Peter and Jane

Front matter

,* 4? *%. •>.

» « 9 *

< v* cr 0

Chapter I

Mrs. Ogievie, red-haired according to the exact shade then in fashion, and dressed by Paquin, sat in her drawing-room reading the Court Journal. She thought on the lines of Aristotle, despised most women except Charlotte Corday, Judith, Joan of Arc and a few others, and she dyed her hair and read the Court Journal. People who did not know her sometimes alluded to her as an over-dressed woman with a wig. Those who had met her, even but once, admitted the power of her personality. Perhaps if anyone had known her very well he or she would have been bewildered by the many-sided complexities of her character, and would have failed to discover any sort of unity behind its bewildering differences. But then as a matter of fact no one did know her well.

Those who cared to remember such an old story used to tell how as a girl of eighteen she had been deeply in love with a cousin of hers, Greville Monsen by name, and how, almost on the eve of her marriage, she had thrown him over and had married Colonel Ogilvie, the explorer; a man twenty years older than herself with an enormous fortune, who was something of a hero just then in London Society.

Colonel Ogilvie married late in life, and his brother’s wife had long ago decided that it would have 1 been better if he had never married at all. Mrs. Lionel Ogilvie was an ambitious woman with a fine family of sons and daughters to whom Colonel Ogilvie’s large estates and immense fortune would have been wholly appropriate. She had always been civil to her brother-in-law, although the estates and the money were entailed upon his brother, and she weighed the disinterested affection which she showed him in the balance against her feeling of satisfaction in that fact that he was a daring and indefatigable traveller; one moreover who was seldom quite happy unless he was in danger, and who never really enjoyed a journey if any other white man had trodden the ground before he himself visited it.

Mrs. Lionel Ogilvie was indignant at the news of Colonel Ogilvie’s marriage. Being a very wise woman she would probably in time have controlled her temper, and by a little judicious management might have secured a considerable fortune for herself and her children. But alas! there was a necessity within her of “ exploding 99 to someone when, as at this instance her heart was hot and her head was not quite cool. And so, venting her spleen with some sense of justice upon the cause of it, Mrs. Lionel Ogilvie said certain very unwise and unkind things about her brother-in-law’s fiancee and her cousin Greville Monsen. Of course the heated and uncontrolled words of the disappointed woman were repeated, and there was a terrible and stormy interview between the two brothers, who parted that same day and never spoke to each other again. Mrs. Francis Ogilvie, the Colonel’s wife, bore the character then which she continued to bear all her life of being a cold and dispassionate woman. And this was the most remarkable because on the distaff side she was of Spanish descent, and might reasonably have been supposed to have inherited the instincts of that passionate and hot-tempered nation. She never quarrelled, and she never met and had the matter out with Mrs. Lionel Ogilvie, as the brothers had done, but her eyes narrowed for a moment with a trick that was characteristic of her when the tale was repeated to her. And when in the quieter moments that followed Colonel Ogilvie’s first hours of real anger against his brother’s wife, he spoke with a certain honest blundering manliness to his bride, wondering with a tone of question in his voice, if Lionel and that odious wife of his could possible expect to be forgiven, Mrs. Ogilvie raised her eyebrows and said simply, “ I do not know what forgiveness means.” And that ended the matter.

When Lionel died the feud might have ended had it not been for the lamentable fact that his eldest son, who had grown up into a faithful likeness of his worldly and commonplace mother, took it into his head at the time of his father’s death to write a letter to his uncle, which showed as much greed as ill-breeding. The foolish young man’s letter might have been put into the fire and forgotten, for Colonel Ogilvie had loved his brother long ago, and his death was making his heart tender. But young Lionel made a mistake when he referred to the fact that Colonel and Mrs. Ogilvie were childless, and alluded to his own prospects. This, to use a hackneyed expression, “ finished ” young Lionel with his uncle forever. And Mrs. Ogilvie drew her lips together, and just for one moment locked her hands with an impulsive movement that had a whole life’s tragedy and disappointment in it. It was all the world to her and her husband that they should have children, but a little girl who had died when she was born had been the only child of the marriage.

