Susan Settles Down

by Molly Clavering

  “Not a bit, but you seem a little distraught. What’s the matter, Peggy? Anything you can tell me?”

  “Yes, oh, yes. I came here to tell you,” she said.

  “It was those horrible Pringles. It would be rather funny if it weren’t so annoying.”

  “A good many things about the Miss Pringles would be funny if they weren’t annoying!”

  “Perhaps I’m only being interfering, but I didn’t want them to come and tell you, and watch like three elderly vultures to see how you’d take it—”

  “Take what?” Susan asked in some bewilderment.

  “Well—” Peggy drew a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of Mrs. Holden?”

  Susan frowned a little, thinking. “I seem to have heard the name,” she said, “but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Who is this Mrs. Holden?”

  “She’s—well, Uncle Jed and she were once engaged, ages ago, or they had an understanding, whatever that may be. It’s the sort of thing that never is understood, isn’t it? Anyhow, she married a Mr. Holden instead, and he has been an invalid for years—Miss Pringle told mother that he can’t possibly live much longer. Some friend who must be as great a gossip as Bell herself, told her. . . . Anyhow, Mrs. Holden comes and stays at Reiverslaw every now and then, with an ancient deaf cousin as a chaperone. They’re to be here for the Races—this is Miss Pringle again. Uncle Jed has never looked at another woman, and now Miss Pringle is sure that Mr. Holden will soon die, and she—Mrs. Holden, I mean, will marry Uncle Jed at last, and he’ll live happily ever after, etcetera.”

  “I see. Well, it’s all very romantic, though perhaps a little premature on Miss Pringle’s part, to say nothing of the cold-bloodedness of arranging a second marriage for a woman before she is a widow,” said Susan dryly. “What I don’t see, Peggy, is where I am concerned in this.”

  “This is the difficult part. I hope you’ll laugh at it,” Peggy said a little apprehensively. “You see, Miss Pringle thinks that you are getting too fond of Uncle Jed, seeing such a lot of him, and that you ought to be told there’s no hope for you!”

  There was a silence, and then Susan laughed with such whole-hearted merriment that Peggy gave a sigh of relief.

  “Oh, Peggy, Peggy! What an exquisite joke! I’m so glad you summoned up your courage and told me! Does Miss Pringle really think that because I’ve been involved in two or three perfectly ridiculous escapades by the man that I’ve fallen in love with him? I couldn’t have believed that credulity could possibly go to such lengths!”

  “She does indeed,” said Peggy with conviction. “Of course this is funny—but Susan, I do think; she’s a dangerous woman. I do really.”

  “I rather agree with you, but fortunately in this case she can’t do much harm, can she? Now let’s talk of something pleasanter. Tell me what Mr. Armstrong’s Mrs. Holden is like. Is she a very attractive person? Is she nice?”

  “She’s awfully attractive,” said Peggy slowly. “But I don’t care for her, somehow. Perhaps you’ll like her. . . . And, of course, she isn’t nearly good enough for Uncle Jed.”

  “Ah, but would you think anyone good enough for him?” asked Susan lightly, and before Peggy could reply she went on: “You are prejudiced in his favour, like Mrs. Robertson, his grieve’s wife, who thinks there is ‘naebody like the maister.’ She sang his praises so loudly the other day when I went up to Reiverslaw to see her, that I could hardly get a word in edgeways. And talking of Mrs. Robertson reminds me that I saw Jo-an the other day, out walking. I love that girl’s name, like an old song. How is she getting on as nursemaid to your Infantry?”

  “Jo-an,” said Peggy, and her blue eyes were troubled, “Jo-an has given a month’s notice. She’s leaving at the end of October.”

  “The silly girl! I wonder what her parents will say. I know that Mrs. Robertson is delighted that she should be at the Manse. What reason does she give for leaving, Peggy?”

  “Only that she’s tired of service and wants a change. I’m worried about her. I thought she had settled down with us, and would go south with the Infantry to the Richardsons. She is fond of them, especially Colin.”

  “She is a strange girl,” Susan said thoughtfully. “I never saw such a secret face as hers. But it’s no use your worrying about her, Peggy, for she will never stay long in any one place, even her own home. She is restless by nature, I fancy.”

