Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

'I remember,' said Sir John, 'how struck my wife and I were, that year we met her in Spain, by her devotion to her son. It seemed to us to have almost a touch of tragedy in it; but that, of course, is now explained by hearing that she had just lost her only other child.'

'Poor Mrs. Ogilvie!' said Mrs. Wrottesley.

The words seemed incongruous. Mrs. Ogilvie, with her contempt for pity, her sumptuous manner of living and of dressing, was hardly an object for compassion; and Canon Wrottesley felt that his wife's commiseration was out of place, although he was far too kind to say so in public.

There was a lull suddenly in the noise of the race-course; the bookmakers' harsh shouts ceased, and even conversation stopped for a moment, for the last race had begun.

The last race was an interesting event. It was a steeplechase for gentleman riders only, and friends of the riders were standing up, with field-glasses to their eyes, watching with absorbed attention the horses, which were still a great distance off on the other side of the course. Jane was standing by Peter. Kitty Sherard was quite near; she was not looking through field-glasses as the others were doing, but stood leaning lightly on the balcony of the stand with her two hands clasped on the wooden rail in front of her.

'Can you see who is leading?' said Jane, and received no answer to her question, and then she saw that Miss Sherard was not looking at the racecourse at all. Her face was white, and her hands, which were clasped on the wooden rail before her, had a strained look about them, and showed patches of white where the slender fingers were tightly pressed on the delicate skin.

The last race involved some big fences, it is true; but then Kitty of all people in the world was the last to be afraid of a stiff course. It was not like her to keep her eyes turned away from the horses until some one quite close to her said, 'Well, they 're over the water-jump anyway,' when she suddenly raised her field-glasses, with hands that were trembling a little, and kept her eyes fixed on the race. It was going to be a close finish, most people thought, and as the horses came round the farther corner you could, as the saying goes, have spread a tablecloth over them. Toffy's horse closely hugged the rails and was kept well in hand; while, of the two in front of him, one was showing signs of the pace and the other had not much running left in him. These two soon tailed off, when the favourite (dark green and yellow hoops) came through the other horses and rode neck to neck with Toffy's. It became a race between these two, and it was evident that the finish was going to be a close one.

'Toffy's not fit to ride,' said the voice of a young man who would have liked Toffy to win the race, although he knew better than to back him. 'He is as mad as ten hatters to have ridden to-day.'

'His weight is right enough,' said another manly voice, with a laugh; 'it's extraordinary how a man of his height can ride so light. Christopherson 's a regular bag of bones.'

'I wish to goodness they wouldn't talk!' said Kitty suddenly under her breath.

The two horses came on neck to neck to the last fence but one.

'By gad, he knows how to ride!' went on the masculine voice, 'but Spinach-and-Eggs is on the better horse of the two.'

The ground was in splendid going condition and the two horses raced over it. They could see Christopherson's face now, and Toffy was smiling slightly, while the other man's teeth were firmly set. Their two stirrups clanged together as their horses rose to the rails and galloped on to the last fence.

And there, of course, Toffy's horse fell. It was not his fault; there was a bit of soft ground just where he landed, his horse blundered and fell, and the favourite rode past the winning-post, an easy winner.

The spectators in the grand stand could see Christopherson pick himself up a moment later and lead his horse home; but there was one moment, when the rider behind him took the last jump, in which for a fraction of time it seemed more than possible that he might land on the top of Sir Nigel. For a breathless space there was that dramatic silence which may be felt when a concourse of people literally hold their breath. Miss Abingdon covered her face for a moment, and Jane heard Peter say 'Good God!'

The next moment the danger was over, and Jane was surreptitiously handing Miss Sherard a handkerchief drenched in eau-de-Cologne, for Kitty had sat down suddenly and her face was white. She did not speak, but she looked up into Jane's face for a moment, and the look said as plainly as possible, 'I can't help it—don't tell any one.'

'It was a horribly near thing,' Jane said, in order to explain Kitty's pallor to herself, 'and I 'm afraid it has given you rather a turn.'

Miss Sherard's feeling of faintness was only momentary, and already the bright colour was in her cheeks again and she laughed and said, 'It was not the jump, really, Jane; but I am a horrible gambler, and I put my very last shilling on Toffy.'

