Susan Settles Down

by Molly Clavering

  The afternoon wore on, the lanterns were fitted with candles and hung in dining-room and hall. The Infantry returned from their outing with cold, rosy cheeks, and were led quickly upstairs by Jo-an, lest the temptation to take “just one peep” at the hidden delights in the dining-room should prove too much for them. Peggy was changing into the brown velvet dress which suited her soft colouring so well when she heard the front-door bell ring, and then a man’s voice in the hall. Presently Agnes came to her, smiling broadly.

  “It’s Commander Parsons, Miss Peggy. He says he’s a’ alane at Easter Hartrigg, and I was tae ask ye can he come tae the pairty?”

  “Oh!” Peggy’s heart jumped absurdly. “Tell him of course he can, Agnes, and I’ll be down in a minute.” But she lingered, staring unseeingly at her reflection in her dressing-table mirror, her soft lips parted, her cheeks aflame, her breath coming fast. Oliver . . .

  3

  After it was all over, and the Infantry had gone to bed, taking their apples, from which they refused to be parted, with them, Peggy stood at the dining-room window and looked out. It was a wonderful evening, just right for Hallowe’en, with stars freckling the frosty sky, a smell of coming snow in the air, and mingled with it the harsh yet pleasant scent of a bonfire where someone in the village had been burning garden-rubbish. Peggy knew that the party had been a success. The Infantry had loved it, Oliver had enjoyed it openly, and she herself had felt that for her it had been the pinnacle towards which all the Hallowe’en parties she could remember from babyhood had been climbing. Oliver at her side, gay and friendly, his fingers touching hers as he gave her the silver fork when her turn came to spear an apple from the bobbing mass in the wooden tub. . . . Oliver playing with the children, helping her to hand out fruit and nuts and cake to the guizards who came shyly into the hall, their eyes shining horribly out of cork-blackened faces in the light. . . . Oliver carrying Bun and Cilly up to bed one under each arm, while the gurgling Colin was borne before them by Jo-an. . . . Oliver, finally, holding her hand when she said good night to him at the door, and telling her that it had been one of the best evenings he had ever known. They had crossed the boundary between acquaintanceship and friendship in those few hours, had advanced into a pleasant intimacy which was very sweet. Peggy, gazing at the sky trembling with stars, hoped passionately that they would never go back. To go on might mean something which she could not bring herself to hope even in her innermost thoughts, since she felt childishly that to do so would break a spell; but the possibility was there, she knew, as sure as the seven stars of the Plough overhead.

  At last she turned to go back to the warm little study, where the firelight played on the sober bindings of her father’s theological books and made the dulled gold lettering of their titles bright. She was sitting there, making a pretence of knitting a bed-jacket for the Women’s Guild, when Jo-an came and stood in the doorway.

  “I’m for my bed, Miss Peggy,” she said in the muted voice which always sounded as if a more passionate note was throbbing behind it. “The bairns are a’ fast asleep.”

  “All right, Jo-an. Did you leave the back-door unlocked for Agnes?”

  “Yes, Miss Peggy.”

  “Didn’t you want to go out yourself?” asked Peggy on a sudden impulse. “When it’s Hallowe’en?”

  Jo-an shook her head. “Na, Miss Peggy. I’d suner be wi’ the bairns.”

  “And yet—you’re leaving them to-morrow?”

  A sort of spasm twisted the small secret face. “Ay.”

  “Wouldn’t you—” Peggy had summoned up all her courage. “Wouldn’t you change your mind and stay, Jo-an? I know Mrs. Cunningham would be glad—”

  Again the girl shook her head. “I canna, Miss Peggy. Oh, dinna say ony mair! But I’ll need tae gang.”

  “Oh, well!” Peggy sighed. It was useless to go on. “I’m, sorry. Good night, Jo-an.”

  The door shut quietly, and she was alone again, but the glow which had wanned her thoughts had lost something of its first splendour.

