No Wind of Blame Read online

  ‘A man not fit to be in the same room with my sister!’ he said dramatically.

  His father was not unnaturally annoyed, and said angrily: ‘Shut up, you young fool! You don’t know what you’re talking about, and if you think I’m going to put up with your bloody theatrical ways, you’re wrong! What’s more, Sam Jones is a Town Councillor, and goes to chapel regularly.’

  ‘Yes,’ sneered Alan. ‘Votes against Sunday games in the park, too, not to mention Colonel Morrison’s scheme for better housing for the poor devils in the Old Town. God, it makes me sick!’

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t true,’ said Janet charitably.

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t! And perhaps it isn’t true that he gets his own employees into trouble, and doesn’t pay a brass cent in maintenance!’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Janet. ‘Not at the dinner-table, Alan, please!’

  ‘I believe in facing facts unflinchingly,’ said Alan superbly. ‘If that greasy swine’s coming here, I shall go out, that’s all. I suppose, if the truth were told, he’s got some shady scheme on foot, and you and Carter think you’re going to benefit by it.’

  ‘Alan dear, you oughtn’t to talk to father like that.’

  This mild reproof was endorsed by White in terms which finally drove Alan from the table, declaring that he would starve before he ate another morsel under the parental roof.

  When he had slammed his way out of the room, Janet, in whom tact was not a predominant feature, said that she didn’t know why it was, but she had never liked Samuel Jones.

  ‘Well, you’re not asked to like him,’ snapped White. ‘You needn’t think he’s coming for the pleasure of seeing you, because he’s not. In fact, the scarcer you make yourself the better.’

  ‘Oh dear, that means you’re going to talk business! I do wish you wouldn’t, father: I’m sure he’s not a good man.’

  ‘Never you mind what we’re going to talk! And if I catch you blabbing all around the countryside any dam’-fool rubbish about Jones and Carter, you’ll be sorry!’

  ‘Have you paid Mr Carter the money you owe him?’ asked Janet. ‘I know you don’t like me to remind you, but it does worry me so.’

  ‘Then it needn’t worry you. Carter and I understand one another perfectly.’

  ‘But I thought he was so cross about it? I’m sure the last time he came over here he was simply horrid, and I do so hate you to be beholden to him.’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ said White. ‘You talk like someone out of a cheap novel! What the devil do you suppose Wally’s likely to do about it, even supposing he is annoyed?’

  ‘But it’s not right to borrow money, and not pay it back!’ faltered Janet.

  ‘Of course I’m going to pay it back! Good Lord, a pretty opinion my own daughter has of me, I will say! Now, you get this, my girl! When I want you to poke your nose into my business, I’ll tell you! Until then, keep it out!’

  Janet was too well accustomed to this rough form of address to be hurt by it. She merely blinked at him, and said: ‘Yes, father. Will they want tea? Because it’s Florence’s half-day.’

  ‘I suppose you’re just capable of making tea without assistance? God knows what other use you are!’

  ‘Yes, only if you’d told me yesterday I could have made a cake. I’m afraid there isn’t much.’

  ‘No, there wouldn’t be,’ said her parent sardonically. ‘Cut some sandwiches, or something.’

  ‘We might have tea in the garden,’ said Janet, as though this would compensate for the meagre nature of the repast.

  Her father intimated that she might set the tea-table where she chose, and added that he had no desire to include his son in the party.

  As Alan had expressed his intention of starving before he ate another meal at the Dower House, Janet did not think that he would appear again until suppertime. She went in search of him presently, but found that he had left the house. White went out into the garden, and peace once more descended, so that Janet was able to devote her attention to the writing of her weekly letter to her tea-planter.

  She was one of those persons who could, without apparent effort, fill any number of sheets with harmless inanities, and she had not by any means come to the end of all she had to say, when the clock in the hall struck four, and recalled her to her duties. She put away her writing materials, and went into the kitchen to make scones for tea. She was still engaged on this task when White shouted to know whether she was asleep, or meant to prepare for the coming of his guests. He did not show the least gratitude when she hurried out to tell him of her activities in the kitchen, but remarked, with perfect truth, that her hair was coming down, and that her nose was shining.

  ‘It’s so hot, bending over the stove on a day like this,’ said poor Janet apologetically.

  ‘Well, for the Lord’s sake make yourself respectable before Jones and Carter turn up!’ he replied. ‘I’ve put some chairs out, but I don’t know where you keep your tableclothes.’

  ‘Oh, have you? Oh, thank you, father! I’ll do the rest!’ she said, feeling that she had been right in her judgment of him all along, and that a rough exterior hid a heart of gold.

  The garden of the Dower House sloped down to the stream separating it from Palings, but a previous tenant had levelled part of the upper ground into a shallow terrace. Here White had dragged several chairs, and a weather-beaten garden table, disposing them in the shade cast by the house. Janet, who had a slightly depressing habit of making yards of crochet-lace in her spare time, spread a cloth, heavy with this evidence of her industry, over the table, and set the tea-tray down on top of it. Like Ermyntrude, she wished that the rhododendrons and the azaleas were in flower, for she was an indifferent gardener, and the prospect included only a few sickly-looking dahlias, some Michaelmas daisies, one or two late-flowering roses, and a thicket of funereal shrubs that ran from the corner of the house down to the stream. However, it seemed unlikely that either Mr Jones or Wally Carter was coming to admire the garden, so beyond casting a wistful glance at the blaze of colour on the southern slopes of the Palings garden, which she could see through a gap in the bushes, she wasted no time in idle repinings, but went indoors to take her scones out of the oven.

  When she came out on to the terrace again, she had changed her workaday garb for a dress of a clear blue, startlingly unsuited to her rather sallow complexion, and had powdered her nose. She found that Mr Jones had already arrived, and was deep in conversation with her father. This conversation broke off abruptly upon her appearance, and Mr Jones hoisted himself out of his chair with a grunt, and shook hands with her.

  He was a fat man, with a jowl, and a smile that was altogether too wide and guileless to be credible; and his notion of making himself agreeable to women was to talk to them with an air of patronage mixed with gallantry.

  Janet’s rigid standards of the civility due to a guest compelled her to receive Mr Jones’s sallies with outward complaisance, but when, from her chair facing down the garden, she caught a glimpse of Wally descending the path to the bridge between the banks of rhododendrons on the opposite slope, she rose with rather obvious relief, and said that she could see Mr Carter coming, and would go and make the tea.

  Her father, who had been treating her with the politeness he reserved for public use, forgot, in the irritation of finding his cigarette-case empty, that in the presence of strangers she was his indulged daughter, and got up, demanding to know why she had not put out a box of cigarettes.

  ‘Oh dear, didn’t I?’ said Janet distressfully. ‘I’ll get it, shall I?’

  ‘Not on my account, I beg!’ said Mr Jones, holding up a plump hand.

  ‘It’s all right: you needn’t bother!’ said White hastily. ‘My fault!’

  This handsome admission, accompanied as it was by the smile of a fond parent, not unnaturally made Janet blink. As White moved towards the