Jan and Her Job Part 20

In spite of her pa.s.sion for fresh air, Jan s.h.i.+vered herself as she undressed. She made a somewhat hasty toilet, said her prayers, peeped round the screen to see that Tony was all right, and hopped into bed, where a hot-water bottle put in by the thoughtful Hannah was most comforting.

Presently she heard a faint, attenuated sniff. Again it came, this time accompanied by the ghost of something like a groan.

Jan sat up in bed and listened. Immediately all was perfectly still.

She lay down again, and again came that sad little sniff, and undoubtedly it was from behind the screen that it came.

Had Tony got cold?

Jan leapt out of bed, switched on the light and tore away the screen from around his bed.

Yes; his doleful little face was tear-stained.

"Tony, Tony darling, what is the matter?"

"I don't know," he sobbed. "I feel so funny."

Jan put her hand on his forehead--far from being hot, the little face was stone-cold. In a moment she had him out of bed and in her warm arms.

As she took him she felt the chill of the stiff, unyielding small body.

"My precious boy, you're cold as charity! Why didn't you call me long ago? Why didn't you tell Auntie Jan?"

"I didn't ... know ... what it was," he sobbed.

In no time Tony was put into the big bed, the bed so warm from Auntie Jan's body, with a lovely podgy magic something at his feet that radiated heat. Auntie Jan slammed down the window at the bottom, and then more fairness! She struck a match, there was a curious sort of "plop," and a little fire started in the grate, an amazing little fire that grew redder and redder every minute. Auntie Jan put on a blue dressing-gown over the long white garment that she wore, and bustled about. Tony decided that he "liked to look at her" in this blue robe, with her hair in a great rope hanging down. She was very quick; she fetched a little saucepan and he heard talking in the pa.s.sage outside, but no one else came in, only Auntie Jan.

Presently she gave him milk, warm and sweet, in a blue cup. He drank it and began to feel much happier, drowsy too, and contented. Presently there was no light save the red glow of the fairy fire, and Auntie Jan got into bed beside him.

She put her arm about him and drew him so that his head rested against her warm shoulder. He did not repulse her, he did not speak, but lay stiff and straight with his feet glued against that genial podgy something that was so infinitely comforting.

"You are kind," Tony said suddenly. "I believe you."

The stiff little body relaxed and lay against hers in confiding abandonment, and soon he was sound asleep.

What a curious thing to say! Jan lay awake puzzling. Tragedy lay behind it. Only five years old, and yet, to Tony, belief was a more important thing than love. She thought of Fay, hectic and haggard, and again she seemed to hear her say in her tired voice, trying to explain Tony: "He's not a cuddly child; he's queer and reserved and silent, but if he once trusts you it's for always; he'll love you then and never change."

Jan could just see, in the red glow from the fire, the little head that lay so confidingly against her shoulder, the wide forehead, the peacefully closed eyes. And suddenly she realised that the elusive resemblance to somebody that had always evaded her was a likeness to that face she saw in the gla.s.s every time she did her hair. She kissed him very softly, praying the while that she might never fail him; that he might always have reason to trust her.

CHAPTER XI

THE STATE OF PETER

Meanwhile Peter was making discoveries about himself. He went back to his flat on the evening of the day Jan and the children sailed. Swept and garnished and exceedingly tidy, it appeared to have grown larger during his absence and seemed rather empty. There was a sense of unfilled s.p.a.ces that caused him to feel lonely.

That very evening he decided he must get a friend to chum with him. The bungalow was much too big for one person.

This had never struck him before.

In spite of their excessive neatness there remained traces of Jan and the children in the rooms. The flowers on the dinner-table proclaimed that they had been arranged by another hand than Lalkhan's. He was certain of that without Lalkhan's a.s.surance that the Miss-Sahib had done them herself before she sailed that very morning.

When he went to his desk after dinner--never before or after did Peter possess such an orderly bureau--he found a letter lying on the blotting-pad, and on each side of the heavy bra.s.s inkstand were placed a leaden member of a camel-corps and an India-rubber ball with a face painted upon it, which, when squeezed, expressed every variety of emotion. These, Lalkhan explained, were parting gifts from the young sahib and little Fay respectively, and had been so arranged by them just before they sailed.

The day before Jan had told the children that all this time they had been living in Peter's house and that she was sure Mummy would want them to be very grateful (she was careful to talk a great deal about Mummy to the children lest they should forget her); that he had been very kind to them all, and she asked if there was anything of their very own they would like to leave for Peter as a remembrance.