As the years came and went Colonel Ogilvie lost interest in his property, and handed over the care of the greater part of it to agents and stewards, and came very near to hating the lands which some day would go to his nephew. A queer restlessness was upon him, and his wife watched him and said nothing. Until one day, seeing him reading a certain paragraph in a newspaper, she said to him smiling slightly as they stood together on the broad stone terrace at Bowshott:

“ Why don’t you go with them on this exploring expedition ? ”

Colonel Ogilvie protested; he was a married man, he said, and his travelling days were over. It is probable, however, that never was a suggestion more welcome to him. The past years, in spite of his deep love for his wife, had been full of fret and shadowed by disappointment, and he longed, with a traveller’s intensity of longing for the wild untroubled places of the world, the primitive life, and if possible some dangers on the road. The exploring party sent out by the British government to discover a lost missionary and to punish a warlike tribe was exactly the thing to suit his adventurous disposition. In spirit he was already in the dangerous places of Central Africa, far from human habitation, and with his right hand very often the only thing between him and a barbarous death. Even while he protested with conscientious emphasis against his wife’s proposal, he already saw the dim forests of Africa, the line of bearers on the difficult march, the tents struck at nightfall, and all the paraphernalia of an interested campaign. . . .

He was away for eighteen months, beyond the reach of letters and telegrams for the greater part of the time; and during his absence Mrs. Ogilvie, whose health had been feeble for some time, went to her native land of Spain for warmth and sunshine, travelling by sea to Lisbon for the sake of the voyage. From her Spanish mother she had inherited a property at Granada, and it was from there that she was able to write and tell her husband that she was the mother of a son. Colonel Ogilvie was in an inaccessible region when that happened, and it was not until he was on his return journey home that he heard the good news. Two years later another child, Peter, was bom, and ardently as her first born had been desired, Mrs. Ogilvie showered by far the greater part of her affection upon the younger child. Everything had to give way to Peter, and she resented that even such baby privileges as a child of tender years can receive were bestowed upon the elder son and heir. Her health gave cause for anxiety for some time after Peter was born, and her mental state and the condition of her nerves accounted perhaps for the almost passionate partiality which she showed for her younger child. There were great doctors down at Bowshott in those days who prescribed for Mrs. Ogilvie, and told the Colonel hopefully that this distorted affection was not unusual in a nervous patient, and that with returning health his wife would be perfectly normal in her maternal love.

The Colonel, however, was always a little jealous for the fair-haired boy who had come to his mother while he was far away; and by his will, which he made at this time, he secured an almost extravagant provision for Edward, the elder son. Colonel Ogilvie could almost forgive his nephews now for their obtrusive existence in the world, and he settled down to enjoy his property with the happy knowledge that he had two fine sturdy boys to whom to leave it. He was still in the prime of life, and not all the dangers and privations which he had undergone seemed to have undermined his splendid constitution. But a drive home in an open dog-cart, after speaking in an overheated hall at a political meeting, brought on a chill and pneumonia of which very suddenly he died. His loss was sincerely and deeply regretted in a neighbourhood where he was both admired and loved for his many good qualities; and a monument in Caversham parish church tells of his excellence as a landlord and his intrepid courage as an explorer.

