He did dance with everyone, with one notable exception—Peggy was never his partner. In spite of his lame leg and his total ignorance of the intricacies of the dance, he insisted on taking part in the Eightsome Reel.
“A scandalous performance, I call it,” murmured Charles who, with Susan, had discreetly elected to look on. They gazed, appalled, at Oliver as he leapt and pranced like a mountain goat in the middle of the ring, his coat-tails flying. Miss Cissie Pringle, attired in a profusion of somewhat draggled tulle flounces in a girlish shade of blue, had taken the floor with him and was obviously entranced by his activity and verve.
Miss Pringle, herself temporarily partnerless, had come to sit beside Susan and Charles, and now said in her most condescending tones, “Of course, the Eightsome Reel is a mere romp.”
“Have you ever,” said Charles languidly, “been to any of the Northern Meeting balls, Miss Pringle? No? I can assure you that it is not looked upon as a mere romp in Inverness.”
Routed, Miss Pringle took refuge in commenting unfavourably on the dresses and deportment of various dancers; but Susan was sure that she had stored up Charles’s remark for future use, this being an annoying habit to which she was greatly addicted.
Later in the evening they were rewarded by hearing the well-known voice addressing Jim Cunningham as, flushed and breathless after a second reel, he paused close by her, his partner on his arm. “Of course, the reel is not danced here,” Miss Pringle was saying. “Now, at the Northern Meeting balls, my dear Jim . . .”
Susan caught Charles’s eye, and hurriedly murmuring, “I think I should like some coffee,” led him away to a secluded corner where they could loose the demon of laughter which had attacked them both.
“The old girl’s an absolute fizzer, isn’t she?” said Charles with unfeigned admiration.
Though she spared time for a little silent sympathy for Oliver, forced to see Peggy dancing in the close embrace of young Collier, Susan found herself heartily enjoying the ball. Her fears that she might not know enough people were rendered groundless by the discovery of several friends, among them a rear-admiral, recently retired, whom she had known some years before as a captain, and his wife.
“You know the Heriots?” cried the second Miss Pringle, pouncing on her in the ladies’ cloakroom, a drear apartment, sole haven of luckless wall-flowers, to which Susan had retired for the purpose of adding a few necessary repairs to her hair and complexion.
“Why, yes. We do.”
“But he’s Lord Soutra’s brother, his heir!” she cried breathlessly.
“So I have heard.”
“And his wife is a daughter of the Earl of Sark!”
“Is she? I’d forgotten,” Susan said with truth.
“Why did you never tell us that you knew them?” This was uttered so accusingly that Susan felt she must defend herself.
“Really, Miss Jelly, I never thought about it. After all, they haven’t been here until quite recently. In fact, it was only when I met them again to-night, and they told me they were coming to live near here, that I remembered their connection with Lord Soutra.”
“Indeed?” she said in accents of outraged incredulity. “But perhaps you didn’t know them so very well?”
“It depends on what you call ‘very well,’” said Susan, losing patience. “I’ve stayed with Lady Evelyn at Wei-hai-wei, when Oliver was on the China station. Her husband was in command of the ship Oliver was in-—”
“Oh, in China!” exclaimed Miss Jelly, as if any extraordinary happening might come to pass in the Far East. “Here, of course, they will be in the hunting set. Lord Soutra and all the County belong to it.”
“Well, we can’t afford to hunt even if we wanted to, and I am quite pleased with the ‘set’ we are in,” said Susan shortly. “I think. I hear the next dance beginning. I must go.”
“Are you dancing?” asked Miss Jelly with quite unwarrantable surprise. “Who is your partner?”
Susan felt that she deserved a stab, however tiny, and dealt it as they left the cloakroom.
“With Admiral Heriot,” she said.
In the passage leading to the ballroom they—for Miss Jelly now clung to Susan like a burr—found a small group conversing with the animation of easy intimacy. Susan recognized the sparkle of Lady Evelyn Heriot’s diamonds, the gay and tuneful ring of her pretty voice. As always, she had several men about her, among them Oliver, Charles, and the Admiral, the last-named her most devoted admirer.
“Susan,” she cried, “do come and reminisce with us. Your brother has just been reminding me of those days of the China station—”
“It’s a far cry from Abbeyshiels to Hong-Kong and Wei-hai,” said the Admiral. “But I seem to remember, young woman, that you were in the habit of keeping your partners waiting even then.”
Behind her, Miss Jelly drew a breath of amazement so deep that it would not have surprised Susan had she been sucked up by it as by a vacuum-cleaner.
“I’m so sorry!” she said, laughing.
“Yes, be an angel and take Robbie away and dance with him,” said Lady Evelyn. “You know how cross he is, poor darling, if he’s done out of even a tiny bit of a dance with a partner he likes. But first—you know we’re going to settle down at King’s Inch? Robbie’s brother is giving us the Dower House to live in, and we expect to be there for a good part of the year. Lovely for the children. I wanted to ask if you’ll all three come to luncheon one day next week? Don’t let us waste time in calling on each other like mere acquaintances—”
“Thank you,” said Susan. “We’d all love to come.”
The Admiral muttered impatiently, and his wife said at once, “You and Robbie go and dance. Oliver can fix a day with me, can’t he?” Lady Evelyn waved them away. “I’m going to sit out with these nice people and hear all their news. You know how I adore young men.”
Thus dismissed, “Robbie” and Susan obediently continued on their way towards the ballroom. As they swung into the dance: “Who was the old girl starin’ at us as if she was a hungry cat and we were a bowl of goldfish?” demanded the Admiral. “Expected to hear her mew any minute, on my word I did!” Poor Miss Jelly. Even as they revolved rapidly, for it was a waltz and the Admiral believed in that particularly breathless but exhilarating form of it known to him as “the good old-fashioned valse,” Susan could see her imparting her precious information to her eldest sister.
2
The crowd was beginning to thin, but among those who remained were the three Misses Pringle, whose custom it was to drink the cup of pleasure dry, and linger until the exhausted band had gratefully brayed out the last notes of “God Save the King.”
“I say, our stock’s soaring,” said Oliver as brother and sister strolled up and down a dimly lighted passage between dances. “At least mine is. I don’t know if you’re forgiven yet, but old Belly has invited Charles and me—been most pressing about it—to shoot the rabbits at Kaleside, to come over for the day and not to bother to bring sandwiches, because they’ll be delighted to give us lunch. What’s the reason for this overwhelming hospitality all of a sudden-like?”
“Perhaps she thinks you’ll do nicely for Cissie,” Susan suggested lightly, and then bit her lip. Oliver was so composed, so like his usual self, that for the moment she had forgotten his feelings about Peggy, whose engagement to Hugh Collier was confidently expected by some people to come about by the time the dance ended.
Oliver took the remark very calmly. “Thanks awfully,” he said, even more lightly. “Why not for Jelly, or even for herself? She can’t be more than thirty years older than me—”
“One saucer of skim for the gentleman. Who said that women were the catty sex?”
“Well, hang it all, Sue, she’ll never see sixty again, I’m sure—” he broke off with a guilty start as the subject, of his calculations spoke close behind him.
“Ah, here you are!” Miss Pringle spoke briskly, her hand resting fondly on Charles’s arm, the rigidity of this membe
r not repelling her in the least. Had not the hand of an Earl’s daughter also lain there this evening? “Now, I’ve thought of such a dee-lightful plan, dear Miss Parsons. This will be your first New Year in Scotland, so let us make it a really Scottish one! You must all three come over to us at Kaleside on Hogmanay, and we’ll see the New Year in together. Positively I insist!”
“Oh—oh, thank you so much,” gasped Susan, feeling as though a pistol had been presented at her head, and quite unable to think up a respectable excuse for refusing. “I—we—that is—”
“Frightfully good of you, Miss Pringle,” broke in Oliver with complete sang-froid. “And there’s nothing we should have liked better, but we’ve already accepted an invitation for—Hogmanay, d’you call it?”
“Oh, what a pity! You naughty people are always engaged!” cried Miss Pringle with grim playfulness. “I suppose you are going to the Soutras, at King’s Inch?”
“We don’t know Lord Soutra,” said Oliver blandly. “No; it’s to Reiverslaw—”
“But you know Lord Soutra’s brother, Admiral Heriot. Such a charming man. Such an asset to the neighbourhood, don’t you think? His father, old Lord Soutra, and my own father, were great friends, real old cronies.”
