THE origin of the house of Grant, like that of many another Scots family, is lost in the Scotch mists of antiquity. The particularly thick mist that obscured the origin of that branch of the family to which Jasmine belonged did not disperse until early in the nineteenth century, when the figure of James Grant, who began life nebulously as an under-gardener in the establishment of the sixth Duke of Ayr, emerged well-defined as a florist and nursery gardener in the Royal Borough of Kensington. The rhetorical questioning of the claims of aristocracy implied in the couplet: was peculiarly appropriate to this branch, for Jamie, besides being a gardener himself, married the daughter of a Lancashire weaver called Jukes, who later on invented a loom and, what is more, profited by his talent. Although Jamie Grant's rapid rise was helped by the success of old Mr. Jukes' invention, he had enough talent of his own to take full advantage of the capital that his wife brought him on the death of her father; in fact by the year 1837 Jamie was as reputable as any florist in the United Kingdom. A legend in the family said that on the fine June morning when Archbishop Howley and Lord Chamberlain Conyngham rode from the death-bed of William IV at Windsor to announce to the little Princess in Kensington Palace her accession, the Archbishop begged a bunch of sweet peas for his royal mistress from old Jamie whose garden was close Andrew Grant, during his career as a clergyman, was called upon to select with even more discrimination and rigour than his father before him. He had first to make up his mind that When Archdeacon Grant was consecrated, he had to find a suitable episcopal residence, and this was not at all easy to find in South London. At last, however, he secured the long lease of a retired merchant's Gothic mansion on Lavender Hill, which after three years of fervid Lenten courses was secured to Holy Church by three appeals to the faithful rich. As soon as the Bishop was firmly installed in Bishop's House, With such a motto it was not surprising that Sholto Grant's refusal to climb should upset his relations. Old Jamie must have dealt with many throwbacks when he was selecting his sweet peas; but it is improbable that any of them refused to climb at all, and though there is now a variety inappropriately called "Cupid" with scarcely more ambition than moss, these dwarfs have a commercial value. Sholto Grant had no commercial value. Sholto indeed had so little sense of profit that he actually failed to arrive in time to see his father die, and if the old gentleman's paternal instinct had not been much developed by his episcopate, and if he had not imbibed every evangelical maxim on the subject of forgiveness, he would probably have cut Sholto off with a shilling. As it During the ten years that had elapsed since then, Sholto had behaved exactly as his family had foreseen that he would behave. He had lost his wife, his money, and then most carelessly his own life, leaving an orphan to be provided for by her relatives. Luckily Sir Hector Grant, because he was the head of the family and because he had climbed a little higher than the rest, was willing to see what could be done with and what could be made of poor Sholto's daughter. Not that the others were slow in coming forward with offers of hospitality. Their letters to Jasmine were a proof of that. But they all felt that Strathspey House was the obvious place for the experiment to begin. Strathspey House occupied what is called a commanding position on the fashionable South Cliff of Spaborough, looking But the claims of exigent ladies were not the only reason that determined Dr. Grant to acquire a house at the seaside. As a prophylactic against his two daughters', Lettice and Pamela, ever reaching the condition in which the majority of his female patients found themselves, their mother, who had an even keener instinct than her husband for the mode, suggested that he should build a house in the country, choosing a design that could be added to year by year as his fame and fortune increased. But when Mrs. Grant suggested building, the doctor replied, "Fools, May, build houses for wise men to live in," and forthwith bought Strathspey House to conclude the discussion. In this case the fool was a Huddersfield manufacturer whose fortunes had collapsed in some industrial earthquake and left him saddled with a double-fronted, four-storied, porticoed house, in which he had planned to meditate for many years on a successful business career put behind him. Actually he spent his declining years in a small boarding-house on the unfashionable north side of Spaborough, where he existed in a miserable obscurity, except as often as he could persuade a fellow-pensioner to walk with him all the way up to South Parade for the purpose of admiring the exterior of the house that had once been his—a habit, by the