  Jo-an went slowly upstairs to her little room opening off a larger one where the children slept. She passed quickly through without a glance at the two small beds or Colin’s crib, and shut herself into her own room. The blind was up and a late-rising moon shone coldly in. On the chest-of-drawers was an apple which Bun had pressed into her hand, a spot of glowing colour on the coarse crochet mat. Jo-an looked at it, then at her mirror, and a faint derisive smile curved her small set mouth. Eating apples before the glass was not for her; it was a childish ploy at best, and she had no longer any heart for that sort of thing. And yet she hesitated, and even while she began slowly to untie the strings of her white apron, she looked at the apple again. After all, it was an old custom, and even if there was nothing in it, where was the harm?

  She threw her apron on to the bed, picked up the apple, and holding it in her hand, went towards the mirror. The sight of her pale reflection, dimly seen by the light of one candle and the moonbeams, seemed to mock her superstition. Defiantly she began to eat the apple, her strong teeth biting through red skin and crisp white flesh, her eyes fixed on the glass. The room was cold, and she shivered as she ate: it was growing darker, too, for her image seemed fainter. Something was coming into sight in the dim glass, something long and black and sinister, growing more distinct with each second that crawled by. At first she could barely see what it was, but now it was quite plain. What was it? What was it? Jo-an gave a strangled cry, and as the apple fell from her shaking hand, she slid to the floor and lay there quite still.

  Peggy heard the cry from the study below, and ran upstairs, her feet winged by a strange fear.

  “Jo-an!” she called softly as she ran. “Jo-an!”

  There was no answer. She saw at once that the children were still sleeping soundly, and opened the door of the inner room.

  Faint yellow flickering of a single candle striving with the white light of the moon, showed her the crumpled figure on the floor. She did not lose her head. She seized a towel, wetted one end of it at the ewer on the wash-stand, and dabbed Jo-an’s forehead, already damp with sweat. In a very short space of time, though to Peggy in her alarm it seemed ages, the unconscious girl shuddered and opened wild eyes.

  “Na! Na!” she moaned. “I didna see it! I didna see that!”

  “Hush, Jo-an. You’ll waken Colin.” It was all Peggy could think of to quiet her, and it had its effect. Almost at once Jo-an became mistress of herself, the terror was wiped from her face as if it had been removed by the towel still in Peggy’s hand.

  “What is it? Are you ill?” asked Peggy in a low voice.

  Jo-an essayed a smile. “I doot I’ve had an ower guid Hallowe’en, Miss Peggy,” she said in a whisper, and staggered to her feet. But she still looked ghastly, and catching sight of the mirror, began to shudder again.

  “I’ll make you some tea,” said Peggy. “We’ll both have a cup. Come down to the study where it’s warm.”

  When a little colour had flowed back to Jo-an’s cheeks and she had drunk two cups of strong hot tea, Peggy said to her quietly, but with a firmness that surprised herself, “You’d better tell me what’s the matter. Even if I can’t help it always does you good to tell, and nothing is as bad once you’ve spoken of it.”

  For a moment, meeting the other girl’s eyes, she thought she had won, that Jo-an was about to unburden herself of her secret trouble. But the moment passed and nothing was said, and after a pause, when Jo-an spoke, it was only to say, with her gaze fixed obstinately on the floor as if studying the well-worn carpet, “It’s naething, Miss Peggy. Dinna fash yersel’. I had a—a pain, nae mair. . . .”

  It was hopeless. “I’m sorry,” Peggy said. “I think you’d better sleep in the second bed in Agnes’s room to-night. She won’t mind.”

  A look of relief passed over Jo-an’s face, and she made no demur. Long after she had fallen asleep, lulled by the placid and unsurprised company of Agnes, Peggy lay awake, startled and worried. Finally
she got up, and putting on a dressing-gown and slippers, crept soft-footed to Jo-an’s little room.

