The sight of a stalwart figure striding over the bare fields towards Reiverslaw caught her eye. Unseen by him, Susan watched Jed Armstrong as he walked his land, or stood to let the black cattle gather about him unafraid, even shouldering each other aside in order to approach him. He was going back to his lonely house, to spend Christmas day with only a wireless set to keep him company. Susan shook the thought from her. After all, he would probably have Mrs. Holden with him by next Christmas, no longer Mrs. Holden, but Mrs. Armstrong. . . . As if she found the idea vaguely displeasing, Susan frowned, and turned towards Easter Hartrigg, where Charles, recovered, would be waiting for her.
2
“Never, again!” said Oliver with a gusty sigh of relief, as he tore off the red dressing-gown (borrowed from Mrs. Cunningham for the occasion) and the voluminous cotton-wool beard and mustachios in which he had enacted Santa Claus at the children’s Christmas tree party. “Never again! For two blistering hours I’ve played the goat, made idiotic jokes, and handed out presents by the hundredweight. I calculate that I’ve swallowed quite half a pound of cotton-wool, which is now twined cosily round my most vital tubes, and I endured agonies of terror when that lighted candle fell off the tree on to my wig. And what is my reward? The thankless brats begin to snivel as soon as I appear, and run bawling to their mothers when I open my month to speak, while Charles merely gambols in, raises screams of laughter by uncomplimentary references to my personal appearance, and becomes the hero of the afternoon. Bring on the serpent’s tooth. I’ll hardly feel it!”
“Have a drink instead,” suggested Charles.
“Poor old chap, were you hideously uncomfortable?” said Susan. “You did it so well, too. Everyone said so.”
“Did they indeed?” retorted her brother. “The remarks I overheard were distinctly unfavourable. ‘Come awa’, then, hinny, an’ we’ll no’ let yon ugly felly wi’ the baird touch ye’! was about the pick of them.”
“Think of the pleasure you gave them, even if some of the tiny ones were frightened at first.”
“The thought of their pleasure doesn’t make up for my damnable discomfort,” said Oliver. “What I wanted was to see several she-bears enter the barn. Good old Elisha! I never really sympathized with him until to-day.”
Charles having supplied him with a tankard of beer, his grumblings died away into a muttering reminiscent of the she-bears which he craved.
Susan was conscious of a vast relief that the party was successfully over. Some forty children, replete from a large and ornamental tea, sticky with sweets and oranges and laden with toys, had by this time reached their own homes, where it seemed probable that the after effects would amply avenge Oliver for their fear and freely expressed dislike of “Sandy Claws.” The Christmas tree, denuded of all its trappings save a few tinsel ribbons and one star on its topmost twig and the burnt-out ends of many coloured candles, stood alone in its dark-green beauty in the disordered barn. To save it from the fate of Hans Andersen’s Little Fir Tree, over which she had wept bitterly as a child, Susan had insisted on its being uprooted instead of cut down; the next day would see it replanted among its brethren in the strip of wood alongside the garden. There it could grow and flourish, and bore all the other trees through years to come with the oft-told tale of a day when it had blossomed unexpectedly with strange gay fruit and flowers.
“Where are you off to now, Susan?” asked Charles, seeing her in the hall in her hat and coat.
“I’m going to ask for Jo-an Robertson and take her a few little things. No, I’m not tired, Charles, really, and I don’t want you to come. It isn’t dark. Stay and minister to Oliver.”
With Tara beside her she climbed up the steep side of the ridge to the grieve’s house, glad to be alone after the heat and noise of the children’s party. It was very quiet at Reiverslaw; so quiet that at first she imagined that the Robertsons must be out.
As she raised her hand to knock a second time the door was quietly opened, and the grieve’s wife, her eyes sunken and red-rimmed with weeping, stood facing her.
“Jo-an?” asked Susan, but she knew what the answer would be.