way, that vexed the new owner extremely, but for which, under the laws of England, he could discover no satisfactory remedy. It is scarcely necessary to add that the Huddersfield manufacturer never called it Strathspey House. That was Dr. Grant's way of saying "My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer," for it was down the dim glens of Strathspey that the prehistoric Grants had hunted in the mists of antiquity. Although Mrs. Grant had never tried to persuade her husband "Yes, perhaps it was a mistake to settle so definitely in Spaborough," he admitted to his wife. "But it's too late to begin building now. You and the girls won't want to keep up an establishment when I'm gone. Extraordinary thing that Ellen"—Ellen was his only sister—"should have six boys. However," he went on hurriedly, "we mustn't grumble." The result of having no heir was that Sir Hector had to make the most of his title in his own lifetime, and he used to carry it about with him everywhere as a miner carries his gold. Journeys which a long and successful life should have made arduous at fifty-eight were now sweetened by his being able to register himself in hotel books as Hector Grant, Bart. Once a malevolent wit added an S to the Bart, in allusion to the hospital that produced him, and Sir Hector, gloating over the hotel book next morning, was so much shocked that he insisted upon the abbreviation Bt. ever afterwards. It was the second time that verbal ingenuity had made free with his titles. For his voluntary services to his country during the Boer war as consulting physician—people used to say that he had been called in to pronounce upon the sanity of the British generals on active service—he was made a Companion of the Bath, and when soon after appeared Traumatic Neuroses. By Hector Grant, C.B., one reviewer suggested that the initials should be put the other way round, so old and out of date were the distinguished doctor's theories. In appearance Sir Hector was extremely tall, extremely thin, extremely fair, with prominent bright blue eyes and a nodulous complexion. His manner, except with his wife and daughters, was masterful. Old maids spoke of his magnetism: women He was once approached by the proprietors of a famous whisky for permission to put his portrait if not on the bottle at least on the invoice. Although he felt bound to refuse, the compliment to his typically Caledonian appearance pleased him, and now on his holiday, in a suit of homespun with an old cap stuck over with flies, Sir Hector regretted that the necessity for keeping one hand in his patients' pockets prevented his setting more than one foot upon his native heath, and even that one foot only figuratively. Lady Grant, who had been the only daughter of a retired paper-maker and had brought her husband some two thousand pounds a year, was at fifty a tall fair woman with cheeks that formerly might not unludicrously have been compared to carnations, but which now with their network of little crimson lines were more like picotees. She was one of those women whom it is impossible to imagine with nothing on. Inasmuch as she changed her clothes three times a day, went to bed at night, got up in the morning, and in fact behaved as a woman of flesh and blood does behave, it was obvious that she and her clothes were not really one and indivisible. Yet so solid Lady Grant had grumbled a good deal about her niece's arrival; actually she was looking forward to it. Several people had told her how splendid it was of her, and how like her it was to be so ready, and what a wonderful thing it would be for the niece. In fact in the ever-widening circle of her aunt's acquaintance Jasmine had already reached the dimensions of a large charitable organization. For some time Lady Grant had been protecting a poor cousin of her own, a Miss Edith Crossfield, who was so obviously an object for charity that the glory of being kind to her was rather dimmed. Miss Crossfield was so poor and so humble and so worthy that her ladyship would have had to own a heart as impassive as her nose not to have protected her. At first it had been interesting to impress poor Edith; but as time went on poor Edith proved so willing to be impressed by the least action of dear May that it became no longer very interesting to impress her. Moreover, now that she was the wife of a baronet, Lady Grant was not sure that it reflected creditably upon her to have such a poor relation. There was no romance in Edith; to speak bluntly, even harshly, she gave the show away. No, Edith must find herself lodgings somewhere in a nice unfashionable seaside town and be content with a pension. Sholto's existence in Sirene, his romantic and unfortunate marriage, his career as a painter, his death in the Bay of Salerno, such a history added to the family past, and if poor Jasmine would be more expensive Lady Grant's daughters were