“What have you done with Cath?” I asked.
“Now, Sara, don’t be provoking. You know I want to hear about the coffee-party! Cath met Lawrence and went back with him to Chapelwood—do tell me what you talked about!”
“I hadn’t much chance to talk about anything,” I said, leaning in at the open window of the car. “But they talked all right.”
“Of course. They would. But what about?”
“Everybody within miles, I should think.”
“Amusing? Scandalous?” demanded Elizabeth with a transparent attempt to appear only mildly interested.
“I don’t know. I didn’t listen.”
“You—you didn’t listen! Oh, I see. Well. How—how noble of you, Sara,” said Elizabeth feebly.
“Surely you don’t think I ought to have listened to them, Elizabeth?” I begged. “I mean, it isn’t really amusing to hear those horrible creatures tearing one’s friends to ribbons.”
“I suppose it isn’t,” she agreed reluctantly. “And you will bear me out that I don’t gossip myself, Sara. Only—I could never have resisted listening to them. Didn’t you hear anything at all?”
She sounded so wistful that I had to laugh. “I did hear one item—it was about Catherine,” I told her.
“About Catherine! Good Heavens, what could they possibly find to say about Cath?”
“Only that she seemed to be very interested in Major Whitburn. Those were their words.”
Elizabeth was indignant. “Old cats! We’ve known the Whitburns for years!” she exclaimed. “Why, it was partly because they live here that we bought Carmichael—”
“You see, you don’t like to hear it when it concerns your own family,” I said.
“No—” Elizabeth laughed suddenly. “Well, you were right, Sara, and I was wrong. I should never have teased you into telling me, But if the old girls only knew it, they are barking up quite the wrong tree.”
“I’m sure they are,” I said soothingly.
Elizabeth pressed the self-starter and the little car’s engine began to throb. “Of course they are!” she shouted above the din. “I could have told them that Lawrence is interested in—you! Good-bye!”
And I could have told her that Lawrence’s interest in me, which I think was never anything but a temporary one, has now died a natural death; but I won’t. She will find out it for herself in time.
CHAPTER XVIII
OCTOBER, 1952
Dear Hugo, you say in both your latest letters that you are longing for RAIN. How I wish we could send Bwana some of our too abundant surplus! We can supply it in any quantity, plain, or with winds (assorted, up to Gale Force). Particularly recommended is our North West special, which comes complete with gusts of forty to sixty miles per hour, for which no additional charge is made.
We have just had a spell of the sort of weather I am offering you. The river, swollen by all the little hill burns roaring down the gullies with wild white manes, has overflowed, and all the low-lying meadows are flooded. To-day, when at last the rain seemed to have exhausted itself, and a pallid sun shone for the first time in six days, I went for a real walk, instead of hurrying out for brief necessary trots with Pam. Looking down the valley I could see everywhere the silvery glint of water flashing back at the sky.
But how glorious the autumn colours are, though the ground is sodden. The woods, the dying bracken and withered heather on the hillsides, all seem deepened and enriched by the rain, and now that the sunlight is falling on them they are glowing with russet reds and browns turning to deep purple in the shadow.
I put on my thickest shoes and a waterproof (just in case!) and took Pam across the moor to Ladymount to see Mrs. Keith.
Beattie looked unusually gloomy when she opened the door to me, and for a horrid moment I was afraid that Mrs. Keith must be ill; but her first words relieved me of this anxiety, though her information was irritating.
“A good thing you’ve come, Miss,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be able to shift that Miss Garvald. I’m sure she’s been here an hour, wearying madam with her silly talk.”
I could hear Miss Garvald’s dreary voice droning on as I crossed the hall. Beattie threw open the drawing-room door with a flourish and announced in triumphant tones: “Miss Monteith, madam.”
Miss Garvald was perched on the edge of a large chair near the fire. Her nose was rather pink and her lacklustre eyes more like a fish’s than I could have believed possible. She gave me a tepid smile when, after kissing Mrs. Keith’s soft withered cheek, I turned to speak to her.
