‘Yes, a whole lot.’
‘Excellent! A very good sign. Now can we go and collect Ralph? I think we should soon be making off.’
They found the others standing round the drawing-room fire, the ‘grown-ups’ having taken themselves off to the study to hear a talk on Timbuctoo. Walter had happened to be passing the door when it began, and declared that the opening words, delivered by the evidently nervous speaker in a sort of screech, had been:
‘People who take their holidays abroad seldom think of Timbuctoo …’
‘Very seldom, I should imagine,’ said Albert. ‘Loudie dear, I wonder if you would sing us this little song which I found in an album here? The words are by Selina Lady Craigdalloch (the genius who collected in this house so many art treasures), and the music is “By my dear friend, Lord Francis Watt”. It has been my greatest wish to hear it sung by somebody ever since I found it.’
‘I have often noticed,’ said Ralph languidly, ‘that all accompaniments between the years 1850 and 1890 were invariably written by the younger sons of dukes and marquesses. They seem to have had the monopoly – most peculiar.’
‘I should love to sing it,’ said Mrs Fairfax, settling herself at the piano, ‘and then we must go. Where is it – here? Oh, yes …’
To Bxxxxxxxxxxx
(Morte Poitrinaire)
She began to sing in a small, pretty voice:
‘When my dying eye is closing,
And my heart doth cease to beat;
Know that I in peace reposing,
Have but one, but one regret!
Leaving you, my only treasure,
Bitter is, and hard to bear,
For my love can know no measure;
Say then, say for me a prayer!
Lilies, darling, on me scatter,
And forget-me-nots, so blue;
What can this short parting matter?
We shall surely meet anew!
We shall meet where pain and sorrow,
Never more assail the breast;
Where there is nor night nor morrow
To disturb our endless rest.’
‘Beautiful!’ cried Albert. ‘And beautifully sung!’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Fairfax, ‘a very pretty little song. You know, Ralph dear, I think that we shall have to be going. Unfortunately we are still in the realm of night and morrow, and if we don’t soon push on to Gleneagles we shall get no rest at all.’
There was a perfect chorus of dismay, but Mrs Fairfax was adamant.
‘Your figure is a dream, Ralph!’ said Albert, as they followed her into the hall. ‘Are you on a diet?’
‘Yes, dear, most depressing. I got muscles from dancing too much, they turned into fat – et voilà! …’
‘Do muscles turn into fat?’
‘Of course they do. Haven’t you noticed that all athletes become immense in their old age?’
‘But this is very serious!’ cried Albert, in a voice of horror. ‘It should be brought to the notice of public schoolmasters. I myself shall give up walking and buy a little car. I sometimes walk quite a distance in Paris.’
‘Nothing,’ said Ralph mournfully, ‘develops the muscles so much as driving. Good-bye, Albert. I hope to see you in London, dear.’
16
That night Jane found herself unable to go to sleep. Her brain was in a particularly lively condition and she tossed and turned thinking first of one thing and then of another until she felt she would go mad. ‘Albert! Albert! Albert!’ was the refrain.
‘Shall I be happy with him in Paris? Will he be the same after we’re married? Shall I interfere with his work? That, never,’ she thought; ‘I am far more ambitious even than he is and will help him in every possible way to achieve fame.
‘If I lie quite still and breathe deeply I might manage to drop off to sleep. What shall I put on tomorrow? Not that jumper suit again. I wasn’t looking so pretty today. I shan’t look pretty tomorrow if I have no sleep. Perhaps if I get out of bed and walk up and down … Yes, now I’m feeling quite drowsy. I must write to mamma tomorrow, I haven’t written for over a week. What shall I tell her? Oh, yes! the games would amuse her.’
Jane began to compose a letter in her head and was soon even more wide awake than before. She had hardly ever in her life experienced any difficulty in going to sleep and it made her furious.
‘I’ll stay in bed till lunch-time tomorrow to make up for this,’ she thought.
After about two hours of painful wakefulness she at last fell asleep, soothed, as it were, by a delicious smell of burning which was floating in at her bedroom window and of which she was only half conscious.
Hardly, it seemed to her, had she been dozing for five minutes when she was suddenly awakened by a tremendous banging on her door, which opened a moment afterwards. The electric light blazed into her eyes as she was struggling to open them.
‘What is it?’ she said, very angry at being awakened in this abrupt manner when she had only just gone to sleep with so much difficulty.
The butler was standing just inside the room.
‘House on fire, miss. Will you please come downstairs immediately?’
Jane sat up in bed and collected her wits about her.
‘Have I time to dress?’ she asked.
‘No, I think not, miss; the flames are spreading very rapidly to this part of the house, and Mr Buggins wants everyone in the hall at once; he is holding a roll-call there.’
Jane leapt out of bed, put on some shoes and a coat, and taking her jewel-case from the dressing-table she ran along to Albert’s room. She noticed that it was just after five o’clock.
The butler was still talking to Walter as she passed and Albert had not yet been awakened. Jane put on the light and looked at him for a moment as he lay asleep, his head on one arm, his hair in his eyes.
‘How beautiful he is,’ she thought as she shook him