“Ay, she’s won awa’, the puir wee lamb—”
It was difficult to know what to say, and Susan was not one of those to whom words of consolation came easily and glibly. She stood for a little looking down at the bunch of sweet smelling violets which she had put into a gilt basket for Jo-an, knowing her love of pretty, useless things, at the small trifles saved for her from the Christmas tree.
“These are for her,” she said at last. “Please take—please take the flowers, anyhow, Mrs. Robertson.” She put the frail basket into the old woman’s gnarled hand, and with a broken, “I’m so sorry, so very sorry!” made more eloquent than she could guess by the rare tears in her hazel eyes, left the cottage door.
Stumbling a little as she went, for the road was rough and her sight blurred by the tears she had always found it difficult to shed, she started homewards, and rounding a corner with bent head, walked straight into Jed Armstrong.
“Steady, lass,” he said, his deep voice kind, and before she could command her voice to speak, he went on: “I’ll walk down to Easter Hartrigg with you.” He turned and walked beside her. Susan, until she met him, had been thankful to be alone, but now she was aware of being less desolate in his company, strange though it seemed to her. There was a strength and comfort even in his silence, a silence which she had always imagined to be merely stolid, which she suddenly realized was sensitive and rather shy.
“I’ve been at the Robertsons’,” she said, “and—and heard about Jo-an.”
“They’ll take it hard. Their kind does,” he answered briefly. “And there’s little you can do for them.”
“It seems so dreadful, a young thing like Jo-an, who should have been happy!”
“There was nothing but grief before her,” he said. “It’s perhaps better the way it is. Life was too difficult for her, poor lass.”
“But it shouldn’t have been!” cried Susan. “I feel that we ought to have been able to do something for Jo-an!”
“You can’t save some folk from themselves,” he said, but quite gently. “No matter how you try.”
Susan sighed. Presently she said: “I’m afraid Peggy will be distressed when she hears, and news like that is so much worse when it’s broken with—with gusto by someone like Mrs. Davidson at the post office.”
“That’s what I thought myself. So I rang up the post office when I was pretty sure Peggy would be there for the evening paper, and told her—”
“That was like you, Jed!” Impulsively Susan put out her hand to him, and though it was almost dark, he saw it and took it into his warm, strong hold. “Anyone would have done it,” he muttered.
“Very few people would even have thought of it,” said Susan.
“Your hand’s cold,” he said, still holding it firmly. With a quick movement he drew her arm through his, and plunged the hand he held into the pocket of his raincoat. “Leave it there,” as she made a tentative effort at withdrawal. “You’re better like that. I can help you over the rough places.”
And so, silently, linked together, they came to Easter Hartrigg gate, where he left her.
Susan stood for a little, her hand still warm from his clasp, conscious that she had not wanted to free herself. “But this is ridiculous!” she said aloud. “Utterly ridiculous!”
Jed, climbing back up the ridge, his own hand still half-shut as if to retain the feel of those cold, smooth long fingers, was saying the same thing in other words. “Don’t be a damn’ fool, man!” he adjured himself. “She was upset and tired, half-afraid of the dark. You needn’t think it meant anything more.” And still his heart kept saying: “but she left her hand in mine. She didn’t want to take it away. I’ve held her hand in mine. . . .”
3
It was late. The candles in their old silver sticks on the dressing-table had burned low, and still Susan moved about her room restlessly,
and still in the sitting-room beneath she could hear the deep voices of her brother and Charles steadily talking.
They had been dining with the Heriots, and though any entertainment given by Lady Evelyn, from tea after an uproarious mixed hockey-match to the stateliest of official parties, was always admirably arranged, the evening had seemed to Susan to drag interminably.
Oliver had grudged even a few hours spent away from Peggy, who, he knew, would be feeling low in her mind over the approaching departure of the Infantry for England; and Charles, who had started out in high spirits, had returned moody and silent. Perhaps it was only the usual effect of the aftermath of Christmas, which is never a really merry season except for children young enough to have no regrets for the past, no fears for the future. Still, it was not like Charles to be plunged in gloom, and he had been gay as ever when they arrived at the Dower House earlier in the evening.