“Sit beside me, Sara my dear,” said Mrs. Keith, and I took my favourite place, the end of the long old-fashioned sofa, on which my old friend was reclining with her feet up; such neat little feet in slippers with bead-work on their glacé kid toes. “And where is Pam? Surely you haven’t left him behind?” went on my hostess.
“I think Beattie took him to the pantry to dry his feet,” I said. “Here he is now—”
Pam caracoled into the room, rushed up to Mrs. Keith whom he adores, and offered her first one paw and then the other in great haste. Then, with a glance at Miss Garvald which told of total lack of interest in her, he flung himself down beside the sofa and went to sleep.
“And do you take your doggie everywhere with you?” demanded Miss Garvald.
I explained that Pam only accompanied me to the houses of friends who were kind enough to invite him, whereupon she tittered and embarked upon an involved and quite pointless tale about the “doggie” belonging to some friend of her own. The story itself, the friend and the dog all sounded equally dull. I sat wondering how long it would last, and if she would leave when it ended. But greatly to my surprise, no sooner had she run down than Mrs. Keith began asking me several questions about Atty. I could not think why she was so anxious to know what relation he was to me, all of a sudden, and came to the conclusion that Miss Garvald had tired her to the extent of making her less quick-witted than usual.
“Rex—Atty’s father—is really my mother’s first cousin, but he is almost exactly my own age,” I answered, hoping that I did not sound bored or irritated, but feeling both.
“That makes him your first cousin once removed, and the boy, of course, is your second cousin. You are of the same generation in spite of his being so much younger,” said Mrs. Keith carefully. She turned to me. “I was telling Kitty here what the relationship was, and I did not think I had it right, you see.”
I didn’t see at all of what possible interest it could be to Miss Garvald, but if Mrs. Keith wanted to ask me questions I could only answer them. Perhaps she thought it was less dreary than listening to Kitty? At all events, I found myself explaining as briefly as possible the circumstances which had led to my having Atty in my charge.
“Unless my cousin changes his mind and decides that he wants Atty to finish his education in the United States,” I ended, “I hope he will be with me during the holidays for four years yet—”
“Indeed, yes, the dear little fellow!” gushed Miss Garvald with a sentimentality which was not only quite revolting but sounded false as well.
“Nonsense, Kitty! ‘Dear little fellow’!” said Mrs. Keith, with a sudden disconcerting return to her normal crisp manner. “Great gangling school-boy, all legs and arms, you mean! Isn’t he, Sara?”
“I’m afraid he is,” I agreed regretfully.
“A delightful boy, for all that, and he will grow into a good-looking man,” was Mrs. Keith’s pronouncement. “Oh, are you going, Kitty? Remember me to your mother—”
It was true that Miss Garvald had made a movement, but I did not think she meant to go. She was not able to stay, however, after Mrs. Keith’s remark, and at last took herself off, still bubbling over with inane conversation.
“What a very fatiguing woman that is, my dear,” said Mrs. Keith as the front-door could be heard shutting behind her departed visitor. “Now you and I will have tea and be comfortable together.”
“You rather encouraged her to stay, didn’t you?�
�� I said mildly. “I mean, all that unnecessary catechism about Rex and Atty!”
“I had my reasons,” said Mrs. Keith with dignity.
“Well, I can’t imagine what they were. Miss Garvald isn’t in the least interested in Atty—why should she be?”
“You are wrong, Sara,” said Mrs. Keith, rather grimly. “She is intensely interested in him!”
I stared at her. “No—really, Mrs. Keith! That doesn’t make sense!” I protested.
“Kitty Garvald and her dear friend Miss Bonaly,” said Mrs. Keith with great emphasis, “are convinced that you are hiding some guilty secret in your past and that you came to Ravenskirk for that reason.”
“Ridiculous! It’s like a cheap novelette!”
“That may be, but women of their sort, who lead an extremely drab existence, are apt to have imaginations remarkably like a cheap novelette. Now, I daresay you have some secret in your life, Sara. Most of us who have lived at all, have something we prefer to keep private. No, I don’t want to know what it is, my dear,” she went on. “I know of course, that it can be nothing you are ashamed of. But the Bonaly woman and that stupid dreep Kitty Garvald have tongues like poisoned razor-blades. They are under the impression, let me tell you, that Atty is your son—illegitimate, of course,” she added blandly.
