Читать книгу Jandy Mac Comes Back - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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“Littlejan!” her mother said severely. “If you don’t stop jumping about, I shall put you out of the car and leave you by the side of the road.”

“And then I shouldn’t see Jansy! But it is so thrilling! How can I sit still? And—oh, Mother! You promised to forget that silly name! You’ll go and give me away to Jansy and Aunt Joan!”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Fraser apologised. “But after calling you Littlejan for all these years it’s difficult to remember you want to be grown-up Joan.”

“I’m thirteen,” Joan shook back her dark mop of hair and sat very straight. “And we’re going to see these crowds of people I’ve been told about all my life. I don’t want to be introduced with a baby name.”

“Very reasonable,” her mother agreed. “But hard to live up to, my child! Thirteen doesn’t seem so grown-up to me, and I expect to your father you’ll always be Littlejan. You were so very little when he first saw you, and so very much like me, and he’d always called me Jan, not Janice. So from the first minute he called you Littlejan.”

As she said, they were much alike, with dark brown hair, which both mother and daughter wore cut short and slightly wavy. There were only twenty years between their ages, for Janice had married at nineteen. Joan’s sailor father often asserted that in a few years more, if Janice kept so slim and youthful, they would look like sisters.

“I know all that,” Joan said impatiently, “but with these new people, Mother——! I’m sure Jansy Raymond would laugh if you called me Littlejan! She sort of belongs to you, as she’s called after you, doesn’t she?”

“Sort of,” Mrs. Fraser assented. “And you’re called after her mother. We arranged that long ago. But they’ve turned Janice into Jansy. When I was small I was called Jandy.”

“I know—Jandy Mac, short for Janice Macdonald! And you’ve turned Joan into Littlejan! Will Aunt Joan mind?”

“I shouldn’t think so. There are other children, you know. Jansy must be ten years old now; then John will be eight. I believe there’s another little girl, much younger, but I don’t know her name. I’m sorry now that I was slack about letters. We wrote to one another for a good many years, but then we let the correspondence drop, and I’m afraid it was my fault. I know I didn’t answer Joan’s last letter.”

“Oh, well, it will be all the more of a surprise when we turn up on her doorstep and say, ‘We’ve come. We’re Mrs. Fraser and Joan.’ She will be surprised, won’t she?”

“I shan’t say that! I shall say, ‘Here are Jandy Mac and daughter, as arranged fifteen years ago.’ I’m afraid she will be surprised,” Janice Fraser admitted, her tone rueful. “I’m beginning to think we’ve made a mistake, Littlejan. We ought to have let her know. Perhaps she won’t like the surprise!”

“Oh, but why not?” Joan let the name pass in her astonishment. “We’ve planned all the way home to give her a surprise! You said she’d love it!”

“Yes, but suppose it isn’t convenient? Suppose they’re away from home—or somebody is ill—or the house is full of visitors?”

“Then we’ll say, ‘Hallo! How are you?’ and then we’ll go back to town. But it would be an awful blow.” Joan looked anxious. “I’ll see Jansy, anyway, won’t I? I want to tell her—you know, about my secret! When we’ve come all the way from Sydney, they wouldn’t send us away without letting us see her!”

“I hope you’ll see her. But I feel now we’d have been wiser to write, or even to phone, before we came.”

“There’s a phone-box,” Joan suggested. “You could ring her up now.”

“We’re almost there.” Mrs. Fraser had caught the name of a village a few minutes before. “We may have been silly—I rather think we have—but we’ll stick to it and see the thing through now. If Joan and her family are away, we could try the Abbey. I expect Joy and her twins are there, and I know they’d like to see us.”

“I want to see the twins too,” Joan assented. “How old are they, Mother?”

“I shall have to do sums in my head! Just nine, Littlejan. Jansy came a year and a half before the twins.”

“Quite little girls! Oh, is that Aunt Joan’s house?”

“Probably. Could you ask that old man?” Mrs. Fraser spoke to the chauffeur.

He drew up and called to the man who was cutting the hedge. “Is this Captain Raymond’s place?”

“It be, sir. Gate be just along there.”

Joan grinned at her mother. “I’m glad it be the house, so we shan’t have to look any farther!”

“They aren’t away from home,” Mrs. Fraser remarked. “The house looks lived in—windows open, smoke from the chimneys. One worry removed, anyway!”

“What marvellous horses! Oh, would Aunt Joan let me learn to ride?” Joan shouted.

A groom in dark livery was leading a fine horse up and down, mounted himself upon another.

Janice Fraser knit her brows. “It looks more as if they had a visitor. I don’t think—well, the man, and those horses, and the livery—it doesn’t look quite like my idea of what Joan Raymond told me about her home. I’ve never heard of her riding.”

The car had turned in at the gate and was running up to the door. Janice spoke firmly to her excited daughter.

