Jan and Her Job Part 38

Whither was it all tending? Jan wondered.

No further news had come from Hugo; Peter, she supposed, had sailed and was due in London at the end of the week.

Then Mr. Huntly With.e.l.ls asked her one afternoon to bicycle over to see his spring irises--he called them "_irides_," and invariably spoke of "_croci_," and "_delphinia_"--and as Meg was taking the children to tea at the vicarage, Jan went.

To her surprise, she found herself the sole guest, but supposed she was rather early and that his other friends hadn't come yet.

They strolled about the gardens, so lovely in their spring blossoming, and it happened that from one particular place they got a specially good view of the house.

"How much larger it is than you would think, looking at the front," Jan remarked. "You don't see that wing at all from the drive."

"There's plenty of room for nephews and nieces," Mr. With.e.l.ls said jocularly.

"Have you many nephews and nieces?" she asked, turning to look at him, for there was something in the tone of his voice that she could not understand.

"Not of my own," he replied, still in that queer, unnatural voice, "but you see my wife might have ... if I was married."

"Are you thinking of getting married?" she asked, with the real interest such a subject always rouses in woman.

"That depends," Mr. With.e.l.ls said consciously, "on whether the lady I have in mind ... er ... shall we sit down, Miss Ross? It's rather hot in the walks."

"Oh, not yet," Jan exclaimed. She couldn't think why, but she began to feel uncomfortable. "I must see those Darwin tulips over there."

"It's very sunny over there," he objected. "Come down the nut-walk and see the _myosotis arvensis_; it is already in bloom, the weather has been so warm.

"Miss Ross," Mr. With.e.l.ls continued seriously, as they turned into the nut-walk which led back towards the house, "we have known each other for a considerable time...."

"We have," said Jan, as he had paused, evidently expecting a reply.

"And I have come to have a great regard for you...."

Again he paused, and Jan found herself silently whispering, "Curtsy while you're thinking--it saves time," but she preserved an outward silence.

"You are, if I may say so, the most sensible woman of my acquaintance."

"Thank you," said Jan, but without enthusiasm.

"We are neither of us quite young"--(Mr. With.e.l.ls was forty-nine, but it was a little hard on Jan)--"and I feel sure that you, for instance, would not expect or desire from a husband those constant outward demonstrations of affection such as handclaspings and kisses, which are so foolish and insanitary."

Jan turned extremely red and walked rather faster.

"Do not misunderstand me, Miss Ross," Mr. With.e.l.ls continued, looking with real admiration at her downcast, rosy face--she must be quite healthy he thought, to look so clean and fresh always--"I lay down no hard-and-fast rules. I do not say should my wife desire to kiss me sometimes, that I should ... repulse her."

Jan gasped.

"But I have the greatest objection, both on sanitary and moral grounds to----"

"I can't imagine anyone _wanting_ to kiss you," Jan interrupted furiously; "you're far too puffy and stippled."

And she ran from him as though an angry bull were after her.

Mr. With.e.l.ls stood stock-still where he was, in pained astonishment.

He saw the fleeing fair one disappear into the distance and in the shortest time on record he heard the clanging of her bicycle bell as she scorched down his drive.

"Puffy and stippled"--"Puffy and stippled"!

Mr. With.e.l.ls repeated to himself this rudely personal remark as he walked slowly towards the house.

What could she mean?

And what in the world had he said to make her so angry?

Women were really most unaccountable.

He ascended his handsome staircase and went into his dressing-room, and there he sought his looking-gla.s.s, which stood in the window, and surveyed himself critically. Yes, his cheeks _were_ a bit puffy near the nostrils, and, as is generally the case in later life, the pores of the skin were a bit enlarged, but for all that he was quite a personable man.

He sighed. Miss Ross, he feared, was not nearly so sensible as he had thought.

It was distinctly disappointing.

For the first mile and a quarter Jan scorched all she knew. The angry blood was thumping in her ears and she exclaimed indignantly at intervals, "How dared he! How dared he!"

Then she punctured a tyre.

There was no hope of getting it mended till she reached Wren's End, when Earley would do it for her. As she pushed her bicycle along the lane she recovered her sense of humour and she laughed. And presently she became aware of a faint, sweet, elusive perfume from some flowering shrub on the other side of somebody's garden wall.

It strongly resembled the smell of a blossoming tree that grew on Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. And in one second Jan was in Bombay, and was standing in the moonlight, looking up into a face that was neither puffy nor stippled nor prim; but young and thin and worn and very kind. And the exquisite understanding of that moment came back to her, and her eyes filled with tears.

Yet in another moment she was again demanding indignantly, "How dared he!"

She went straight to her room when she got in, and, like Mr. With.e.l.ls, she went and looked at herself in the gla.s.s.

Unlike Mr. With.e.l.ls, she saw nothing there to give her any satisfaction.

She shook her head at the person in the gla.s.s and said aloud:

"If that's all you get by trying to be sensible, the sooner you become a drivelling idiot the better for your peace of mind--and your vanity."

The person in the gla.s.s shook her head back at Jan, and Jan turned away thoroughly disgusted with such a futile sort of _tu quoque_.

CHAPTER XXI

ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE