Jan and Her Job Part 29

"She scolded you," he rejoined obstinately.

"Not really, Tony; she didn't mean to scold."

Tony looked very hard at Jan.

In silence they stared at one another for quite a minute. Jan got up off the seat.

"Let's go and find the others," she said.

"She is a very proud cook," Tony remarked once more.

Jan sighed.

That night while she was getting ready for bed Tony woke up. His cot was placed so that he could see into Jan's room, and the door between was always left open. She was standing before the dressing-table, taking down her hair.

Unlike the bedrooms at the flat, the room was not cold though both the windows were open. Wren's End was never cold, though always fresh, for one of Anthony's earliest improvements had been a boiler-house and central heating, with radiators set under the windows, so that they could always stand open.

Jan had not put on her dressing-gown, and her night-dress had rather short, loose sleeves that fell back from her arms as she raised them.

He watched the white arm wielding the brush with great pleasure; he decided he liked to look at it.

"Auntie Jan!"

She turned and flung her hair back from her face in a great silver cloud.

"You awake, sonny! Did I make a noise?"

"No, I just woke. Auntie Jan, will Daddie ever come here?"

"I expect so."

"Well, listen. If he does, he shan't take your things, your pretty twinkly things. I won't let him."

Jan stood as if turned to stone.

"He took Mummy's. I saw him; I couldn't stop him, I was so little. But she _said_--she said it twice before she went away from that last bungalow--she said: 'Take care of Auntie Jan, Tony; don't let Daddie take her things.' So I won't."

Tony was sitting up. His room was all in darkness; two candles were lit on Jan's dressing-table. He could see her, but she couldn't see him.

She came to him, stooped over him, and laid her cheek against his so that they were both veiled with her hair. "Darling, I don't think poor Daddie would want to take my things. You must try not to think hardly of Daddie."

Tony parted the veil of hair with a gentle hand so that they could both see the candles.

"You don't know my Daddie ... much," he said, "do you?"

Jan shuddered.

"I saw him," he went on in his queer little unemotional voice. "I saw him take all her pretty twinkly things; and her silver boxes. I'm glad I sleep here."

"Did she mind much?" Jan whispered.

"I don't know. She didn't see him take them, only me. She hadn't come to bed. She never said nothing to me--only about you."

"I don't expect," Jan made a great effort to speak naturally, "that Daddie would care about my things ... It's different, you see."

"I'm glad I sleep here," Tony repeated, "and there's William only just across the pa.s.sage."

CHAPTER XVI

"THE BLUDGEONINGS OF CHANCE"

They had been at Wren's End nearly three weeks, and sometimes Jan wondered if she appeared to Tony as unlike her own conception of herself as Tony's of his father was unlike what she had pictured him.

She knew Hugo Tancred to be dishonest, s.h.i.+fty, and wholly devoid of a sense of honour, but she had up till quite lately always thought of him as possessing a lazy sort of good-nature.

Tony was changing this view.

He was not yet at all talkative, but every now and then when he was alone with her he became frank and communicative, as reserved people often will when suddenly they let themselves go. And his very simplicity gave force to his revelations.

During their last year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his father and mother.

Jan talked constantly to the children of their mother. Her portraits, Anthony's paintings and sketches, were all over the house, in every variety of happy pose. One of the best was hung at the foot of Tony's cot. The gentle blue eyes seemed to follow him in wistful benediction, and alone in bed at night he often thought of her, and of his home in India. It was, then, quite natural that he should talk of them to this Auntie Jan who had evidently loved his mother well; and from Tony Jan learned a good deal more about her brother-in-law than she had ever heard from his wife.

Tony loved to potter about with his aunt in the garden. She worked really hard, for there was much to do, and he tried his best to a.s.sist, often being a very great hindrance; but she never sent him away, for she desired above all things to gain his confidence.

One day after a hard half-hour's weeding, when Tony had wasted much time by pulling up several sorts of the wrong thing, Jan felt her temper getting edgy, so they sat down to rest upon one of the many convenient seats to be found at Wren's End. Anthony hated a garden where you couldn't sit comfortably and smoke, wheresoever the prospect was pleasing.

Tony sat down too, looking almost rosy after his labours.

He didn't sit close and cuddly, as little Fay would have done, but right at the other end of the seat, where he could stare at her. Every day was bringing Tony more surely to the conclusion that "he liked to look at"

his aunt.

"You like Meg, don't you?" he said.

"No," Jan shook her head. "I don't like her. I love her; which is quite a different thing."

"Do you like people and love them?"

"I like some people--a great many people--then there are others, not so many, that I love--you're one of them."

"Is Fay?"

"Certainly, dear little Fay."