“Littlejan—well, Joan, then!—you’ll stay in the car till I call you. Remember we’re uninvited and unexpected guests. It may be impossible for Joan to see us. If it’s all right, I’ll wave to you to come. I’m feeling more sure every minute that we ought to have written. Surprises are all very well, but they can be very awkward.”

“You’re shy!” Joan protested. “I’m not, a scrap. Better let me go to the door and ask! When they hear I’ve come from Australia, on purpose to see Jansy and tell her——”

“Nonsense!” her mother said, laughing. “I’m not shy! I’m cross with myself for being silly! Wait quietly here, Littlejan.”

She went to the big door, and Joan leaned forward in breathless eagerness, trying to hear what was said.

She saw her mother ask a question, saw the maid’s puzzled look as she replied, saw her mother’s face change, first to dismay and then to eager interest, as she asked question after question. It was almost more than Joan could do to keep from leaping out of the car and running to ask what it was all about. Her mother wrote a few words on a card and gave it to the girl, and then came back to the car.

“That’s the end of that idea!” she said, half-laughing, but much perturbed, as she opened the door. “Take us away, please!” to the chauffeur. “I don’t know yet where to, but away from here. Back to the main road, where the phone-box was. We’ll have to decide what to do.”

“Mother, I shall die in one more minute!” Joan exploded.

“Die, then, Littlejan. It won’t help matters. But I’ll tell you what has happened. Mrs. Raymond has a son a few hours old. He was born early this morning. She can’t have any visitors for a little while. I sent her a message of love and congratulations and good wishes; that’s all we can do. Now where would you like to go?”

“But couldn’t I see Jansy?” Joan wailed. “You know how much I want to ask her about my secret plan!”

“It won’t be a secret long if you talk about it so much. Jansy and John are away from home. The baby—I mean, the one who was the baby until this morning—is called Jennifer, so Joan Raymond has been faithful to the family tradition, and I hope she’ll call the new little boy Jim! Jennifer is only two, so she’s no use to us. I’ve never met Joan’s husband, so I didn’t ask to see him. We shall have to come back later, to see them all. The girl said he was engaged at the moment, in any case. Now what are we going to do with ourselves? Go straight back to town? Where have the horses gone?”

“I don’t know. I was watching you. They’ve disappeared. Oh, isn’t it all rotten?” Joan wailed.

“A gardener spoke to the groom and he went to the other side of the house; round that way,” said the chauffeur, as he turned the car in the drive.

Joan craned her heck, trying to see, but a screen of bushes hid the side door. She sighed. “Everything’s going wrong to-day! I want to know who rides on that marvellous horse, since it can’t be Aunt Joan!”

“It certainly isn’t Aunt Joan,” her mother agreed. “Don’t be so gloomy, my child. We’ve found our way to the house and we’ll come back later. It’s a beautiful place; look at the lake, and those rhododendrons and azaleas on the banks!”

“It’s marvellous, of course,” Joan’s tone was lacking in enthusiasm and extremely despondent. “But I want to see the people it belongs to!”

“I’m disappointed too. But it’s lovely to know Joan has another little boy; that’s four children she has now.”

Littlejan caught her arm. “Look, Mother! The horses!”

While the car crept towards the gate, uncertain of its future course, it was followed down the drive, and passed, by the cantering horses, the groom riding behind his mistress, a tall girl with yellow hair, who rode astride.

“Oh, lovely!” Joan whispered enviously.

“She rides well. Some friend who has been to ask for Joan, I suppose.” Mrs. Fraser’s eyes followed the straight erect figure with admiration.

Then she turned to the chauffeur. “Please take us back to the road; but go slowly. I must think out another plan. You’re sure it will be all right for you, if we decide to try some other friends, on our way back to town? Mrs. Grant said——”

“That I should hold myself at your disposal for the day, madam. Just say where you wish to go.”

“It was terribly kind of her! She’s an absolute angel,” Joan cried. “Oh, Mother! Let’s go and find that Abbey, where the twins live!”

“I’m going nowhere else without first asking if I shall find anybody there,” her mother said firmly. “That’s why we’re going to that phone-box. And then we must all have some lunch somewhere.”

“We can’t phone yet,” Joan pointed out, as they reached the main road and saw the kiosk a short way ahead of them. “She’s using it—or rather the man is.”

“How very odd!” Mrs. Fraser exclaimed. “Why didn’t she ring up from the house? The Raymonds must be on the telephone!”

The groom was in the phone-box. The rider had dismounted and was sitting on the bank, on a mackintosh spread on the grass. At sight of the car she rose quickly and went to hold the horses.

The car drew up, obviously waiting till the telephone was free. The man came out and took his mistress’s place between the horses. “That will be all right, my lady. The car will come as quickly as possible.”

“Good!” The girl went—wearily, it seemed—back to the grass verge and threw herself down to rest again.

“Now, Mother!” Joan’s voice rang out. “Now you ring up and ask if we can go to the Abbey and see those twins!”

“Yes, but I don’t ring up the Abbey. The house is called Abinger Hall. That’s where the twins live,” her mother retorted, stepping out of the car.