  Peggy stirred uneasily in her chair. “There’s something about Jo-an that frightens me,” she said suddenly. “As if she weren’t quite—quite human, Susan.”

  Susan nodded. “A changeling? Yes. She made me think of that the first time I saw her. But I think we’re both being rather fanciful. Probably it’s just the restlessness and discontent of the age, and die is a normal young woman really. If she is at home after she leaves the Manse, I’ll have her down here instead of her mother to help Donaldina once or twice a week. Would that relieve your mind at all?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Peggy like a polite child. She was not yet easy in her mind, but she had found it impossible to tell Susan any more. To speak of Jo-an visiting the haunted wood was merely being more fanciful than ever. . . .

  “We’ll have tea. I hear the men coming,” and Susan rang the bell.

  Oliver, calling loudly for hot scones, tramped in with Jed Armstrong. Their cheeks were wind-reddened, their shoes muddy, and with their arrival came a robust air of common sense, before which fancies fled away like cobwebs blown by a strong wind.

  Looking at Jed as he ate and drank with serious zest, or rumbled out his few remarks in a good-natured growl, Susan found it very hard to believe that he was the victim of an unhappy love-affair; but then, of course, most people wore masks in self-defence, when all was said. She herself . . . “but that was over, long ago. It’s finished, done with. I don’t need the mask now, it’s just habit to wear it,” she told herself. Aloud she said:

  “Are you going to the Races, Peggy?”

  “No, I’m not allowed to. You see, being a minister’s daughter makes it a bit difficult,” explained Peggy, blushing under Oliver’s gaze of interest and astonishment. She held her head up in spite of the shyness which always embarrassed her now in his presence, and returning his look with her own candid glance, continued bravely: “As mother won’t even allow a cushion or a cake to be raffled at the Guild Sale in case it encourages gambling, I could hardly be seen at the Races by members of the congregation, could I?”

  “Hardly,” Oliver agreed quite gravely, for which she could have thanked him. “Never mind, we can do lots of other things just as amusing. We’ve got a man coming to stay, an old shipmate of mine, and a boyfriend of Susan’s into the bargain, and we’ll make whoopee together. Won’t we, Susan?”

  “I haven’t a doubt that when you and Charles once get together, we shall,” said Susan, laughing.

  Not the flicker of an eyelid betrayed that she had anything but a friendly interest in this unknown Charles to whom her brother alluded so easily as her “boyfriend.” Peggy thought that Jo-an was not the only person she knew who had a secret face. There was a difference, and she puzzled it out to her own satisfaction while the talk went on round her at the tea-table. Certainly there was a difference. Even if Jo-an had nothing behind that face except a mind empty of thought, she would still look secret as the Sphinx: Susan’s habitual expression of tolerant amusement was the result of years of practice; she wore it for protection.

  “Peggy’s miles away!” Oliver was saying, and she came to herself with a start, blinking like a baby owl.

  “I’m sorry. I was thinking,” she said.

  “I know. It takes me like that too, sometimes. But you should be careful, you know. Fearful strain on the mind, thinking,” said Oliver, with every appearance of kindly sympathy.

  “Pay no attention to him, Peggy,” advised Susan. “He’s only trying to be funny.”

  Peggy’s blush had faded by this time. “I thought he was,” she answered demurely.

  Everyone laughed, b
ut Oliver’s eyes had a look of respect mingled with the amusement, and Peggy left Easter Hartrigg feeling that she had made a small start towards levelling the score between them. In fact, she was beginning to know how to deal with men.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1

  “It really is terribly nice to see you again, Charles,” said Susan, breaking in upon the Service gossip which had kept both men talking hard since the beginning of dinner.

  Charles Crawley turned his head quickly to look at her, saw the open affection and pleasure in her eyes, and answered in his soft voice: “Thank you, darling. That’s very sweet of you.”

  His glance travelled round the room, skimmed over Oliver, seated alert and cheerful at the head of the table, and returned to Susan’s face. “I like your house,” he said.

  “’Umble but ’omely, Mr. Crawley, sir,” said Oliver. “We like it too. Don’t we, Susan?”

  “We do,” answered Susan. “We love the whole place.” This time her eyes, as they met Charles’s, held a look of challenge, as if daring him to disagree or disbelieve.