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Ogilvie's ball, according to an old-established custom, followed closely on the race. The proximity of the two events had helped to gain for the quiet countryside the reputation of a gay neighbourhood. Country houses were filled with visitors, and the ballroom and the famous picture-gallery at Bowshott received an even larger number of guests than usual. There was something impressive in the great space and width of the ballroom, with its polished floor. The palm-houses had been emptied to form an avenue of green up the middle of the picture-gallery, at whose extreme end an altarpiece, representing a scene from the Book of Revelation, showed a company of the heavenly host as a background to a buffet-table crowded with refreshments. The constant movements and the brilliant lights provided a fitting air of gaiety to the scene. It was Mrs. Ogilvie's whim to have her rooms illuminated in a manner as nearly as possible to represent the effect of tempered sunlight. 'No woman cares to see,' she used to say, 'she wants to be seen.' And so the lights at Bowshott were always arranged in such a way that the beauty of women should be enhanced by them. Plain faces softened under the warm glow which had no hard shadows in it, and beautiful faces were lighted up in a manner that was almost extravagantly becoming.

'It is only on such an occasion as this,' said Miss Abingdon, 'that one really seems to think that Bowshott is put to its proper use.'

She was talking to a young man who called old furniture delicious and Spanish brocade sweetly pretty. 'The modern Englishman,' said Mr. Lawrence, 'was made to live in barracks or in a stable. Probably he is only in his right place when he is on a horse. Could any one but he live at Bowshott and dress in shabby shooting clothes, and smoke cigarettes in a room where Charles I. made love, and wear hobnailed boots to go up and down a grand staircase?'

Miss Abingdon sat on a convenient large couch, where a chaperon might close her eyes for a moment towards the end of a long evening without being accused of drowsiness. She was the recipient of many wise nods and hints and questions.

'How well they look together!' said a lady, as Peter Ogilvie and Jane came down the line of palms, and she left a blank at the end of her speech, to be filled in, if possible, by Miss Abingdon.

'Jane makes Peter look rather short,' said another.

'She should have chosen some one taller.'

'I suppose it really will be settled some day,' said Mr. Lawrence.

'They went for a ride this morning,' said Miss Abingdon dryly, 'and they were positively disappointed because Sir Nigel Christopherson could not go with them. I do not profess to understand love-affairs of the present day.'

Mr. Lawrence was a portly, red-faced young man, with a high-pitched voice. He throve on scandal, and gossiped like a housekeeper. Miss Abingdon liked and thoroughly approved him; his views were sound, his opinions orthodox, and he always took her in to supper at any dance where they met.

Mr. Lawrence's manner towards elderly ladies was a mixture of deference and familiarity which never failed to give satisfaction; he could even discuss Miss Abingdon's relatives with her without offence, and he gave advice on domestic matters. People in want of a cook or of a good housemaid generally wrote to Mr. Lawrence to ask if he knew of any one suitable for the post, and he recommended houses and health-resorts, and knew to a fraction what every one's income was. He was a useful member of society in a neighbourhood like that of Culversham, and was considered an interesting caller. It was his ambition to be first with every piece of intelligence, and he enjoyed telling news, even of a harassing description. Mr. Lawrence believed that Miss Abingdon's niece was already engaged to Peter Ogilvie, and he began by a series of deft questions to try to abstract the definite information that he required from her.

'Young people nowadays,' said Miss Abingdon, ascribing a riper age to Mr. Lawrence than he altogether approved—'young people nowadays think that everything that concerns themselves is what they call their own business. They talk as though they lived in some desert cave instead of in the midst of the world. I am on thorns sometimes when the servants are in the room; after all, a man may be only a footman, and yet is not necessarily a deaf-mute.'

Peter and Jane, meanwhile, had strolled into the picture-gallery, with its softly shaded lights and long vistas of flowering plants and palms. There was about them to-night something which seemed to set them apart. Few persons cared to disturb them, even by a greeting, as they sat side by side in the corridor or walked together down the long gallery. Jane Erskine had put off that air, which suited her so admirably, of seeming to be always under an open sky; she had left it behind with her short skirt and the motor-cap which she loved to pull down over her eyes. This evening in shimmering white satin, and with a string of pearls round her throat, she looked what she was—a very beautiful and very distinguished young woman. The tempered light of the room seemed to deepen the colour in her cheeks and to bring out the bright tints of her hair; her lips parted in a smile, and her eyes had radiance in them.