Tony instantly fetched the camel-corps soldier that kept guard on a chair by his cot every night; that Ayah had not been permitted to pack because it must accompany him on the voyage. It was, Jan knew, his most precious possession, and she a.s.sured him that Peter would be particularly gratified by such a gift.

Not to be outdone by her brother, little Fay demanded her beloved ball, which was already packed for the voyage in Jan's suit-case.

Peter sat at his desk staring at the absurd little toys with very kind eyes. He understood. Then he opened Jan's letter and read it through quite a number of times.

"Dear Mr. Ledgard," it ran.

"Whatever Mr. Kipling may say of the Celt, the lowland Scot finds it very difficult to express strong feeling in words. If I had tried to tell you, face to face, how sensible I am of your kindness and consideration for us during the last sad weeks--I should have cried. You would have been desperately uncomfortable and I--miserably ashamed of myself. So I can only try to write something of my grat.i.tude.

"We have been your guests so long and your hospitality has been so untiring in circ.u.mstances sad and strange enough to try the patience of the kindest host, that I simply cannot express my sense of obligation; an obligation in no wise burdensome because you have always contrived to make me feel that you took pleasure in doing all you have done.

"I wish there had been something belonging to my sister that I could have begged you to accept as a remembrance of her; but everything she had of the smallest value has disappeared--even her books. When I get home I hope to give you one of my father's many portraits of her, but I will not send it till I know whether you are coming home this summer.

Please remember, should you do so, as I sincerely hope you will, that nowhere can there be a warmer welcome for you than at Wren's End. It would be the greatest possible pleasure for the children and me to see you there, and it is a good place to slack in and get strong. And there I hope to challenge you to the round of golf we never managed during my time in India.

"Please try to realise, dear Mr. Ledgard, that my sense of your kindness is deep and abiding, and, believe me, yours, in most true grat.i.tude,

"JANET ROSS."

For a long time Peter sat very still, staring at the cheerful, highly-coloured face painted on Fay's ball. Cigarette after cigarette did he smoke as he reviewed the experience of the last six weeks.

For the first time since he became a man he had been constantly in the society of a woman younger than himself who appeared too busy and too absorbed in other things to remember that she was a woman and he a man.

Peter was ordinarily susceptible, and he was rather a favourite with women because of his good manners; and his real good-nature made him ready to help either in any social project that happened to be towards or in times of domestic stress. Yet never until lately had he seen so much of any woman not frankly middle-aged without being conscious that he _was_ a man and she a woman, and this added, at all events, a certain piquancy to the situation.

Yet he had never felt this with Jan.

Quite a number of times in the course of his thirty years he had fallen in love in an agreeably surface sort of way without ever being deeply stirred. Love-making was the pleasantest game in the world, but he had not yet felt the smallest desire to marry. He was a shrewd young man, and knew that marriage, even in the twentieth century, at all events starts with the idea of permanence; and, like many others who show no inclination to judge the matrimonial complications of their acquaintance, he would greatly have disliked any sort of scandal that involved himself or his belongings.

He was quite as sensitive to criticism as other men in his service, and he knew that he challenged it in lending his flat to Mrs. Tancred. But here he felt that the necessities of the case far outweighed the possibilities of misconception, and after Jan came he thought no more about it.

Yet in a young man with his somewhat cynical knowledge of the world, it was surprising that the thought of his name being coupled with Jan's never crossed his mind. He forgot that none of his friends knew Jan at all, but that almost every evening they did see her with him in the car--sometimes, it is true, accompanied by the children, but quite as often alone--and that during her visit his spare time was so much occupied in looking after the Tancred household that his friends saw comparatively little of him, and Peter was, as a rule, a very sociable person.

Therefore it came upon him as a real shock when people began to ask him point-blank whether he was engaged to Jan, and if so, what they were going to do about Tancred's children. Rightly or wrongly, he discerned in the question some veiled reflection upon Jan, some implied slur upon her conduct. He was consequently very short and huffy with these inquisitive ones, and when he was no longer present they would shake their heads and declare that "poor old Peter had got it in the neck."

If so, poor old Peter was, as yet, quite unconscious of anything of the kind.

Nevertheless he found himself constantly thinking about her. Everything, even the familiar streets and roads, served to remind him of her, and when he went to bed he nearly always dreamed about her. Absurd, inconsequent, unsatisfactory dreams they were; for in them she was always too busy to pay any attention to him at all; she was wholly absorbed by what it is to be feared Peter sometimes called "those confounded children." Though even in his dream world he was careful to keep his opinion to himself.

Why on earth should he always dream of Jan during the first part of the night?