  Dinner was over, but the three still lingered at table in the soft light shed by four green candles in tall silver sticks. A bowl of apples, another of green grapes, glowed brilliant as jewels above the dark surface of the polished wood, which faithfully reflected their rounded contours. Susan sat in a high-backed chair with arms, her dress of darkest green velvet shining where the light was spilled over it, her soft hair pushed back behind her ears and curling at the nape of her white neck. She felt happy, and her eyes had lost their gravity and smiled with her lips. It was good to see Oliver in such spirits, for she had been half-afraid that seeing Charles again might bring back too poignant memories of the life which he no longer shared with his best friend. That it had not was plain to see, for his dark face was alight, his eyes sparkled, and he spoke without a trace of regret of old days. . . . It was good, too, to have Charles at Easter Hartrigg, handsome Charles, the exact opposite of Oliver in looks, with his fair hair, his long blue eyes, and the absurd youthfulness of appearance which often misled strangers into thinking him a very junior officer indeed, instead of a Lieutenant Commander. He was her own kind, she could talk to him, and she only realized now how much she had missed him during the months which had slipped away since their last meeting.

  “Are you awfully huntin’—shootin’—fishin’ nowadays?” asked Charles later, when they were gathered close to a companionable fire of logs in the sitting-room.

  Susan laughed. “I’m not, anyhow. Oliver does a little desultory shooting, but that’s about as far as it goes. The best people, of course—or so Miss Pringle assured me, go in for all three, but we certainly couldn’t afford to hunt even if we knew how.”

  “Jed Armstrong, our nearest neighbour, wants us to go and shoot with him one day,” said Oliver, stirring the fire until a shower of golden sparks flew up the chimney. “You’ll like him.”

  Charles Crawley once more looked at Susan, and it was to her that he spoke. “You’ve mentioned him in your letters several times, haven’t you?”

  “Probably I have,” Susan answered tranquilly. “We see a good deal of him. He is a great friend of Oliver’s.”

  “We haven’t seen much of him lately,” Oliver reminded her. “I’ve been kept pretty busy at Wanside, and then he’s got this Mrs. Holden staying with him—”

  Susan’s expressive face lighted with interest. “Have you seen her, Oliver? What is she like?”

  “No, I haven’t seen her, but she’ll be at the Races, of course. Judging from the fact that our Miss Pringle doesn’t approve of her, I should say she’d be pretty good value.”

  “I wish you’d tell me who these mysterious females are!” Charles sounded plaintive, but there was a look of relief in his eyes. “This Mrs. Holden, for instance. Is she a girlfriend of your Armstrong, Noll?”

  “More or less,” said Oliver taking a cigarette and pushing the box towards his guest. “At least, rumour says she used to be. Married some other fellow, name of Holden, who’s been in a looney-bin of sorts for years, and isn’t expected to last much longer.”

  “And local public opinion—in other words, the Pringles—is that when her husband dies she’ll return to her first love and become Mrs. Armstrong.”

  “So they’ve got it all taped before the poor devil of a husband is even dead,” said Charles. “Seems a bit previous, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, my dear!” Susan laughed. “Every neighbourhood contains a few industrious persons, highly skilled in the art of making bricks without straw or any other material, and ours is no exception to the rule.”

  “In this case, there actually happens to be a little straw,” Oliver conceded handsomely. “I mean, old Jed was honestly keen on Mrs. Holden—”

  “Well, here’s luck to him, anyhow!” said Charles, so fervently that Susan, who had been going to ask Oliver the reason of his certainty about Jed’s feelings, looked at him in astonishment.

  “Have a drink?” suggested Oliver, and rising, limped over to a small table behind them.

  “Thanks, Noll,” said Charles, and then, meeting Susan’s eyes, added quietly: “Don’t you wish him luck too?”

  “Of course I do. But—you haven’t even seen him yet,” she said.

  “It’s me kind ’eart, duckie. I’ve been in love meself!”

  “‘All the world loves a lover—’” began Olive sententiously, and Susan rose with her quick yet graceful movement.

  “Oliver dear, if you’ve reached the stage of producing antiquated quotations, I’m going to bed. Good night,” she said lightly, and left them.