“Well!” I gasped. I really could not say anything more for a minute. At first I was furious, and then, when I thought how appalled poor dear Rex would have been at this monstrous suggestion, I began to laugh.
“You think it funny?” asked Mrs. Keith.
“I wouldn’t, I suppose, if there were the tiniest grain of truth in it!” I said, mopping my eyes, which had overflowed as they always do when I laugh a great deal. “But oh, my dearest Mrs. Keith, if you knew Rex, you’d laugh too! He is the most conventional, proper creature!”
“I wish you would realise that these women’s tongues are dangerous, Sara,” said Mrs. Keith with some asperity.
“But none of my friends would believe them.”
“Well, I do not choose that a thing of that sort should be hinted about a friend of mine,” Mrs. Keith said, putting her thin hand with its many rings, over mine. “So I thought, as you arrived so opportunely, the best thing was to get you to give all the details in Kitty Garvald’s presence. She will have to believe what you said, however little she may want to. And she will not dare, now, to say anything more about Atty’s connection with you. I have spiked her guns, I think.”
“It was kind and dear of you,” I said, very much touched at her thought for me and my reputation. A sudden resolution seized me. “I think,” I said slowly, “that I should like to tell you my so-called guilty secret.”
“Only if you really want to, Sara. Don’t tell me anything on impulse that you may regret later.”
And so I told her about Ivo, Hugo. For the first time I spoke about him and what I felt when he went down with his ship. In a way, I felt that I had lost him by doing so, and yet, I don’t regret having told Mrs. Keith. I have known in my heart for a long time now that I have been trying to live in the past, and that I should not. Mrs. Keith talked so kindly and affectionately about Ivo as she had known him when he was a boy. “Such a gay, carefree boy,” she said with a little smile, as if she were looking back down the years at him. “Hugo was always quieter and more serious—more thoughtful, too, if you won’t mind my saying so, Sara. He and Ivo were inseparable. There was only fourteen months difference in their ages, but they never seemed to quarrel as brothers often do. Perhaps that was because Hugo adored and admired his brilliant elder brother so whole-heartedly. Dear boys! I am glad you told me your story, Sara—”
We both wept a little, but my own tears were not the bitter ones I have shed so often in secret. I was crying for the Sara who has gone, quite as much as for Ivo, because it is sad to see one’s younger self finally vanish. And then we heard Beattie bringing tea, and dried our eyes and pulled ourselves together before the slight tinkling of silver and china that heralded her had reached the drawing-room door.
“I’ve brought in your wee pills, madam,” said Beattie firmly, as she set the tea-tray in a small table in front of the sofa. “You’d be as well to take one, or maybe two, with your tea.”
“Thank you, Beattie, I believe I will take one,” said her mistress with most unwonted docility. “Though it is the first time, I should think, that a visit from Kitty Garvald has put anyone in need of a sedative,” she added after Beattie had retired in triumph. “Her conversation can hardly be considered exciting as a general rule, poor dreary woman!”
“Hardly,” I said. “But she had succeeded in rousing you to-day.”
“Yes, and before we leave the subject, I want you to promise, Sara, that you won’t antagonise those two any more than you must, To please me?”
“I’d do a great deal to please you, Mrs. Keith,” I said. “But as I didn’t know I had ever done any antagonising, it is difficult to see how I can stop it. We are just naturally antipathetic.”
“They are jealous of you, of course.”
“There is no reason why they should be.”
“Every reason. One only has to look at them and then at you to see that no matter what sorrows you may have had, you understand how to enjoy and appreciate life, and they do not.”
“Short of trying in future to model myself on Miss Bonaly, I don’t see what I can do,” I replied.
Mrs. Keith rapped my knuckles with a teaspoon. “Now you are simply being naughty, and you know it,” she said. “All I ask is that you will try not to put on that don’t-care-nose-in-the-air look of yours when Miss Bonaly is talking to you.”