“What exactly is a crony?” asked Charles in his dove-like party voice, so different from the hearty bellow which he employed among his intimates. “It always sounds to me like a golf-club.”
Nothing they could say or do annoyed Miss Pringle that evening. Susan supposed that they must shine with reflected glory shed by the Heriots on all their acquaintances; all offences of the past had been forgiven, if not forgotten, even her own quite recent refusal to listen to gossip about Peggy. For Miss Pringle now actually produced a sound approximating to a giggle as she replied. “How very amusing of you, Commander Crawley. I must tell Jelly and Cissie; they will enjoy that. And you know the Admiral, too, don’t you?”
“An old shipmate of mine,” said Charles carelessly. “He was our skipper in China.”
Miss Cissie suddenly made a fluttering appearance, looking like a rather elderly butterfly. “Oh, Bell, I’ve lost my dear little evening-bag. That sweet gold bead one, you know. I’ve looked everywhere, except just behind that screen. Perhaps it’s there—”
The screen to which she pointed concealed what Oliver had learned from Jim Cunningham to call a “sit-ootery,” and was placed discreetly across a corner of the passage. Behind it, Susan knew, for she had spent a few cooling minutes there with Charles earlier in the evening, a large potted palm acted as chaperone to two well-cushioned chairs. It did not seem possible that any of Miss Cissie’s partners would have led her to this secluded bower, but she ran girlishly towards it, pulled aside the screen, and exposed to the public gaze Peggy in the act of being well and truly kissed by young Hugh Collier.
While everyone paused, petrified, uncertain what to do or say, Miss Pringle, whose little gimlet eyes had not missed a detail of the scene, remarked acidly, “Dear me, Peggy. Surely I am not mistaken in supposing that this is an occasion for congratulations?”
“For God’s sake let’s get out of this!” said Oliver hoarsely in his sister’s ear, and she turned away with him, sick at heart for his sake. Charles, whom Miss Pringle would have retained by her clutch on his arm, shook her off as though her fingers stung him, and raced after his friends.
“Strewth!” he ejaculated faintly as he reached Susan’s side. “Talk about a close-up!”
Oliver merely uttered a savage laugh.
3
In his character of laird, Oliver had been eager ever since he came to Easter Hartrigg to give some sort of party to which all his neighbours could be invited; and though Susan, urged by prudence, had restrained any prodigal scattering of his “twenty pence,” she agreed with him that Christmas ought not to pass without a celebration.
“They’ll keep New Year for themselves,” he had said. “It’s their own day. But we, as poor ignorant English bodies, will be forgiven if we have our show at Christmas.”
So it was arranged that there should be a dance two days before Christmas in the old barn, which had been empty for many years, while the youngest generation were to have a Christmas tree on the afternoon of Boxing Day.
“Charles dear,” said Susan gratefully, “if it hadn’t been for you and Mr. Woolworth I’d have given it all up. Oliver has been quite useless since the dance at Abbeyshiels, and apart from ordering drink for the men, has done nothing about the preparations. He seems to have lost all interest in his parties.”
“It’s hardly to be wondered at,” said Charles. “Never mind, honey, we’ll do it between us, and make a damn’ good show of it too, see if we don’t!”
Susan smiled down at him from the top of a step-ladder. There was something very heartening about Charles. . . .
They were alone in the big barn, where the faint sweet smell of long-vanished hay still strove with the stronger resinous scent of fir-branches. Paper and tinsel streamers, gaudy exotic flowers, were strung from the beams. The Christmas tree, a sturdy young spruce-fir, stood in a far corner, decked with enticing toys, balls of silver and gold and green glass, strings of glittering tinsel.
“What now?” asked Charles.
“Only the high leather screen to put round the tree to hide it,” said Susan indistinctly, for she was wrestling with a refractory spray of holly, and held a piece of twine between her teeth.
“Good work. We’re done, then. Come down off that ladder, Susan. I’ve got it all right.”
Susan thankfully descended. “I feel that I deserve tea after this,” she said.
“Tea? I want beer, buckets of beer—”
“Beer’s fattening. You’d much better have tea.”
“The British workman,” said Charles firmly, “must have his beer. Or wot abaht a tot o’ rum, duckie?”
“There’s no rum. All there was has gone into the plum-puddings; but come along and you shall have your beer.”
