"She sang very well," Jan owned honestly, "but when Fay was first engaged she and Hugo used to sing those songs to each other--it seemed all day long--and this afternoon I couldn"t bear it. It seemed such a sham somehow--so false and unreal, if it only led--to this."
"It"s real enough while it lasts, you know," Peter remarked in the detached, elderly tone he sometimes adopted. "That sort of thing"s all right for an episode, but it"s a bit too thin for marriage."
"But surely episodes often end in marriage?"
"Not that sort, and if they do it"s generally pretty disastrous. A woman who felt she was less than the dust and rust and weeds and all that rot wouldn"t be much good to a man who had to do his job, for she wouldn"t do hers, you know."
"Then you, too, think that"s the main thing--to do your job?"
"It seems to me it"s the only thing that justifies one"s existence.
Anyway, to try to do it decently."
"And you don"t think one ought to expect to be happy and have things go smoothly?"
"Well, they won"t always, you know, whether you expect it or not; but the job remains, so it"s just as well to make up your mind to it."
"I suppose," Jan said thoughtfully, "that"s a religion."
"It pans out as well as most," said Peter.
The days that had gone so slowly went quickly enough now. Jan had much to arrange and no word came from Hugo. She succeeded in getting the monthly bills from the cook, and paid them, and very timidly she asked Peter if she might pay the wages for the time his servants had waited upon them; but Peter was so huffy and cross she never dared to mention it again.
The night before they all sailed Peter dined with her, and, after dinner, took her for one last drive over Malabar Hill. The moon was full, and when they reached Ridge Road he stopped the car and they got out and stood on the cliff, looking over the city just as they had done on her first evening in Bombay.
Some scented tree was in bloom and the air was full of its soft fragrance.
For some minutes they stood in silence, then Jan broke it by asking: "Mr. Ledgard, could Hugo take the children from me?"
"He could, of course, legally--but I don"t for a minute imagine he will, for he couldn"t keep them. What about his people? Will they want to interfere?"
"I don"t think so; from the little he told us they are not very well off. They live in Guernsey. His father was something in salt, I think, out here. We"ve none of us seen them. They didn"t come to Fay"s wedding. I gather they are very strict in their views--both his father and mother--and there are two sisters. But Fay said Hugo hardly ever wrote--or heard from them."
"There"s just one thing you must face, Miss Ross," and Peter felt a brute as he looked at Jan pale and startled in the bright moonlight.
"Hugo Tancred might marry again."
"Oh, surely no one would marry him after all this!"
"Whoever did would probably know nothing of "all this." Remember Hugo Tancred has a way with women; he"s a fascinating chap when he likes, he"s good-looking and plausible, and always has an excellent reason for all his misfortunes. If he does marry again he"ll marry money, and _then_ he might demand the children."
"Perhaps she wouldn"t want them."
"We"ll hope not."
"And I can do nothing--nothing to make them safe?"
"I fear--nothing--only your best for them."
"I"ll do that," said Jan.
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the scented stillness of the night.
The shadows were black and sharp in the bright moonlight and the tom-toms throbbed in the city below.
"I wonder," Jan said presently, "if I shall ever be able to do anything for you, Mr. Ledgard. You have done everything for us out here."
"Would you really like to do something?" Peter asked eagerly. "I wouldn"t have mentioned it if you hadn"t said that just now. Would you write pretty often? You see, I"ve no people of my very own. Aunts and uncles and cousins don"t keep in touch with one out here. They"re kind, awfully kind when I go home on leave, but it takes a man"s own folk to remember to write every mail."
"I"ll write every mail," Jan promised eagerly, "and when you take your next leave, remember we expect you at Wren"s End."
"I"ll remember," said Peter, "and it may be sooner than you think."
They sailed next day. Jan had spent six weeks in Bombay, and the whole thing seemed a dream.
The voyage back was very different from the voyage out. The boat was crowded, and nearly all were Service people going home on leave. Jan found them very kind and friendly, and the children, with plenty of others to play with, were for the most part happy and good.
The journey across France was rather horrid. Little Fay was as obstreperous as Tony was disagreeably silent and aloof. Jan thanked heaven when the crowded train steamed into Charing Cross.
There, at the very door of their compartment, a girl was waiting. A girl so small, she might have been a child except for a certain decision and capability about everything she did. She seized Jan, kissed her hurriedly and announced that she had got a nice little furnished flat for them till they should go to the country, and that Hannah had tea ready; this young person, herself, helped to carry their smaller baggage to a taxi, packed them in, demanded Jan"s keys and announced that she would bring the luggage in another taxi. She gave the address to the man, and a written slip to Jan, and vanished to collect their cabin baggage.
It was all done so briskly and efficiently that it left Ayah and the children quite breathless, accustomed as they were to the leisurely methods of the East.
"Who is vat mem?" asked little Fay, as the taxi door was slammed by this energetic young person.
"Is she quite a mem?" suggested the accurate Tony. "Is she old enough or big enough?"
"Who is vat mem?" little Fay repeated.
"That," said Jan with considerable satisfaction in her voice, "is Meg."
CHAPTER IX
MEG
It was inevitable as the refrain of a _rondeau_ that when Jan said "that"s Meg" little Fay should demand "What nelse?"
Now there was a good deal of "nelse" about Meg, and she requires some explanation, going back several years.
Like most Scots, Anthony Ross had been faithful to his relations whether he felt affection for them or not; sometimes even when they had not a thought in common with him and he rather disliked them than otherwise.
And this was so in the case of one Amelia Ross, his first cousin, who was head-mistress of a flourishing and well-established school for "young ladies," in the Regent"s Park district.
She had been a head-mistress for many years, and was well over fifty when she married a meek, small, nothingly man who had what Thackeray calls "a little patent place." And it appeared that she added the husband to the school in much the same spirit as she would have increased the number of chairs in her dining-room, and with no more appreciable result in her life. On her marriage she became Mrs.
Ross-Morton, and Mr. Morton went in and out of the front door, breakfasted and dined at Ribston Hall, caught his bus at the North Gate and went daily to his meek little work. It is presumed that he lived on terms of affectionate intimacy with his wife, but no one who saw them together could have gathered this.
Now Anthony Ross disliked his cousin Amelia. He detested her school, which he considered was one of the worst examples of a bad old period.
He suspected her of being hard and grasping, he knew she was dull, and her husband bored him--not to tears, but to profanity. Yet since she was his cousin and a hard-working, upright woman, and since they had played together as children in Scotland and her father and mother had been kind to him then, he could never bring himself to drop Amelia. Not for worlds would he have allowed Jan or Fay to go to her school, but he did allow them, or rather he humbly entreated them, to visit it occasionally when invited to some function or other. Jan"s education after her mother"s death had been the thinnest sc.r.a.pe sandwiched between many household cares and much attendance upon her father"s whims. Fay was allowed cla.s.ses and visiting governesses, but their father could never bring himself to spare either of them to the regular discipline of school, and Cousin Amelia bewailed the desultory training of Anthony"s children.