Jennie About to Be (33 page)

Christabel made approving sounds at intervals while they paced along as if to ceremonial music. When they reached the mansion and entered the gloomy hall, and the stags' eyes, Christabel said “Do you wish to retire for a few moments before dinner, Eugenia?”

“No, thank you, Christabel.”

They proceeded into the dining room. Archie retained possession of Jennie's hand and would not allow Armitage to seat her. Nigel gallantly did the same for Christabel.

The food was excellent here, as it always was. Jennie was proud of the way she could enjoy it while she plotted against the other three.

“We shall have some music by and by,” Archie said. “Now that Jennie's here to wake up the old pianoforte.”

“If she feels quite well enough,” said Christabel. “She's had several of these strange attacks lately. Really, they come at the most inconvenient times. I'm quite astonished to see you here tonight, Eugenia. I expected you'd be taken ill again.”

“Perhaps you should see the doctor,” Archie sounded concerned.

“No need,” said Jennie blithely. “I know the reason for it, and I assure you that as the day goes on, I always feel very well.”

Archie burst into a guffaw which he stifled with his napkin, but he couldn't hide his glee. Christabel said, “Is everyone finished with the soup?” She rang for Armitage.

The conversation was superficial. Jennie took no part in it, but Nigel assumed his London manner; it was almost inpossible to imagine this character standing in the midst of the smoke and cries, holding his watch in his hand and giving the signal to the torchbearers. Knocking Morag away with a sweep of his arm . . . When he gave Jennie a shrewd, humorless glance in the midst of a silly joke he was telling, she realized she must have been staring at him. She smiled and picked up her wineglass.

“When do the sheep arrive?” she asked Archie, sounding merely curious. Nigel tried to introduce a new subject, but Archie took it that she was really interested, now that she'd gotten over her little upset about the evictions.

“Any day now they'll be leaving Northumberland. Your home, my dearie! But we don't know when they'll arrive. They'll not drive them too hard because of the lambs.” He sprawled back expansively in his chair, rubbing his hands and flashing his teeth at her. “We have only to finish enclosing. Your husband's done fine work, hiring laborers from the village.”

Probably he threatened them with eviction, too
, Jennie thought. She kept a gently eager gaze on Archie's face, but she felt Nigel's apprehension and was pitiless.

“They were glad to earn sixpence a day,” Archie went on. “But those other lazy devils were a different story. D'you know, in some parts of the estate they kept knocking down the stone dykes every night, after the laborers left?”

“Well, one can hardly blame them,” she said mildly, “knowing what the arrival of the sheep meant for them. I wonder what they're eating tonight, and where.”

“Don't let your heart bleed for them, Eugenia.” Christabel's voice was acid. “They'll survive. That kind of people don't seem ever to die out.”

In spite of your best efforts
. Jennie just managed not to say it. Archie squirmed and tittered. “Come now, let's enjoy this grand meal!” He was ignored. Christabel's flush contrasted ill with her orange crepe.

“And where was that rabble-rouser Alick Gilchrist yesterday? Where was he, for all his cant about loyalty to the peasants? He wasn't to be found on the estate, I hear. Perhaps he was afraid he'd be expected to fight for them!”

Archie was sweating, running fingers around inside his cravat, twisting his head around, stretching his long neck. “He came here later to ask for extra time for them. I granted it.”

“
After
the event. He's like the rainbow; he comes out when the storm is past.”

“I understand,” said Jennie, “that before the evictions began, he was visited in his house, stunned, tied hand and foot, and gagged. He could have suffocated if someone hadn't found him, or died slowly and horribly from thirst and hunger.” She didn't raise her voice; she might have been describing a garden party.

Archie, sweating more profusely, said, “Superior duck,” and forked in a mouthful that should have choked him.

“Where do you hear all this fustian?” Christabel asked Jennie.

Nigel answered for her. “My wife practices Gaelic with the servants and believes most of what they tell her, whether she understands it or not. She even has great conversations with Fergus, can you believe that?” He gave Jennie an amused and uxorious smile.