Susan stopped beside the dressing-table, and gently drumming with her finger-tips on the polished surface, looked back on the dinner-party. Just one thing might possibly have accounted for Charles’s sudden change, but it seemed so far-fetched, so improbable. . . . She frowned a little, remembering details, looks, scraps of conversation. The drawing-room at the Dower House was a long room, with two doorways at one end, the space between them occupied by a huge mirror which doubled the expanse of shining parquet floor, and reflected the groups of guests who stood about waiting for some late arrival. A soft clinking of sherry and cocktail glasses, a whisper of long skirts, voices and laughter, had supplied an undercurrent to Oliver’s tale of his sufferings as Santa Claus, with which he was amusing his hostess, while Charles added a running commentary. Everything had been quite normal then. It was when Susan had turned to him with some careless remark that the change had come. Charles, usually so attentive to her, had not even heard what she was saying to him. He was staring down, the long room at a girl who had just come in, a tall, slim, brown girl with deer’s eyes and a dainty head held high. At the moment her cheeks were almost as pale as the white satin dress she wore. She had seemed as startled by seeing Charles as any doe surprised in a woodland glade. . . .
“Oh! Here is Daphne at last,” said Lady Evelyn. “A first-cousin-once-removed of my husband’s,” she had added to Susan. “Haven’t you met her? Daphne Fleming. . . . We had her out in Malta with us one winter a few years ago. Charles knows her, I think.”
Obviously Charles had known her, thought Susan. Again she frowned. Oliver had said carelessly, when they came home, “I say, I thought that pretty young cousin of Robbie’s was married, didn’t you, Charles? She seemed headed that way when we saw her in Malta. . . .”
And Charles had murmured, as if the subject did not interest him very much, “Er—yes, she did.”
Then why, thought Susan, did they both look as if they had seen a ghost when they met? She shook her head, and began to make ready for bed.
4
A quick though heavy step on the gravel brought Susan’s head up from the writing-pad over which it was bent as she sat in the window-seat. Looking out, she saw Jed Armstrong approaching the front door, a gun under his arm, a cartridge-bag slung over his shoulder. The formality of ringing the bell had long since been waived by him, and he tramped into the hall and presently appeared in the sitting-room doorway.
“What are you all fugging in here for?” he demanded. “It is a fine day.”
“I have been out,” said Susan righteously. “Before lunch, in the rain. It certainly wasn’t fine then, whatever it may be now.”
“Bring yourself to anchor, Jed,” said Oliver in sleepy tones. “Charles and I were having a bit of shut-eye, an’ you’ve gorn an’ bin an’ disturbed us, you blinkin’ behemoth. If you want to prattle, do it in a whisper. I’m Sandy Claws, I am, enjoying a rest after playing at chimney-sweeps—”
“Well,” said Jed, acknowledging with a nod the cigarettes which Susan pushed towards him. “I came to see if you’d like a shot at the duck, but seeing you’re all so comfortable it’s a pity I—”
“Duck?” Charles’s eyes opened and he sat up with surprising alertness. “Where? When?”
“At the loch up at Reiverslaw. Now. They’ll be flighting just before sunset, and we ought to be in our places in plenty of time.”
“Come on, Oliver!” Charles rose and shook his somnolent host mercilessly. “Get your gun, my boy, and look sharp!”
“Not the proper season,” Oliver, was heard to mumble. “Duck an’ green peas—not till June—”
“Come on, you fool, or we’ll be too late. Where’s your gear?” said Charles.
Galvanized into activity, Oliver rose also and stretched himself, and with a good deal of noise and argument they made ready for the slaughter which appeals so strongly to almost all right-minded men.
“Would you like to come too?” asked Jed suddenly, addressing Susan. “The car’s at the gate, and we’ll run you up in no time.”
“Yes, come on, Susan darling,” cried Charles. “Leave those letters of thanks for all the presents you didn’t want, and come on!”
Gladly, though rather guiltily, Susan left her half-finished letter, and hurried to put on thick shoes and a heavy coat.