  The blind was still undrawn, the moonlight still fell on a corner of the room as if unwilling to leave it. Peggy’s foot touched something hard, which rolled off a rug and across the bare floor towards the dressing-table. She set down her candle and picked up the hard object: it was an apple, half-eaten. Puzzled, she looked at it. Jo-an must have been eating it when she fainted. But why should an apple cause such a thing? Suddenly she found herself staring at the mirror, which stared back at her, blank save for her own reflection. Peggy felt as if an ice-cold hand had been laid on the nape of her neck. Hallowe’en, the apple, Jo-an’s terror, the now sinister looking-glass. . . . Could the girl have imagined she had seen something, a thing so appalling that she had fallen where she stood? It was ridiculous to suppose it in the nineteen-thirties; and yet—strange things happened on Hallowe’en. . . . People had seen dreadful portents in their mirrors. . . . For the first time Peggy felt almost relieved to think that Jo-an was going away. She was uncanny, not like other people . . .

  There was snow during the night, and they awoke to a wintry grey and white world. Jo-an, insisting that she was quite well, left early, walking away down the drive in a soft flurry of flakes. She did not look back once. Peggy knew that though before last night she had not wanted to go, now she was glad to be leaving the Manse. She would never have slept in her little room off the nursery again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1

  Winter came in with November, bringing a shrewish nip to the air, wreathing Cheviots and Lammermuirs deep in snow, and sending rude winds to bang at doors and windows, or howl desolately down the chimneys. Wonderful sunsets of angry red and purple set the skies ablaze behind the black leafless trees every evening, lamps were lighted and curtains drawn by tea-time. The hawthorn hedges were gay with their rich crimson fruit which the birds, looking chill and pinched, ate thankfully; among the glossy leaves of the hollies the berries were already glowing in preparation for Christmas. The world outside the immediate neighbourhood seemed to have receded to a great distance, which newspapers, the daily post, and the wireless only served to intensify. In its winter isolation the countryside did not go to sleep, like a squirrel or hedgehog, only to rouse itself when spring came round again. As if everyone had drawn closer to a cheerful fee, this rural life was only enriched by the narrowing of its boundaries.

  Deprived of the amusements which during the longer, finer days took people so much farther afield, the villages of Muirfoot and Kaleford, the little town of Abbeyshiels, seemed to become one large family, busied with local entertainments and activities. This was the season when Boy Scout troops and Girl Guide companies flourished, and the roads were apt to be dangerously thronged by infant girls in brown, hopping like wrens towards their Brownie meetings. This was the season when Miss Pringle’s Literary Club was galvanized into a frenzied outpouring of works more or less inspired, when concerts in aid of various deserving objects were organized. Mr. Cunningham’s Guild for the young men of his parish met weekly in a disused cottage, to debate solemnly on topics of international importance with all the Scots fondness for intellectual argument which has not yet died out in spite of the influence of the cinema. Once a week, too, the Women’s Guild sat in the Manse drawing-room, plying needles and tongues with equal industry under the direction of Peggy and her cheerfully indefatigable mother.

  Nor were more ambitious efforts wanting, in Abbeyshiels at least, where the Dramatic Club were reported to be rehearsing a three-act play, and where the strains of Gilbert and Sullivan, issuing from a church hall, proclaimed that the Amateur Operatic Society was hard at work on Patience.

  Finally, there was a mysterious institution known as The Looral, of which Mrs. Davidson the postmistress was a pillar. For some time Susan did not dare to expose her ignorance by asking what the name meant, in case it might be some dark masonic sisterhood which scorned to reveal its secrets to the uninitiated. But on discovering that Donaldina was a member of the Muirfoot branch, the same over which Mrs. Davidson presided, she braved ridicule one morning, and said:

  “Donaldina, what exactly is ‘The Looral?’”

  As she had feared, Donaldina looked faintly astonished, but replied politely, “It’s whit they ca’ the Weemen’s Looral Institute, mem.”

  “Oh!” said Susan, a great light breaking upon her. Once she had heard the translation, she wondered how she had been so dense as not to guess it before. She felt that she ought to have been prepared for any little idiosyncrasy on the part of a people who, while never dropping an H, yet invariably rendered “Helen” as “Ellen,” and talked cheerfully about a Jumbo Sale without any ironic reference to the possible white elephants they might buy at it. . . . Whatever its name, The Looral had a fine following in the district, and its douce meetings were always well attended by the wives of lonely herds and ploughmen in the more remote places of the neighbourhood.