Mrs. Ogilvie’s health still being precarious she went abroad for the winter after her husband’s death, to look into some matters concerning her own property, and to try and court health in the sunny vinegrowing country. And there in a little remote Spanish village by the sea which she loved to visit, little Edward Ogilvie, the elder of the two children, died; and not until six years later did Mrs. Ogilvie return to England. To all outward seeming she was as emotionless and reserved as she had ever been, and she spoke no word of her double sorrow and her irreparable loss. Her love for her remaining child never showed itself in caresses, and was not even discernible in her speech, but in spite of her reserve there was an undefined feeling in most people’s minds that Mrs. Ogilvie idolised her son. Of the two who were dead no one ever heard her speak. Whatever she thought of them seemed to be buried in her heart as deeply as though that heart had been their graves. And there remained only cheery popular Ogilvie, with his mind as open as the day, and not a secret upon his soul and with as much reserve as a schoolboy, to inherit the fortune which a prince might have envied, and a property which was a show place in a county rich in beautiful houses.

The gardens of Bowshott were the admiration of the countryside, and Mrs. Ogilvie rarely entered them. The picture gallery was visited by foreigners from every part of the world; Mrs. Ogilvie frequently showed the works of the great masters herself, strolling along the polished floor of the gallery in dresses which Marie Antoinette might have worn, and telling the story of this picture and that with the inimitable grace of manner which was vaguely resented by her country neighbours, and delighted the distinguished foreigners who came to see the pictures. She herself hardly ever glanced at the Old Masters for her own pleasure; and although full of technical knowledge on the subject she had no love of art. It used to weary her when she had to listen to enthusiasm, generally only half sincere, about her Botticellis, Velasquezes or Raphaels. Music never stirred her, and she regarded the society of the country neighbourhood where she lived with a sense of uncomprehension, which she sometimes found difficult of concealment. “ Why were such people born ? ” she used to say to herself at the sight of some rural gathering. On the rare occasions when she went to a party she was always the first to leave — boredom seemed to overtake her before she had been anywhere very long. Entertainments, so called, were horribly wearisome to her, and she never for an instant believed them when people professed to have enjoyed a pleasant party. Parties were all stupid, she thought; just as most people were stupid, and most food was badly cooked. Therefore, why meet in somebody else’s most probable hideous room, and eat impossible dishes and talk to impossible people? Her own chef had been famous, even in Paris, and every evening it was the custom of the house to prepare an extravagant menu , at which, when she was alone she hardly glanced.

Mrs. Ogilvie discussed all things in Heaven or earth with a baffling lightness ; turned philosophy into a clever jest, and made a sort of slang of classical terminology. Amongst a clever set in London she reigned supreme when she chose; but a false note or pose offended her immediately, and the poseur, or the insincere person, would generally receive one of her exquisite snubs which cut like acid into tender skins. The pretentiousness of the so-called cultured set was a vulgarism in the eyes of this woman who could be rude with the airs of a princess, and could give a snub as some people offer a compliment. Inferior people sometimes wondered how she had a friend left. To be popular, they argued, one had to be civil, whereas Mrs. Ogilvie was often daringly disagreeable. There was, indeed, something almost fine in her splendid disdain of the persistent civility of the so-called popular person. She could wound; but she did it with the grace of a duellist of old days, who would wipe his rapier with a handkerchief of cambric and lace when he had killed his opponent, and would probably expect a man to die as he himself would die, with a jest on his lips and a light laugh at the flowing blood. Mrs. Ogilvie slew exquisitely, and she never hated her opponent.

She smiled at enthusiasm and thought it bizarre and rather delightful; but towards vulgarity, especially in its pompous form, she presented her poignard point, sharply tipped and deadly. “ Why should people take themselves seriously? 99 she would say with a shrug of her shoulders. “ Surely we are a common enough species ! 99 And then the green-grey eyes would narrow themselves in their short-sighted way, and Mrs. Ogilvie’s voice, charmingly refined and well-bred with a few words would lightly prick the falsely sentimental and self-inflated wind-bag of oratory that had presented its unprotected surface to her shaft.