“Oh, Jeannie, Jeannie!” Archie laughed and shook his finger at her.

“He had a dramatic excuse for staying away,” said Nigel, lifting his wineglass to Jennie. “Quite original and romantic.”

“But it was I who found him,” said Jennie. Nigel turned pale; she actually saw the red leave his cheeks. Archie's loaded fork stopped halfway to his mouth; his toothy grin was frozen.

Christabel asked with remarkable calm, “Whatever were you doing over there?”

“I watched the evictions at the cottages just below the ridge, and I too wondered where he was.” Equanimity went just so far. She'd have loved to spew the facts into their faces, over the men's immaculate cravats and Christabel's powdered and gemmed bosom, but it would have left herself devastated.

“So I rode around the loch to see. If he hadn't had the strength to drive his feet against a table leg and make some sounds, I'd have gone away again. Didn't he mention it to you, Archie?”

“No, no!” Archie was huffing and puffing.
Lying too
, she thought.

“And he didn't tell you about Lachy dead, with a dirk in his hand, and the blood on the dirk not his own? It was a grand death for a Highlander, was it not? I hope he was piped into heaven. I'm sure he was, if there is any justice there. It certainly doesn't exist on earth.”

“My dear girl.” Nigel's voice was brittle as glass. “This whole experience has been devilish hard on you because you don't understand it. You've hardly eaten since yesterday, and now you're drinking too much wine.”

“I agree,” said Christabel. “What she needs is her bed and a good long sleep.”

“Preferably forever,” said Jennie. “So Nigel can find him a more comfortable bride.” Nigel stood up, pushing his chair back so hard it fell over. “Would I sleep, do you think,” Jennie asked softly of them all, “until the smell of burning's gone? It's not as strong as it was from the eight townships burned out last week, but if you could put together the reek from all the burning at Linnmore yesterday, it could compete.” She nodded at them. “And by how many times would you multiply the scene I saw yesterday? You know, Archie. I don't. I can only imagine. And what I cannot understand—yes, Nigel is right, there's much I cannot understand—is how you can sit here, beautifully dressed, eating an elegant meal, discussing the wine and the sauces, when all this has happened, and you ordered it as you ordered the food.”

Christabel tried to interrupt her. Across the table Nigel stood immobile. She looked at neither of them; she kept her eyes on Archie, driving the knife home and twisting it.

“Someday, when the bracken and the gorse have hidden everything but what's left of the walls, and the sheep are everywhere, you can stand on the ridge and look down and pretend there was never anything else on twenty thousand acres but sheep and their shepherds.”

“
Jennie!
” Nigel shouted at her. “You forget yourself!”

“Never.” She arose too. It wasn't wine she was drunk with, and the effect wouldn't last much longer. She left the room, leaving silence behind her. She picked up her shawl in the hall and went out.

She ran down the steps, past the rhododendrons, and over the bridge. She wanted to be well away from Linnmore House before Nigel caught up with her. But by the time she had reached the trees, he was still not in sight. She walked now in the twilight, feeling every pebble through the flimsy soles of her slippers, so she moved to the grassy verge. There could be no row with Nigel if she refused to answer; she had said all she was going to say. It had been enough to make sure that she'd never again be welcomed at Linnmore House, at least by Christabel, and she was the one who called the tunes to which Archie danced.

Nigel could go there alone as much as he pleased. He was not likely to be dismissed because of his difficult wife; he'd proved himself as factor, and he was still the heir, unless Christabel and Archie accomplished a biological miracle.

Obviously Nigel wasn't trying to catch up with her. Either he was so outraged he didn't trust himself with her, or he was receiving advice and commiseration from the other two. She pictured Archie, stuttering, fiery red from too much claret gulped down like water. “Fine little lass, my boy. Deserves the best. If there's a baby on the way, she'll soon forget all this nonsense; she'll think of nothing else but the wee bairn. We must have the old cradle down. Be patient with her. Women have strange notions at this time, they tell me.” Sentimental tears in his eyes. “Dear wee Jeannie. Tender heart. Does her credit.”