tall blondes in their mid-twenties who had always hated each other, and whose hatred had never been relieved by being able to disparage each other's appearance, owing to their both looking exactly alike. They too, perhaps, were fairly pleased at the notion of Jasmine's arrival, because Cousin Edith was no use at all as a contrast to themselves; she merely lay untidily about the house like a duster left behind by a careless maid. Pamela and Lettice wanted to get married well and quickly; but since either was afraid of the other's getting married first, it began to seem as if neither of them would get married at all. Their passion was golf, and it was a pity that the pre-matrimonial methods of savages were not in vogue on the Spaborough links; Lettice and Pamela would have willingly been hit on the head by a suitor's golf club if they could have found themselves married on returning to consciousness. Such was the family to whose bosom Jasmine was being jogged along through the lamp-lit dusk of Spaborough. It may be easily imagined that Lady Grant, after taking the trouble to send Nuckett with the car to meet her niece's arrival at Spaborough, was not pleased to find that she had driven up to Strathspey House behind an orange postilion. "Didn't you see Nuckett?" she asked of Jasmine, whose attempt to kiss her aunt had been rather like biting hard on a soft pink sweet and finding nougat or some such adamantine substance within. Jasmine, wondering who Nuckett might be, assured her aunt that she had not seen him. "Which means that he will wait down there for the 9.38. Hector!" she called to her husband, who was at that moment Sir Hector recoiled from the kiss, blew out his cheeks, and looked at his niece with the expression he reserved for wantonly hysterical young girls. There ensued a long discussion of the methods of communication with Nuckett, during which Jasmine's spirits, temporarily exhilarated by the ride behind the orange postilion, sank lower than at any point on the journey. Nor were they raised by the entrance of her two cousins, who were looking at her as if one of the servants had upset a bottle of ink which had to be mopped up before they could advance another step. At last the problem of Nuckett's evening was solved by entrusting the postilion with authority to recall him. "You mustn't bother to dress for dinner to-night," conceded Lady Grant, apparently swept by a sudden gust of benevolence. "Pamela dear, take Jasmine to her room, will you?" "Do you get much golf in Sirene?" enquired Pamela on the way upstairs. Jasmine stared at her, or rather she opened wide her eyes in alarm, which had the effect of a stare on her cousin. "No, I've never played golf." It was Pamela's turn to stare now in frank horror at this revelation. "Never played golf?" she repeated. "What did you do at home then?" "I played picquet sometimes with father." This was too much for Pamela, who could think of nothing more to say than that this was a chest of drawers and that that was a wardrobe, after which, with a hope for the success of her ablutions, she left Jasmine to herself. Presently a maid tapped at the door. "Please, miss, her ladyship would like to know where you would prefer the packing-cases put." "Oh, couldn't you bring them up here?" Jasmine asked eagerly. "That is, of course," she added, "if it isn't too much trouble." The maid protested that it would be no trouble at all; but her looks belied her speech. "And if you could bring them up at once," added Jasmine quickly, "I should be very much obliged." She had a plan in her head for softening her relatives, the successful carrying out of which involved having the crates in her room. After a few minutes they arrived. "I'm afraid I can't open them with my umbrella," she said. She was not being facetious, for in her impetuousness she had tried, and broken the umbrella. "I wonder if you could find me a screw-driver?" "Oh yes, miss, I daresay I could find a screw-driver." "And a hammer," shouted Jasmine, rushing out of her room to the landing and calling down the stairs to the housemaid. "I think I shall change my frock all the same," she decided. "Or at any rate I shall unpack; because if I don't unpack now, I shall never unpack." In order not to lose the inspiration, Jasmine began to unpack with such rapidity that presently the room looked like the inside of a clothes-basket. Then she undressed with equal rapidity, mixing up washed clothes with unwashed clothes in her efforts to find a clean chemise. She found several chemises, but by this time it was impossible to say which or if any of them were clean, and when the housemaid came back with the "I say, I wonder if you could lend me a chemise. And, I say, what is your name?" The housemaid winced at the request; but the traditions of service were too strong for her, and with no more than the last vibrations of a tremor in her voice, she