Towards religion her attitude was the well-bred one. She took off her hat to it, as a gentleman removes his hat in church, whatever his creed may be. Her own beliefs were as daring and as nearly as possible uninfluenced by outward opinion or by the accepted system as it is possible for a creed to be. She never tried to force her theories upon anyone else; possibly she did not believe in them herself sufficiently to wish to do so ; but like her queer gowns and her dyed red hair her creed suited Mrs. Ogilvie. There was a congruous incongruity about her which set many people puzzling to find out her real character. Pompous persons and snobs detested her. Stupid or vapid people saw nothing in her — or saw merely that she dyed her hair and was dressed by Paquin. Narrow-minded people disapproved of her, and clever people considered her one of the most striking, if not the most agreeable of the personalities of the day. Women hardly ever understood her; but they respected anyone who dressed as well as she did, and they had an undeclared admiration for a woman who could hold so lightly the possessions which they believed to be all-important, and which Mrs. Ogilvie seemed to find so trivial.

But Mrs. Ogilvie was a power, and that without any effort of her own; and she attracted even where she provoked. No one had more enemies than she, but she could obtain worship for herself by merely holding up her little finger, and it sometimes suited her purpose to make the required signal to the most unlikely persons. The indifferent attitude was impossible towards Mrs. Ogilvie. Her country neighbours respected her, as they respected her picture gallery and her magnificent jewels, and her world renowned collection of art treasures, and they regarded her in some sort, as a splendid appendage to a country house of which the whole neighbourhood was proud.

The house and its gardens were open once a week to visitors, and the country neighbours brought their guests and strangers to see it — their pleasure in showing off Mrs. Ogilvie’s possessions being somewhat tempered by timidity; while those who came to pay a call on the chance of finding her at home would sometimes say with an air of courage and independence to a friend, “ Mrs. Ogilvie is considered rather alarming, you know, but it really is only her manner.” She played her part as country neighbour conscientiously. Once a year she gave a sumptuous garden party — all other garden parties in the neighbourhood being dated by it. And when Peter was a little boy there were children asked to the house to play games with him, and later there were dances and balls.

Peter accepted his mother, his property, and his position, on what he himself would probably have called their most cheery side. He valued Bowshott because there was excellent hunting to be got there ; just as he loved his place in Scotland because of the deer-stalking, and the fishing and the shooting, but that they were magnificent or enviable never entered his head. Fate had dealt very kindly with him, and its kindliness had provoked a charming geniality in the character of the young man whom it had treated with such lavish good fortune. Taking it all round Peter considered this world an excellent one, and most of the people in it very good sorts indeed. He accepted his mother as he accepted everything else, with a simple-heartedness which never looked below the surface nor concerned itself with motives ; and if anyone had suggested to him that she was inexplicable he would have considered such a judgment very foolish, and quite unintelligible. He enjoyed a visit to her more than almost anything else in the world. She had always been devoted to him ever since he was a boy, and for the life of him he could not see that she was difficult to understand.

It was the fashion to say that Mrs. Ogilvie had altered greatly since the death of Colonel Ogilvie and the little boy. People who remembered all the circumstances of that sad time thought always that in her own way Mrs. Ogilvie was the victim of remorse for not having loved her dead child better. But after all there was nothing that a child of three or four years old could have felt seriously in his mother’s conduct, and his father’s affection must have consoled him for any coldness on her part. After the Colonel’s death there were those who said it would have been better if Mrs. Ogilvie had married again or even if she had had a daughter — someone who would have been always at home, and who, to use the usual phrase — might have taken Mrs. Ogilvie out of herself. Peter was too much away from home to be a real companion to his mother, and there were never guests at Bowshott unless he was there. It would surely have been in reason if the widow had taken a fancy to some nice girl and had had her live in the house. But Mrs. Ogilvie did not take fancies to nice girls. She loved Jane Erskine, but disguised the feeling under a sort of whimsical indifference. And the friendship seemed incongruous enough if one came to think of

14* it. Jane, with her wholesome love of out-door life, her fresh beauty, her heedlessness of learning and ignorance of books — what had Jane in common with Mrs. Ogilvie in her Parisian gowns and with her dyed hair, sitting in the vast drawing-room at Bowshott reading the Court Journal and thinking on the lines of the speculative philosophers?