“Are you warmly enough wrapped up?” asked Jed, as he turned his car into the narrow road that ran like a spinal column up the whole length of the ridge. “There’s a cold wind blowing, and I think we’ll have snow before night.”
There was something rather touching about his solicitude for her, his constant absurd assumption that she was incapable of taking care of herself, which Charles also seemed to have adopted recently.
“Thank you, I’m quite warm,” she assured Jed gravely.
He only grunted. “Warm enough just now, but how about after you’ve been waiting in the open for a bit?”
A wind whistled piercingly about their ears as they left the car at the highest point of the long ridge. There was no shelter up here on top. The little church stood bleakly by the road, and over the Flodden knight’s forgotten grave the ancient yews of the kirk-yard stooped black and melancholy. They had been standing there long before his day; and now that he was dust and his good sword rust, as Sir Walter wrote of another knight, they still stood, seemingly ageless, sombre and unchanging. The loch was steel-grey, fretted into waves by the wind which ran among the rushes and sedge by the water’s brink with a continuous dry hush-hushing. A well-filled stackyard at the nearer end of the loch looked homely and comfortable, speaking of harvest and prosperity. The sun, half sunk below the western horizon, was gilding the straw and giving the waves little crests of gold as Susan stood watching the day fade to the tune of the wind, while the men fussed with guns and bags.
Jed caught her by the arm. “You’ll be best in the lee of one of the stacks,” he said, hurrying her towards them. “And here’s a coat to sit on. Wrap yourself in it, and don’t make a sound, whatever you do.”
Obediently Susan allowed herself to be established in what he called a “bield” behind a huge stack like a round tower. In a moment he was gone, and she remained alone, with the wind’s sigh and the rustling of straw for company. Slowly the shadows lengthened, the air grew colder, the tops of the stacks, from being golden, turned greyish yellow, and the gold slid gradually down their rounded sides. There came a whistling of powerful wings overhead, and looking up, Susan saw the duck flying straight into the sunset and their deaths. They were big birds, even to her inexperienced eyes larger than mallard, and beyond the noise of their flight and an occasional “carrr-carrr,” they came over the stackyard in silence, high and fast against the wind. The outstretched red-billed heads, the green-glossed backs, the strong wings beating the air so rhythmically, all were dark, but their breasts were flushed to an exquisite rose, as though the setting sun had dyed them. To watch them was like looking on a Japanese picture come to life, and for one wild second Susan longed to spring up, regardless of sport, and by alarming them, save them from destruction. In that second, however, they were
over and out of her sight, and the next instant shots broke out, shattering the stillness.
The duck set up a lamentable quacking, and the dull thud of bodies falling to earth from a height told Susan that toll had been taken of their numbers. One bird, twisting and turning, came tumbling down not far from where she crouched. . . . Almost before the echoes of the shots had died, another flight appeared above the tree-tops, but these, warned by the clamour of their fellows, swerved, mounted, and passed far out of range. When the men came to pick up the spoil, there were six limp corpses which a few minutes earlier had been living embodiments of winged grace. Already as they were stowed on the floor of the car, the gloss was fading from the bright plumage, leaving it dull. Even those sunset-tinted breasts, though still flushed, were an uninteresting shade of pale salmon-pink.
“Goosanders,” said Jed. “D’you want them?”
Oliver and Charles accepted them eagerly, but Susan thought she noticed a peculiar glint in Jed’s blue eyes, and she wondered.
She had regretted the slaying of these birds, and Oliver and Charles were to share her regret when they tried to eat the one goosander they had kept after sending the others to various friends. Donaldina had cooked and sent it to table with considerable misgiving, which Susan fully appreciated on tasting her first—and last—mouthful. To eat it was merely to eat very tough, rather high, and intensely fishy fish.
Even Tara turned from it with undisguised loathing when Oliver, abandoning the attempt to eat it which pride had forced him to make, presented him with a generous portion.
5
“How did you enjoy your duck?” was Jed’s greeting, as they arrived at Reiverslaw on New Year’s Eve.
Susan Settles Down Page 27