replied: "Oh yes, miss, I daresay I could find you a chemise. And, please, I'm called Hopkins, miss." "Yes, but what's your other name?" "Amanda, miss." "What a pretty name!" "Yes, miss," the housemaid agreed after a moment's hesitation. "But it's not considered a suitable name for service, and her ladyship gave orders when I came that I was to be called Hopkins." "Well, I shall call you Amanda," said Jasmine decidedly. No doubt Hopkins thought that a young lady who was capable of borrowing a chemise from a housemaid was capable of calling her by her Christian name, and since she did not wish to encourage her ladyship's niece to thwart her ladyship's express wishes, she hurried away without replying. While Hopkins was out of the room Jasmine attacked the crates, tearing them to pieces with her slim, brown, boyish hands as a monkey sheds a coconut. Then she took out the pictures and set them up round the room in coigns of vantage, two or three on the bed, one leaning against the looking-glass, one supported between the jug and the basin, and several more on chairs. This happened in the days before the Germans bombarded Spaborough and destroyed its tonic reputation; but between that date and this no room in Spaborough could have "Never mind, Amanda; I've found one." "Oh yes, miss, but please, miss, with your permission I'd prefer you called me Hopkins. I wouldn't like it to be said I was going against her ladyship's wishes in private." "Well, I like Amanda," persisted Jasmine obstinately. "Yes, miss, and it's very kind of you to say so, I'm sure, and it would have pleased my mother very much. But her ladyship particularly passed the remark that she had a norrer of fancy names, so perhaps you'd be kind enough to call me Hopkins." "All right," agreed Jasmine, who, having only just arrived at Strathspey House, found it hard to sympathize with such servility. "But look here, the washing-stand's all covered with chips and nails. What shall I do?" A moral struggle took place in Hopkins' breast, a struggle between the consciousness that dinner must inevitably be ready in five minutes and the consciousness that she ought to show Miss Grant where the bathroom was. In the end cleanliness defeated godliness—for punctuality was the god of Strathspey House—and she proposed a bath. "No, miss," the housemaid agreed doubtfully. After seeing Jasmine's room security of location had somehow come to mean less to Hopkins; in fact she said, when she got back to the kitchen: "I give you my word, cook, I didn't know where I was." It was a wonderful bath, and while Sir Hector downstairs kept taking his watch out of his pocket—with every passing minute it slid out more easily—Jasmine spent a quarter of an hour in delicious oblivion. At the end of it, Pamela came tapping at the door to tell her that dinner was ready, if she was. Jasmine was so full of water-warmed feelings that she leaped out of the bath, flung open the door, and all dripping wet and naked as she was assured her cousin that she herself was just ready. "Is the island of Sirene inhabited by savages?" asked Pamela superciliously when she brought back news to the anxious dining-room. This was considered a witty remark. Even Lettice smiled, for she already despised her cousin more than she hated her sister. "And now," said Jasmine to herself when another quarter of an hour had gone by and she was dressed, "and now which picture shall I give them?" She pulled down the cord of the electric light to illuminate better her choice, pulled it down so far that it would not go up again, but stayed hovering above the billowy floor like a sea-bird about to alight upon a wave. It was easy, or difficult, to choose for presentation one of Sholto Grant's pictures, because in subject and treatment they were all much alike. In "I ought to have warned you that in the country we always dine at half-past seven. It was my fault," said Lady Grant. Penitence is usually as unconvincing as gratitude, and certainly nobody in the room, from Jasmine to Hargreaves the parlourmaid waiting to announce dinner, supposed for a moment that her ladyship was really assuming responsibility for the long wait. "I thought perhaps you might like one of father's pictures," Jasmine began. "Oh dear me ... oh yes," hemmed Lady Grant, who, to do her justice, did not want to hurt her niece's feelings, but who felt that the lusciousness of the scene presented might be too much for her husband's appetite. Sir Hector, craning at the picture, asked what the principal figure was holding in her basket. "Cherries, aren't they?" suggested Lettice. "Ah, yes, so they are," her father agreed. "Cherries.... Precisely.... Come, come, we mustn't let the soup get cold. The dessert can wait." On the wings of a dreary little titter they moved toward the dining-room; Sir Hector, leading the way like a turkey-cock "Poor old Sholto. We must get it framed." |