And even to Jane Erskine her manner was cold. Her chilling philosophy would soon have quenched a less happy and impulsive nature. No one but Jane would have bothered her head about Mrs. Ogilvie, the kindly neighbours said — envying, nevertheless, the girl’s intimacy at the great house. But as a matter of fact, Jane expended a wealth of honest affection on Mrs. Ogilvie, and not only thought her the cleverest woman she had ever met, and had even been heard to affirm that her hair was not dyed. She called her “ such a really good sort,” and the words were as inappropriate as the words of Peter Ogilvie and Jane Erskine usually were.

Chapter II

Jane Erskine was at this present time at that interesting period when her friends and relatives, having just discovered the unexpected fact that she was grown up, subjected her to mildly severe criticism, while believing that to have reached womanhood at all showed a considerable amount of talent and good taste on her part. They were, they said, under no misapprehension about Jane; in moments of extreme candour touched with responsibility they had even been known to say that in one or two respects she was not absolutely perfect. Miss Abingdon, for instance, who always conscientiously encouraged these moods, and censured the General for spoiling Jane, would frequently compare her niece with herself, as she remembered that dim figure of girlhood, and never failed to find cause for unfavourable comparison between the two. From the portraits which she drew of herself it was generally believed that Miss Abingdon must have been bom rather a straight-laced spinster of thirty, and have increased in years until her hair was touched with grey ; when she would seem to have become the mellow^ severe, dignified, loving and critical lady who at this moment was looking out of her drawing-room window and trying to show her impartiality for 15 her orphan niece by subjecting her to lawful and unbiassed criticism.

“ The day of the incomprehensible woman is past and gone,” said Miss Abingdon, and she looked out of the window and sighed a little.

Jane Erskine was painting a rabbit hutch on the lawn. Miss Erskine’s attitude showed the keen workman, but disguised the woman of grace. Miss Erskine, in fact, was lying full length on the greensward of her aunt’s lawn absorbed in the engrossing occupation of putting the right dabs of green paint upon a portion of the inside of the rabbit hutch which was awkward to get at.

“ They are all alike,” sighed Miss Abingdon. She alluded to the girlhood of the present day as it presented itself to her regretful and disapproving eye. “ They wear shoes two sizes too large for them, and they don’t require to be taken care of, and they buy their own horses and they are never ill. They call young men by their Christian names ! I don’t think they even have headaches.” Miss Abingdon sighed again over this lost art of womanhood. “There is my niece, Jane Erskine; she might be a graceful and elegant young woman, whereas, she is sunburned, and — it is a dreadful word of course — but I can only call her leggy; perhaps it is the fault of those narrow skirts. Women have never been so much respected since crinolines went out of fashion. I believe the independence of the modern girl is no longer assumed; it is not even a regrettable passing fashion ; the time has come when I am afraid they really are independent. Jane would think me insane if I were to go out and sit with her in the garden when Peter comes to call; and I don’t believe she has ever done a piece of fancy work in her life!” said Miss Abingdon.

She looked round her pretty drawing-room, in which with a spinster’s instinct for preserving old family treasures, she had gathered and garnered antique pieces of furniture, ill-drawn family portraits, and chairs covered with the worsted work and bead work of fifty or sixty years ago. She looked regretfully at the piano and the old neatly bound folios of music with »“ M. A.” upon the covers, and she wondered how it was that no one cared to hear her “ pieces ” now. She went over to the music stand and fingered them in a contemplative way. How industriously she used to practise “ Woodland Warblings,” <e My Pretty Bird,” “ La Sympathie, Valse sentimentale pour le piano,” and “ Quant’ e piu bella ” — fingered and arranged with variations.