She and Peter mingled with the throng of dancers again, and then, not waiting until the music had finished, they left the ballroom by the farther door where Mrs. Ogilvie was standing.

Peter stopped when he saw her, and looked at her a little anxiously. 'You should not be standing, should you?' he said, in his kindly way; 'you look tired.'

Mrs. Ogilvie gave one of her enigmatic smiles. 'Who would not be tired?' she said. 'Was there ever such an extraordinary way of amusing oneself as to stand in a draughty doorway in the middle of the night, shaking hands with some hundreds of people whom one doesn't want to see!'

She sat down on a sofa and watched the two figures as they passed down the long corridor. The mechanical smile of welcome with which she had greeted half the county this evening had not died away from her face; she sat upright on the satin-covered sofa. There was about her an air of strength, of eminence almost, which seemed to place her genuine ugliness above criticism. Her dress was of some heavy purple stuff which few women would have had the courage to wear, and the diamonds in her hair, with their sharp points of radiating light, accentuated something that was magnificent and almost defiant about Mrs. Ogilvie to-night. Her short-sighted eyes contracted in their usual fashion as she watched the couple disappear down the vista of the corridor. 'If only it could be soon! If only their marriage could be soon!' she murmured to herself, her lips moving in an inward cry that in another woman might have been a prayer.

'How do you think she is looking?' said Peter, as, without conscious intention, he and Jane drifted away from the dancers into a more distant part of the house. 'Surely she gets tired too easily? I wish she would see a doctor; but she hates being fussed over, and one can never persuade her to take care of herself.'

'What is one to do with so wilful a woman?' said Jane.

They paused and looked at the dim crowd of dancers through one of the entrances to the ballroom, and passed down the corridor where misty figures sat on sofas and chairs enjoying the cool. Every one looked to them misty and far away to-night, almost as though they had not sufficiently materialized to be perfectly distinct.

With definite intention Peter led his partner towards a little room, hung with miniatures and plaques, at the farther end of the long corridor. Here they found Nigel Christopherson in conversation with Miss Sherard. Kitty was talking as lightly as usual, deliberately misunderstanding everything that was said to her, and being as provoking as she ever was; and Toffy was so much in earnest that he did not see Peter and Jane, but continued to talk to the girl beside him. So the two intruders never entered the room at all; but, as they pursued their way still farther, Peter was thinking about Mrs. Avory, and wishing to goodness that Toffy had never met her.

The big house seemed too full of people for his taste to-night. Every room and corridor was occupied, and Peter said, 'Let's go to my mother's sitting-room. Do you mind, Jane? We can get cool on the bridge.'

Bowshott is a very old house, so old that, if it had not been for archaeologists, who came there sometimes and read the grey stones as though they had been printed paper, no one would ever have known when the earliest part of it was built. Antiquaries agreed that it dated from Norman days; but the only portion of the building of that period which was standing now was a tower at the eastward end of the house. It had been almost in ruins at one time, but Colonel Ogilvie's father had restored it, and, with a considerable amount of skill, had connected it with the more modern part of the house by a stone bridge on a single arch. The whole thing was excellently contrived; the archway lent a frame to one of the most beautiful parts of the garden; and the tower, which was entered by a strong oak door from the bridge, now contained three curious, romantic-looking rooms, with quaint, uneven walls six feet thick, deep, narrow windows, and heavy oak ceilings. The largest of the rooms to which admittance was gained by the oak door was Mrs. Ogilvie's sitting-room. She had a curious love of being alone for hours at a time, and she enjoyed the sense of isolation which was afforded her by being cut off from the rest of the building by the stone bridge on its high arch. Here she would spend whole days by herself, reading or writing. Above this room, which was full of her own particular possessions, was a smaller apartment containing a valuable library of philosophical works. Here were muniment-chests, and the large writing-table where she wrote all the business letters relating to the estate; and here it was that she was wont to see her steward and her agent from time to time. No one but Mrs. Ogilvie and her son ever entered the room without some special reason, and it was too far away from the rest of the house for casual visitors to intrude themselves. The short passage, within the more modern house, which led to the bridge was reached by a door hung with a leather curtain securely arranged to prevent draughts, and no one ever lifted this curtain except those who had a right to the rooms beyond.