  Topics of conversation narrowed with the interests, and also tended to come nearer home. Mrs. Cunningham’s hens and their prodigious laying capacities, the Miss Pringles’ progress in home crafts—for they had taken to leather-work and pen-painting—Susan’s literary efforts, were freely discussed in one circle. In another, village tongues clacked of Mrs. Davidson-at-the-post-office’s new teeth, which gleamed like Oriental pearls, a really startling display in her brown nut-cracker face; of the arrival of a ninth lusty infant at Buckhaugh Mains, and of other matters of note. Above all, the matrimonial prospects, real or rumoured, of every single young woman, every eligible man, formed by far the most engrossing subject wherever women neighbours met. The men had their own talk in smoking-room or bar, bothy or market-place: deep-voiced chat of the lately-gathered harvest, shooting, hunting, poaching, the price of beasts at this sale or that, the lambing outlook for the coming season. But no woman supposed for a moment that these could be so all-absorbing as their own questions.

  Muirfoot gossip did not lack material near at hand, for Peggy Cunningham’s name was cropping up rather frequently at any gathering from which she and her mother were absent. At first it was all very good-natured, but presently a more malicious tone began to be noticeable, particularly when Miss Pringle was about. Vague rumours floated through the district, rumours which Miss Pringle and her immediate circle of cronies piously hoped would never come to the ears of Peggy’s parents, while they lost no opportunity of spreading them by portentous head-shakes, sighs, and sentences left tantalizingly unfinished. Peggy had been seen with that rather ne’er-do-well young Graham at odd hours and in lonely places, obviously meeting him without her parents’ knowledge or consent. True, Ronald Graham had now left Abbeyshiels for Manchester, but Miss Pringle was afraid that the mischief had been done. Had no one noticed how Commander Parsons had given up going to the Manse? No doubt he had heard something. Of course Peggy was now much to be seen with a dashing young surgeon, fresh from one of the big London hospitals, who had come as partner and assistant to his uncle, old Doctor Scott at Kaleford; but that would not last. When Hugh Collier heard about young Graham, he would desert Peggy as suddenly as that delightful Commander Parsons had. “Poor Peggy. Very foolish of her, and such a pity!” the gossips would wind up, wagging their heads above their tea-cups.

  Poor Peggy, indeed. She was going through a difficult time, nor could she remain unaware of the fact that her name was constantly on the lips of Miss Pringle and her intimates. It was quite true that Oliver, who had been an almost daily caller at the Manse for some weeks after the Hallowe’en party, was now seldom seen there.

  Mr. Cunningham commented on this not once but many times. “He seemed to be taking such an interest in the Young Men’s Guild,” he lamented. “That was a fine talk he gave on ‘Life in the Royal Navy.’ And now he never comes near us. What can be the matter, do you think, Grace?”

  “He’s probably kept busy at Wanside, James,” his wife would reply, and Peggy felt grateful for this plausible
explanation. She was more than thankful that her father and mother had no suspicion as to the real cause of Oliver’s absence, thankful that they heard nothing of the reports fostered by Miss Pringle; but she felt desperately alone. Had Susan been at hand she would probably have confided in her, but Susan was away in England, paying a round of visits. So Peggy hid her troubles, held her head high, and out of bravado encouraged the attentions of young Hugh Collier. And Oliver became more and more distant. He had retreated so far that their friendship, begun on the evening of Jed’s dinner-party at Reiverslaw, might have been a figment of her own imagination.

  Peggy sometimes even wondered if it had not. Then, as she recalled the reason for his withdrawal, she knew again that the friendship had existed, had begun to blossom into something rarer and more precious—until that last unfortunate encounter had killed it.

  Not without misgiving had she decided upon speaking to Ronald Graham, about Jo-an, and not without difficulty had she arranged a meeting with him. For Ronald, once so eager to waylay her after choir-practice and on Sunday afternoons, now showed an elusiveness which she knew to be spiteful. Peggy had plenty of spirit, and the very fact that he avoided her made her the more determined to have it out with him. Finally he agreed to meet her, but at his own time, and in a place of his choosing.