  2

  “I’m afraid Miss Pringle isn’t pleased with me,” murmured Susan, as that lady greeted them with a bow of extreme hauteur on their arrival at the race-course.

  “What have you been doing?” asked her brother.

  “Well, she sent a postcard inviting herself and the other two to tea, and I sent back a polite telegram full of regrets by James. It was only curiosity. She wanted to see Charles before anyone else did.”

  “My head is bloody but unbowed,” said Oliver cheerfully. “What’s your fancy for the first race?”

  Susan, who had never pretended to any knowledge of the Sport of Kings, would have spent the afternoon quite happily without putting a penny on anything, if it had not been for Oliver’s shocked remonstrances.

  “What on earth’s the good of coming if you aren’t going to back a single horse?” was the conclusion of his somewhat heated harangue, delivered in an undertone in the paddock.

  “I enjoy watching it all,” Susan replied quite unchastened; whereupon her brother groaned aloud and washed his hands of her.

  “After all,” she said to Charles, “I derive just as much pleasure out of a day’s racing as those people who knit their brows over their cards, and confer so importantly with their favourite bookies, or rush frenziedly to and from the tote!”

  The whole countryside had gathered there, from the unemployed of Abbeyshiels and neighbouring towns to that select few known as “the County.” Smart tweeds, fur coats, bowlers, field-glasses hung across immaculate suitings, collected and dispersed in ever-changing groups. The scent of good tobacco from cigar or cigarette mingled with delicate whiffs of French perfumes, and strove with the smell of wet trodden grass. There was a sudden splash of colour as rainbow-tinted jockeys sidled past on horses as sleek, as sinuous, as well-groomed as any fashionable debutante, with the muscles making moving shadows and highlights shimmer on their polished skins.

  It was a day of fight winds which harried the clouds fast across blue sky, of fitful sunshine enamelling the grass, brilliant after a night’s rain. Wherever the humbler enthusiasts had not clustered, the white-painted palings marking the course gleamed against the green. Tears of excitement and pure pleasure filled Susan’s eyes as the horses thundered by to finish the first race. They came, passed, and were gone in a second; flash of colour, dazzling, confused, dizzying; the sound of
hard breathing from flaring nostrils, and that dull, hollow thud of hoofs which, with distant drums, is surely the most heart-stirring in all the world. Deserted long before, at her own request, by Oliver and Charles, Susan remained in one of the stands, entirely content, careless as to the result, since she had nothing to win or lose.

  “Hullo!” Jed Armstrong loomed beside her, field-glasses hanging like an out-sized pendant round his neck. To her astonishment, for she had pictured him in his usual costume of riding-breeches and tweed jacket, he was attired with conventional correctness in a suit, a navy-blue overcoat and a bowler set on at a rakish angle. More surprisingly, these garments did not look in the least incongruous on him.

  “Where’s Oliver? Left you in the lurch?”

  Susan hastened to clear her brother of this charge. “I am hopeless at this sort of thing,” she said. “I don’t even want to bet, and Oliver is indignant and says it’s a sheer waste of money for me to have come at all!”

  “H’m,” he growled. “A pity everyone hadn’t as much sense; I know some people who’ve lost a packet over the last race. But you’ll have to have a little on Dauntless in the next, you know. He’s a local horse, owned and bred by Hepburn of Kelpieha’, and young Wat is riding—”

  “It isn’t a bit of good. I don’t know how,” said Susan. “And the bookies rather terrify me. I’m sure I should pick out a welsher or something, and Oliver would never let me hear the end of it.”

  “You come with me,” said he. “I’ll look after you.” Susan hesitated. She had come to the Races with two men perfectly capable of “looking after” her; and surely Mr. Armstrong ought to be in attendance on his guest, Mrs. Holden. He seemed so unaware that his proper place was not here that she said at last: “What about—Mrs. Holden? Won’t she be wondering where you are?”

  “Not she. She’s with a pack of friends. We lunched with them, and I’m sick of hearing them all squawk.”

  “And I am the lesser of two evils?” said Susan, unable to restrain her laughter, which seemed to puzzle Jed. But she could not very well explain that her amusement was partly due to the construction which the Misses Pringle would undoubtedly place on his kindly intention.