“I never knew that I did,” said I, much interested. “But I will try not to.”
“That’s a good child,” she said. “And now let us talk of something more agreeable.”
As soon as she said it every possible topic of conversation fled from my brain. We stared at one another speechlessly and stupidly until, with a gasp of relief, I remembered something.
“Is there more news about the people who have rented Corseburnhead, my nice house?” I asked.
“There is nobody there yet, but Beattie tells me that two women from the village have been engaged to scrub and generally clean up the place,” said Mrs. Keith. “Beattie seems to take it as a personal affront that as they were taken on and paid by the London solicitors, they do not know the name of the mysterious tenant—which means, of course, that Beattie doesn’t know it either—”
I laughed. “Poor Beattie, how sad for her! I don’t suppose she is the only one who wants to know.”
“Oh, all of us are curious about these people in a greater or less degree,” said Mrs. Keith. “All that Beattie has discovered is that the house is to be ready for occupation by the end of next month.”
“November,” I said. “What an odd time of the year to come to a house in the country. So dull and cold, and if we had an early fall of snow the road might be blocked.”
“Quite easily. It has often happened in the past.”
“Goodness! I hope these poor strangers won’t arrive in Ravenskirk only to find that they can’t get to their house,” I said. “It would be maddening to be so near, and yet have to live in the Lion Hotel until the snow melted.”
“Oh, I expect they know something about the chances of being snow-bound,” said Mrs. Keith. “After all, they must have some idea of the kind of country this is. One doesn’t just take a house blind, someone must have suggested it to them.” She spoke rather absently, and I thought she looked a little tired.
Small wonder if she did, after all the emotional strain and excitement of the last hour or two, caused by me, I remembered with remorse.
“I think it is high time I went home and gave those sedative pills of yours a chance to work,” I said, getting up and calling Pam from his chosen corner under the grand piano. “In any case, I’ll have to go round by the road, it will be too dark for the hill now—”
When I bent down to
kiss her, she put her thin, fine-boned old arms round me for a moment. “Bless you, my dear,” she said. “Go on being happy. It is the best thing you can do, and Ivo would wish it, I know.”
I hope she is right, Hugo, and I think she is. Ivo never could bear anyone to be unhappy, or even out of spirits, could he?
And now I have done as you wished too, and made a confidante of Mrs. Keith. . . .
You can spend a little of your spare time in wondering what sort of people the tenants of Corseburnhead are (that sounds rather early Bronte-ish, doesn’t it?) and let me know in your next letter.
CHAPTER XIX
NOVEMBER, 1952
Dear Hugo, if you should ever have occasion again to send me a letter liable to give me such a shock as the one I have just received, I hope you will employ some device like writing the address in red ink, as a warning that the contents are unexpected—to put it very mildly.
It came by the second post, and I was opening it as I went upstairs to wash and tidy before lunch. Just when I put my foot on the topmost step I caught sight of the words, in that clear handwriting of yours: “If everything goes according to plan I should be in Ravenskirk three weeks from to-day.” And I very nearly fell backwards downstairs on top of Pam, who was following me. Please don’t think this was due even in the tiniest degree to dismay; it wasn’t, it was plain surprise. You can hardly blame me, for not so much as a hint have you given me that you were coming home on long leave at all, still less to Ravenskirk, and least of all to Corseburnhead!
I cannot think how you could read my letters telling you about Corseburnhead and the mysterious new tenants without letting me know they were you. No wonder you have never mentioned the house at all; and I was afraid I had bored you with it! Men were deceivers ever. . . .
It isn’t easy to tell you how pleased I am at the thought of really seeing you at last after writing to you for almost two years, Hugo, and for your own sake, not just because you are Ivo’s brother. Somehow I have felt all along that I know you well, and from your letters I fancy that you know me. But the thought creeps in, no matter how hard I try to push it out—shall we like one another when we meet? I can tell that you are wondering about this too. I have confided so freely in you, as it is easy to do when writing to a sympathetic friend at a distance; I very nearly put “fatally easy.”
Dear Hugo Page 18
