In the pa.s.sage he caught sight of Meg going from one room to another with her arms full of little garments.

"Ah," he cried, striding towards her. "Good night, Miss Morton. I hope we shall meet again soon," and he held out his hand.

Meg ignored the hand, her own arms were so full of clothes: "I'm afraid that's not likely," she said, with unfeeling cheerfulness. "We all go down to the country on Monday."

"Yes, yes, I know. Jolly part of the world it is, too. I expect I shall be thereabouts a good deal this summer, my relations positively swarm in that county."

"Good-bye," said Meg, and turned to go. Jan stood at the end of the pa.s.sage, holding the door open.

"I say, Miss Morton, you'll try and like my William, won't you?"

"I like all sensible animals," was Meg's response, and she vanished into a bedroom.

CHAPTER XIV

PERPLEXITIES

"Don't you think it is very extraordinary that I have never had one line from Hugo since the letter I got at Aden?" asked Jan.

It was Friday evening, the Indian mail was in, and there was a letter from Peter--the fourth since her return.

"But you've heard of him from Mr. Ledgard," Meg pointed out.

"Only that he had gone to Karachi from Bombay just before Fay died--surely he would see papers there. It seems so heartless never to have written me a line--I can't believe it, somehow, even of Hugo--he must be ill or something."

"Perhaps he was ashamed to write. Perhaps he felt you would simply loathe him for being the cause of it all."

"I did, I do," Jan exclaimed; "but all the same he is the children's father, and he was her husband--I don't want anything very bad to happen to him."

"It would simplify things very much," Meg said dreamily.

Jan held up her hand as if to ward off a blow.

"Don't, Meg; sometimes I find myself wishing something of the kind, and I know it's wrong and horrible. I want as far as I can to keep in the right with regard to Hugo, to give him no grievance against me. I've written to that bank where he left the money, and asked them to forward the letters if he has left any address. I've told him exactly where we are and what we propose to do. Beyond the bare facts of Fay's death--I told him all about her illness as dispa.s.sionately as I could--I've never reproached him or said anything cruel. You see, the man is down and out; though Mr. Ledgard always declared he had any amount of mysterious wires to pull. Yet, I can't help wondering whether he is ill somewhere, with no money and no friends, in some dreadful native quarter."

"What about the money in the bank, then? Did you use it?"

Jan blushed. "No, I couldn't bear to touch his money ... Mr. Ledgard said it was idiotic...."

"So it was; it was Fay's money, not his. For all your good sense, Jan, sometimes you're sentimental as a schoolgirl."

"I daresay it was stupid, and I didn't dare to tell Mr. Ledgard I'd left it," Jan said humbly; "but I felt that perhaps that money might help him if things got very desperate; I left it in his name and a letter telling him I had done so ... I didn't _give_ him any money...."

"It was precisely the same thing."

"And he may never have got the letter."

"I hope he hasn't."

"Oh, Meg, I do so hate uncertainty. I'd rather know the worst. I always have the foreboding that he will suddenly turn up at Wren's End and threaten to take the children away ... and get money out of me that way ... and there's none to spare...."

"Jan, you've got into a thoroughly nervous, pessimistic state about Hugo. Why in the world should he _want_ the children? They'd be terribly in his way, and wherever he put them he'd have to pay _something_. You know very well his people wouldn't keep them for nothing, even if he were fool enough (for the sake of blackmailing you) to threaten to place them there. His sisters wouldn't--not for nothing. What did Fay say about his sisters? I remember one came to the wedding, but she has left no impression on my mind. He has two, hasn't he?"

"Yes, but only one came, the Blackpool one. But Fay met both of them, for she spent a week-end with each, with Hugo, after she was married."

"Well, and what did she say?"

Jan laughed and sighed: "She said--you remember how Fay could say the severest things in the softest, gentlest voice--that 'for social purposes they were impossible, but they were doubtless excellent and worthy of all esteem and that they were exactly suited to the _milieu_ in which they lived.'"

"And where do they live?"

"One lives at Blackpool--she's married to ... I forget exactly what he is--but it's something to do with letting houses. They're quite well off and all her towels had crochet lace at the ends. Fay was much impressed by this, as it scratched her nose. They also gave you 'doylies' at afternoon tea and no servant ever came into the room without knocking."

"Any children?"

"Yes, three."

"And the other sister?"

"She lives at Poulton-le-Fylde, and her husband had to do with a newspaper syndicate. Quite amusing he was, Fay says, but very shaky as to the letter 'H.'"

"Would they like the children?"

"They might, for they've none of their own, but they certainly wouldn't take them unless they were paid for, as they were not well off. They were rather down on the Blackpool sister, Fay said, for extravagance and general sw.a.n.k."

"What about the grandparents?"

"In Guernsey? They're quite nice old people, I believe, but curiously--of course I'm quoting Fay--comatose and uninterested in things, 'behindhand with the world,' she said. They thought Hugo very wonderful, and seemed rather afraid of him. What he has told them lately I don't know. He wrote very seldom, they said; but _I've_ written to them, saying I've got the children and where we shall be. If they express a wish to see the children I'll ask them to Wren's End. If, as would be quite reasonable, they say it's too far to come--they're old people, you know--I suppose one of us would need to take them over to Guernsey for a visit. I do so want to do the right thing all round, and then they can't say I've kept the children away from their father's relations."

"Scotch people always think such a lot about relations," Meg grumbled.

"I should leave them to stew in their own juice. Why should you bother about them if he doesn't?"

"They're all quite respectable, decent folk, you know, though they mayn't be our kind. The father, I fancy, failed in business after he came back from India. Fay said he was very meek and depressed always. I think she was glad none of them came to the wedding except the Blackpool sister, for she didn't want Daddie to see them. He thought the Blackpool sister dreadful (he told me afterwards that she 'exacerbated his mind and offended his eye'), but he was charming to her and never said a word to Fay."

"I don't see much sign of Hugo and his people in the children."

"We can't tell, they're so little. One thing does comfort me, they show no disposition to tell lies; but that, I think, is because they have never been frightened. You see, everyone bowed down before them; and whatever Indian servants may be in other respects, they seem to me extraordinarily kind and patient with children."

"Jan, what are your views about the bringing up of children?... You've never said ... and I should like to know. You see, we're both"--here Meg sighed deeply and looked portentously grave--"in a position of awful responsibility."

They were sitting on each side of the hearth, with their toes on the fender. Meg had been sewing at an overall for little Fay, but at that moment she laid it on her knee and ran her hands through her cropped hair, then about two inches long all over her head, so that it stood on end in broken spirals and feathery curls above her bright eyes. In the evening the uniform was discarded "by request."

Jan looked across at her and laughed.

So funny and so earnest; so small, and yet so great with purpose.