To-night, however, the house was open to all comers, and it afforded no surprise to Captain Ogilvie and his companion, when they had quitted the corridor and the reception-rooms, and had left the guests and servants behind them, to find a man's figure before them in the short passage leading to the leather-covered door.

'Who 's that, do you know?' said Peter, when they had passed under the curtain and were crossing the bridge.

'I have no idea,' said Jane; 'some stranger, I suppose, whom some one has brought.'

'They don't seem to be looking after him very well,' said Peter, 'leaving him to prowl about alone and get lost in a great barrack like this. I don't suppose I ought to have asked him if he wanted partners, or anything of that sort? Some one is sure to look after him.'

'Oh, sure to!' said Jane, and they passed over the bridge together and went into Mrs. Ogilvie's morning-room.

Having arrived there and secured two comfortable chairs, the power of speech seemed suddenly to have deserted two persons whose conversation was never brilliant, but who at least were seldom at a loss for anything to say. It appeared as though Peter Ogilvie had brought Miss Erskine to this distant room for no other purpose than to say to her, in an absent-minded way, 'Is every one enjoying themselves, do you think?'

'I think every one is quite happy,' said Jane, and added, with characteristic frankness, 'I know I am!'

Peter gave her a quick glance, turning his eyes full upon her for a moment as though to read something in the face beside him; then he began with absorbed attention to twist the silk string of his ball programme round and round his finger. The room where they sat was singularly unlike those rose-shaded bowers which are considered suitable to the needs of dancers who pause and rest in them. Its austere furnishing had something almost solemn and mysterious about it; and the stone walls hung with tapestry, on which quaint figures moved restlessly with the draught from an open window, would have given an eerie feeling to a man, for instance, sitting alone there at twelve o'clock at night. But in the gloom and austerity of the still and distant chamber sat Jane in white satin with pearls about her neck, and the room was illumined by her.

'So you are enjoying yourself,' said Peter at last—Peter who never made fatuous conversational remarks of this sort. The words, for no reason in themselves, fell oddly, and were followed by a silence which was disturbing and made for sudden self-consciousness wholly to be condemned, and to be banished, if possible, directly. Jane, who did not fidget aimlessly with things, began diligently to pluck a long white feather out of her fan, and said in a voice that was deliberately commonplace, 'We ought to go back now, oughtn't we? Let me see who your next partner is, Peter, that I may send you back to dance with her.' She stretched out her hand for the young man's programme.

But Peter sat absorbed, twisting its silk cord round his finger. 'Don't let's go yet,' he said, and the constrained silence fell between them again. 'I want to ask you something, Jane.'

'Yes,' said Jane. Her hands lay idle now in her lap, and she no longer tried to extract the white ostrich feather from her fan.

'I want to know if you think you can care for me a little?'

Probably when a man feels most deeply his utterances are the most commonplace, and an Englishman is proverbially incapable of expressing his feelings. In the supreme moments of their lives, it is true, a few men, and those not always the most sincere, may speak eloquently; but for the most part a proposal of marriage from an Englishman is—as it should be—a clumsy thing. Peter Ogilvie could only speak in such limited language as he always used. Yet the world seemed to stand still for him just then, for he knew that everything in his heaven or upon earth depended on what Jane's answer would be.

'Don't let me bother you,' he said at last, 'or rush you into giving an answer now if you would rather wait.'

Perhaps a declaration of love from an old comrade is the most dear as well as the most embarrassing of all such avowals. A heart which has already given itself in loyalty and affection to another finds that it is not a deepening of this loyalty and affection that is asked, but a complete re-ordering of things. The lover's petition, therefore, either comes to the woman as a revelation, betraying to her in a flash that she has loved always, and has merely been calling the thing by another name, or else it finds her impatient at the disturbance of an old comradeship, a cherished friendship, which nothing but this foolish, exacting thing called love could ever shake.