They lingered, however, in the doorway, to cast a last look of proud achievement over the decorated barn, transformed by the green of laurel and fir, the red of holly berries, the brilliant tinsel and paper flowers. Above the door hung an enormous bunch of mistletoe, and Charles, catching Susan round the waist as she stood unwarily below it, kissed her heartily, to the open delight of Jems, who happened to be passing on his homeward way.
“Charles! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” asked Susan severely, disengaging herself with decision from his hold.
“Not a bit. Why should I be? It’s a charming old custom, an’ if you look at me like that I swear I’ll do it again.”
“Indeed you won’t. Once is more than enough. As it is, I expect Jems has fled home at top speed to broadcast what he saw all over Muirfoot.”
Charles sighed. “The worst disadvantage of the feudal life you’re living, darling, is that all your affairs are of such overpowering interest to your neighbours. Now in town, if I’d kissed you in the middle of Oxford Street, do you suppose anyone’d have cared, if they’d even noticed it? Not a bit. At the worst they’d have thought we were acting for the talkies. And the moral of that is—”
“Reserve these evidences of your affection for Oxford Street!” Susan said laughing.
“No. Marry me and come back to your own sort of life!” he answered eagerly.
“What? And desert Oliver when he is so miserable, and leave him forlorn? It can’t be done, Charles dear. You know I said that we couldn’t even begin to discuss our own affair as long as he is dependent on me to look after him.”
“But damn it all, Susan, this is fantastic. Am I not to be allowed to marry because Oliver doesn’t want to?”
“Poor old boy,” said Susan. “It does seem a shame!” Charles remained serious. “If Oliver fixes things up with Peggy, will you consider yourself engaged to me?” he demanded, and added, “It’ll be a short engagement, too, if I’ve any say in the matter!”
“Well, yes. I will. . . . If you are quite sure
you really want to marry me,” said Susan. “Oh, I know you are fond of me, my dear! If it comes to that, I’m fond of you. But—somehow, I don’t believe it will break your heart if you don’t marry me.”
“I never said it would. My heart’s pretty tough. But you’re so dashed cold-blooded about it all,” he grumbled.
“It’s because I’ve been caught once before,” Susan said, serious herself now. “I don’t want to make a mess of things this time, Charles.”
“We won’t make a mess of things, you’ll see. We always get on well together. Why shouldn’t we make a good show of marriage, Susan darling?”
“All right.” Susan yielded suddenly and charmingly. “You’re probably right. I leave it to you, partner—no, you are not to kiss me. We aren’t engaged—yet!”
“I believe you’re half afraid of being kissed!”
“I don’t want to be swep’ off me feet,” said Susan. And in spite of his muttered, “That’s what you need!” she remained firm on this point.
By the time they had reached the house, Charles was gay again, and full of plans for throwing Oliver and Peggy into each other’s arms by main force if need be, at the dance in the barn the following evening.
A note lay on the oak chest in the hall, addressed to Susan. She tore it open and read it quickly.
“Bad luck, Charles,” she said ruefully. “You won’t be able to do any match-making to-morrow evening. This is from Peggy, to say she isn’t feeling very fit, and won’t be able to come to the dance. Poor Oliver!”
“Poor me!” was Charles’s gloomy answer.
4
The dance at Easter Hartrigg was in full swing. An exceedingly refined young lady from Abbeyshiels presided at the piano, her abnormal agility of finger only equalled by the strenuous exertions of the dancers, whose feet twinkled like those of Squirrel Nutkin. Beside her a pale young man, introduced with a coy flourish as “my fee-ong-say” sawed perseveringly at his fiddle. Oliver and Charles were doing their duty nobly among the ploughmen’s wives and daughters from Reiverslaw and Wanside, and skirls of delighted laughter rang from end to end of the barn, drowning even the stentorian bellow in which the Master of Ceremonies, a burly hind from Reiverslaw, announced the dances. Susan found it pleasant to watch the honest enjoyment of the guests, the hearty appetite with which they attacked the refreshments provided for them. Only the pianist asserted her gentility by sitting apart beside her “fee-ong-say” and drinking horribly strong tea with such an elegant quirking of fingers that it caused her hostess to marvel how she could hold her cup at all. She further showed her refinement by refusing almost all nourishment, and nibbling at what she did deign to accept with an air of faint distaste which enraged Donaldina.
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