Jenny turned round to the table and sat down.
Chapter VI
Mac and Alan only stayed for a bare twenty-four hours. Mac was two years down from Oxford and in process of becoming a barrister. Jenny was still not quite sure how this giddy height was to be attained, but she had very exciting visions of Mac scintillating with talent and good looks, sweeping all before him in some spectacular trial. This was when she wasn’t angry with him, when he charmed, and she let herself be charmed. It had not got very far. He had kissed her once when she had a tray in her hands and couldn’t stop him. She hadn’t wanted him to kiss her- not like that. She had very nearly dropped the tray, which she wouldn’t have been carrying if Carter hadn’t come over queer just as she was going to take it in. Mrs. Bolton, the cook, didn’t carry trays-she was very firm about that. And Mary, the house-parlour maid, who didn’t live in but came up from the village, certainly wasn’t going to do anything about it when it was her afternoon off and she was going with her young man to the pictures. Jenny had come out of the dark passage which led to the kitchen, and he had taken her by surprise. At the time it had just been fun, but when she remembered, it hurt. But then everything did hurt now. She didn’t want the touch-and-go game, the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow kind of thing that had been fun in the past. She wanted something she could lean on and trust. There had been Garsty for that, and now there wasn’t Garsty any more, and she wanted Garsty-oh, how she wanted Garsty!
She didn’t think a great deal about Alan. He was a boy, just down from Oxford. Quite a nice boy if he could get over being so afraid of his mother-and of Mac. He was very like his father to look at. She wasn’t so sure if he was really like him. She had been very fond of Colonel Forbes, and she had been aware of something in him which she missed in Alan. Colonel Forbes had not so much given way to his wife as stood out of her way. More and more as the years went on, he had avoided her, not in the way of offence or bad temper, but where their opinions differed-well, he made a point of not being there to be differed from. And more and more he had withdrawn into his library.
Jenny used to come in by the window and talk to him. He was a wonderful friend to have. He knew a tremendous lot about birds, and beasts, and all the country things. She loved him very much, and she had grieved terribly when he died. Alan was grieved too, but not Mac. And not Mrs. Forbes. “She doesn’t mind a bit. I know she doesn’t,” she had said to Garsty when they came home after the funeral. “Jenny, you shouldn’t say that-you can’t judge.” That was Garsty all over. She was so kind, even to the people who had no kindness in them-and you can’t go farther than that. She remembered her own outburst-“How can you say she minds, when she’s got her hair so beautifully done!” Well, it was a schoolgirl’s judgment, but when she looked back on it Jenny was quite sure that it had been a true one. When people are broken-hearted they may see that their hair is neat, but they don’t bother about whether it’s becoming.
She thought that Alan had cared-she hoped that he had. He was abroad when his father died, and she didn’t see him for three months. Mac didn’t care, or only just a little. But then Mac was different. Jenny didn’t explain to herself why she thought of Mac as different. That other sense which came from she didn’t know where stepped in and told her that he didn’t care. She believed that sense, but she didn’t analyse it. It lay under all her thoughts of Mac, but she didn’t often look that way.
She settled easily enough into the routine of the house. It wasn’t so very different from what she had been accustomed to. Until she left school she had bicycled the four miles into Camingford every morning and bicycled back at tea-time. After that she had spent her days at Alington helping to nurse Joyce when she was ill and teaching Meg. She didn’t want to do anything else. She was quite happy. She had been head girl at her school, but she didn’t want to go on to college. She was quite content to look after Meg and Joyce, and to see the boys at week-ends. That they came home much oftener than they used to did not strike her at all. She took it quite naturally. But now there was a change. Living in the house, things struck her that she hadn’t noticed before. Or perhaps “struck” is the wrong word. There was nothing as definite as that. It was just that, the strangeness having worn off a little, there was something left that hadn’t been there before. She couldn’t get nearer to it than that.
As the second Saturday came round, Meg and Joyce began to wonder openly whether Mac and Alan would come down for the week-end.
“They don’t ever come two weeks running,” said Meg.
“They did in the summer.”
“That was on a special occasion. I remember it quite well. It was for Anne Gillespie’s birthday party.”
“August’s a stupid time to have a birthday. Everyone’s away.”
“Mac and Alan weren’t away.”
“Perhaps that’s why she was born then.”
“When?”
“In August, stupid!” Joyce made a face and put out her tongue.
“I’m not,” said Meg with dignity. “And it’s very vulgar to make faces like that.”
“Who says it is?”
“Mother does.”
“Oh-”
Jenny thought it was time to interfere.
“Who’ll get to the elm tree first?” she said in a laughing voice, and the three of them raced away over the lawn to the big elm which creaked so horribly in winter, and which the gardener, old Jackson, always said was only biding its time. “Nasty trees, ellums,” he would say. “No one ought to have ’em in the garden. Churchyard trees, that’s what they are, and there they may bide for me. That ’ere tree ought to come down, miss. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it fifty times for sure.”
“Well, it’s no good saying it to me,” said Jenny.
Jackson looked at her. He remembered her mother. “Features her proper,” he thought, “but more of a way with her.”
It rained in the afternoon, so they didn’t go out. The little girls were going to have tea with their old nurse, Mrs. Crane, who lived with her daughter just on the other side of the village. They kept on going to the windows and looking out to see if it had stopped raining.
Mrs. Forbes came in and gave orders that they were not to go unless there was a reasonable probability of their getting there dry.
“It doesn’t matter so much about their coming back, but they must get there dry,” she said in her sharp, imperious way. “I shall be out in the opposite direction so I can’t take them-I’m going to the Raxalls. You’ll be going with the children of course.”
Jenny hesitated.
“Well, I thought if you didn’t mind I’d stay at home and let Carter go. She’s such friends with Nanny.”
“Oh, yes-I’d forgotten. Well, if they can get there dry they can go.”
She was gone again without waiting for an answer. It wasn’t her place to wait for answers. She gave an order and it was carried out, as she knew it would be when she gave it.
The rain was slackening off, when the door opened and Mac and Alan walked in. Meg and Joyce gave squeals of joy and flung themselves on them.
“Mother seems to be out, and we’ve come to tea.”
“We didn’t expect you this week,” said Jenny. Her colour had risen. She looked very pretty indeed.
Mac smiled at her. He might do worse. He might do much worse. She could have been a plain lump, and here she was, very far from being plain. Very, very far indeed.
Alan had the two little girls one in each arm and was swinging them. Mac leaned a little closer to Jenny and dropped his voice.
“Have you missed me, Jen?” he said softly.
“A little-perhaps-”
“Perhaps a lot?”
And with that there was a good resounding crash. Alan had tripped over a chair and was down with a tangle of shrieking, excited little girls. Jenny sprang to her feet.