Peter was not versed in introspective questions or hair-splittings; he loved with his whole heart, and he had tried to say so without very much success. Just then he would have given anything he possessed to be endowed with a little more eloquence, though deep down in his heart he had a lingering hope that perhaps Jane would understand. 'It's neck or nothing,' he was saying to himself, in the homely jargon in which he usually formed his thoughts. 'God knows I may have been a fool to speak.'

'Peter,' began Jane shyly. And Peter ceased twisting the silk cord of the programme round his finger, and they turned and looked at each other.

'Is it true?' he said at last, with a queer kind of wonder in his voice.

'Let us go into the garden,' he said. His instincts remained primitive, and just then this room was too narrow for all he felt, and it seemed to him that the large things of the night and the distant glory of the stars were the only environment that he could bear.

Passers-by, had they been mean enough to pause and listen outside the sheltering yew-hedge near which they sat, might have questioned the poetry of their love-making, and have condemned an avowal of devotion punctuated by barbarous slang; but the silence that fell between them was full of tenderness and more easily understood than speech, and perhaps the moon—an inquisitive person at the best of times—as she peeped over the grey turrets of the house saw the dawn of a love as single-hearted and as genuine as many sentiments which have been more carefully analysed and described.

These were two happy, light-hearted persons, without very much to recommend them except a certain straightforwardness of vision which abhorred, as by a natural instinct, circuitous or crooked things, a transparent honesty, and a simple acceptance of those obligations which race and good-breeding demand.

At the present moment, out in the garden on the stone seat set in the embrasure of the high yew-hedge, they were oblivious of everything in the world except each other and the absorbing discovery of love.

They were the last to hear the cry of 'Fire!' which rang out from the house, and they were still sitting undisturbed while men ran with hose and buckets, and a clamour arose in the stable-yard for more water, and a clatter of horses' hoofs could be heard as a groom galloped off for the nearest fire-engine. The yew-hedged garden where they sat was distant a long way from the house, and it was not until a heavy cloud of smoke rose up against the sky that Peter's attention was attracted, and he realized that the Norman tower was on fire.

He started up and ran to the place where grooms and helpers, gardeners and strangers' coachmen, and waiters and guests were standing, with hose and buckets, pouring a ridiculous little stream of water against the burning pile. The fire had begun in the roof, and the smoke was pouring from the narrow windows in the tower. No flames had shot up yet, and the fire-engine from Sedgwick, prompt and well-served as it always was, might be here any minute. The oak roof would burn slowly and the walls were secure, but the tapestry in the lower room was dry and old, and would fire like a bundle of shavings. An effort was made by a body of men to force an entrance into the lower room and save what they could; but they were beaten back by the smoke which came in volumes down the turret staircase and by the flames which now began to shoot up here and there against the darkness of the night. There was nothing for it but to safeguard the main building. The wind was setting towards it from the tower, and a party of men were up on the roof treading out burning sparks and playing water where slates were hottest or ashes might burst into flames.

Mrs. Ogilvie stood on the terrace in her magnificent purple gown, her red hair with flashing diamonds in it, and her long-handled glasses held up to her near-sighted eyes.

'So that goes!' she said, shrugging her shoulders. 'Well, it will give me a good deal of trouble. Or is it fate, I wonder?'

Peter was directing a body of men to play water on the bridge; garden and stable hoses were turned full upon it by relays of helpers, and some long ladders were placed against the windows to see if it were possible in that way to effect an entrance and save some of the valuables in the room. The guests—women in light ball dresses and bare shoulders, and men in evening clothes—had surged out on to the terrace, and were watching with that curious mixture of fascination and regret which comes to the eyes of those who see destruction going on and know that they are powerless to prevent it. Every ear was strained to catch the first sound of the fire-engine on the road from Sedgwick, and some twenty or thirty couples, more impatient than the rest, had run to a distant knoll, from whence the road was visible, to peer through the darkness and to see if anything was coming. The stars shone serenely overhead, and the moon was turning the water in the fountains to cascades of silver, while from turret and roof the volumes of grey smoke belched forth, and the ineffectual fire appliances played upon the house.