. This helped to convince him that he had borne the burden and heat of the day, and very naturally he regarded idleness as the root of all evil.

'Mrs. Wrottesley is looking over the guild work in the morning-room,' said Miss Abingdon conscientiously. She loved a chat with the vicar, and thought him more genial and charming when his wife was not present. 'Shall I tell her you are here?'

'She likes taking a look at the things the girls have made,' said the canon indulgently.

The Vicar of Culversham and Honorary Canon of Sedgwick-in-the-Marsh was a genial and delightful man. He always spoke kindly of his wife's work, and he could even pardon fussing on the part of a woman. He was a universal favourite and was no doubt aware of the fact, which gave him a very legitimate and wholly pardonable sense of pleasure. It is doubtful if any man was ever more happily placed than was Canon Wrottesley in the considerable village of which he was the esteemed vicar. In a larger place he might have been overlooked, in spite of his many excellent qualities; and in a smaller one he would not have had so many social advantages nor so many opportunities for usefulness. His vicarage was large and well-furnished, his sons were well-grown and well-educated, and he himself had many friends. The part of the country where he found himself was known to house-agents as being a good neighbourhood; and it was not so far away from London that the canon felt himself cut off from the intellectual life of his day. Canon Wrottesley belonged to the London Library and liked to converse on books, even when he had read only a portion of the volumes which he discussed. He often fingered them with true scholarly affection as they lay on his library table, and he discussed erudite points of learning with a light touch which his hearers, in a parish not renowned for its culture, found truly impressive. Even his vanity was of the refined and dignified order of things, and seemed to accord pleasantly with his handsome, clean-shaven, aristocratic features. Perhaps his one weakness was to be the centre of every group which he adorned. And he held this position skilfully, not only by a well-bred display of tact, such as he showed upon all occasions, but by a certain gift which he possessed of appearing in different roles at different times, according to his mood. Still, in spite of a tendency to a self-convincing form of masquerading, one is fain to admit that the village of Culversham would have lacked one of its most pleasing figures had Canon Wrottesley been removed from it. He bore an untarnished name, he had always a pleasant, if pompous greeting for every one, and he preached and lived like a gentleman. He was well-dressed and amiable, and his only display of temper or touchiness took the rather curious form of adopting some impersonation not in accordance with the circumstances in which for the moment he found himself.

Mrs. Wrottesley appeared from the house, still clad in her black mantle which had evidently not been removed while she looked over the guild work, for it bore traces thereof upon it in morsels of cotton and the fluff of unbleached calico.

'Come and sit beside me, love,' said her husband, indicating one of Miss Abingdon's garden-seats in close proximity to his own cushioned chair, 'and I will take care of you.'

Miss Abingdon smiled and looked admiringly at him. Conscience frequently protested against her giving way to the thought, but in her heart Miss Abingdon was convinced that Mrs. Wrottesley was not quite worthy of her husband.

'I think I must go back to the house and finish the guild work,' said Mrs. Wrottesley. 'I have been very slow over it this morning, but I have got a little headache, and I have been counting up everything wrong, which is very stupid of me.'

'How often have I told you not to work