On Sunday afternoons when her guests “ were having a look at the mokes ” Miss Abingdon still played through her book of Sacred Pieces; and it was on Sunday afternoons, too, that she always stirred the jars of potpourri upon the cabinets, so that their pungent faint odour might exhale through the room. The old pieces of music and the scent of the dried rose leaves together always brought back to Miss Abingdon’s mind fragrant memories of long ago.

“We used to take a roll of music with us when we were asked out to dinner,” she reflected ; “ and it was all-important to us who should turn over our leaves for us, and we generally blushed and hesitated before we sat down to the piano at all. Last night Jane almost fought with Peter for the larger portion of the key-board of the piano; and they played music without any tune in it, to my way of thinking, and there is no seriousness at all about any of them.

“ I wonder if they — ” Miss Abingdon again referred to that distressing body of young women of the present day — “ I wonder if they have ever kissed a lover’s letter, or have slept with his picture underneath their pillows at night? Or have they ever lain sleepless for an hour because of a loved one’s absence, or because of a cold word from him? Do they write verses, or exchange valentines, or even give each other flowers ? ”

Miss Abingdon recalled in her own mind the days when she and her sister used to walk together in the Park, with Mamma leaning upon Papa’s arm and pacing sedately behind; and how when they used to sit down on one of the lawns it had always been in a group of four. Ah! those were the days when one went home and wept because the dear one, the handsome hero who filled half a girl’s thoughts, and was the object of more than half her worship, had not seen one across the crowd; or he had seen, perhaps, but girlish modest eyes were forbidden to give the signal of approach. It was more maidenly to be oblivious of a young man’s presence then. “ Now,” said Miss Abingdon, “ when they see a young man whom they know — a pal, I believe they call him — girls will wave their parasols or even shout. I have known them rise from their own chairs and go and speak to a man. The whole thing is extraordinary to me.”

It was a relief to Miss Abingdon’s sombre reflections when her friend, the vicar’s wife, came in for a morning call. She thought that Mrs. Wrottesley’s brown merino dress and bonnet and constraining mantle, which rendered all movements of the arms impossible, looked very decorous and womanly compared with the soles of a pair of brown leather shoes, and the fore-shortened figure of five feet eight of slender young womanhood stretched in strenuous devotion to her strange occupation on the lawn.

When Mrs. Wrottesley seated herself opposite the window, Miss Abingdon resisted an impulse to pull down the blind.

“ Yesterday,” said Miss Abingdon glancing at her niece, “ she was trying to copy a feat which she had seen at the hippodrome, and was riding one pony and driving another tandem in front of her over some hurdles in the field.”

Mrs. Wrottesley smiled with the rather provoking indulgence with which our friends regarded the foibles of our relations.

44 She is young/’ said Mrs. Wrottesley, 44 and she is very beautiful.”

44 No,” said Miss Abingdon with inward pride at her own unwavering impartiality ; 44 1 honestly believe that if we were to consider Jane without prejudice we should find that she is simply healthy.”

44 It is a great charm,” said Mrs. Wrottesley.

44 No, no,” corrected Miss Abingdon quickly, 44 the charm of womanhood consists in its mysteriousness. Now the girl of to-day is simply a good fellow; she is a boy in petticoats. She doesn’t require to be understood, and she doesn’t drive men crazy; she shoves her own bicycle up hills, and fights for the larger half of the key-board of the piano.” She sighed again.

44 She is a moral influence,” said Mrs. Wrottesley.

Mrs. Wrottesley also alluded to the girl of the period; and Miss Abingdon thought to refer to her as 44 she ” or a type, instead of 44 they ” had a flavour of culture about it, but she was slightly embarrassed by it.

44 Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, her love of contradicting Mrs. Wrottesley inclined her to undue severity, 44 she is as straight as any other good fellow, and she pays up if she has lost at bridge, and would as soon think of picking a pocket as of cheatin g at croquet; but she is not mysterious, she is absolutely comprehensible.”