Christabel would not enjoy talk of wee bairns. “The sooner you have the whip hand, the better. She's been badly brought up, thoroughly spoiled. You'll do her and yourself no good if you allow these tantrums. She's a romantic little fool with dangerous radical notions, and it's up to you to curb her.”

Jennie went up the steps and into the house, leaving the front door open behind her to the glimmer of twilight and the last sounds of birds. Lizzie had left a candle burning on the console table. The tall clock numbered the seconds of her life as she stood there, listening, and watching the small blossom of flame flutter and then steady itself. Then she sighed without knowing it and picked up a bedroom candle to light it from the other.

“Jennie,” Nigel said quietly from the doorway, “when are you going to forgive me?” She went on holding the wick to the flame, her hand trembling a little. He shut the door and came up behind her and put his arms around her. She stood passively in the embrace.

“It's not a matter of simply forgiving.” She kept her voice low. “You're a stranger to me, and I have to see if I can live with that stranger. It's too soon. All I know is that you have never been honest with me, so I don't know what to do now.”

“I
honestly
love you, Jennie.”

“But who
are
you?” She put down her candlestick, unclasped his hands, took the candle again, and went to the stairs.

He shouted after her, “If I weren't the man I am, I'd never forgive you for the way you humiliated me tonight!”

“Oh, don't talk to me about humiliation,” she said wearily. “You've been doing that to me for too long! Don't follow me, please. I am so tired. I just want to be let alone.”

Footnote

* Wellesley did not become the Duke of Wellington until the following summer.

T
HE HEAVY
oaken front door slammed before she reached the head of the stairs. She set her candlestick on the floor of the hall, and by its flickering light she took the bedding out of the chest where she'd crammed it this morning. Her agitated shadow danced hugely over walls and ceiling while she made up the antique bed for him, listening all the time for his return; the finished chore would not have been approved by
Lizzie
Lindsay. Then she locked herself into their bedroom by beth doors.

He hadn't come back by the time she had undressed, washed, and was in bed. The long-case clock chimed dimly and melodiously for the hours and half hours; she didn't know how many times she heard it before she fell asleep.

She woke at daybreak. The first thing she thought was that she hadn't given Fergus any money to take to Alick. She was deeply ashamed for having been so self-centered all day yesterday.

The second thing was that today was Sunday, but she was not going to church even if she was asked, as seemed unlikely. No one wanted her embarrassing questions or statements to disturb the genteel sociabilities around the church door, and she didn't ever want to lay eyes on Dr. Macleod again in her life.

He'll not christen
my
babies
! she thought fiercely.

She got up and dressed in the blue riding habit; after she had given the money to Fergus, she would ride for hours. She unlocked her keepsake bex and lined up her golden hoard on the bureau. The last time she'd done this had been on that morning in Brunswick Square when she'd sworn she'd be off to the north within twenty-four hours.
I had all my faculties then
, she thought.
I lost them in the park that afternoon. Now they're back, but it's too late
.

As a spinster she'd have been as free as the blackbird or the lark, in comparison with a woman who had perversely left a husband who hadn't married her for her money, who never abused her, who was not a dru^^fu, a gambler, or a womanizer; who adored her.

Jennie's sisters would understand her, but William, while deploring the reason for her flight, would remind her that the marriage bond was sacred, and her duty was to remain with her husband, to forgive him seventy times seven and be a high moral influence on him in the future.

The rest of the world (Aunt and Uncle Higham) would see that an immature girl had flung herself about in hysterical objections to sound business practice; strictly men's business too, and absolutely none of hers.

In Switzerland with Ianthe she'd be clear of the moralizing, but even if she used some of her sovereigns to go to the Continent, there she would be considered a light woman and fair game. If Nigel should divorce her, she would be ruined by the scandal wherever she was. Her sisters' love couldn't do much for her then.

There was a cannonade of knocks on the door from the dressing room, and she almost spilled the coins across the floor. “Jennie, open up at once!” Nigel shouted.