Pigeons sidled over the rough cobbles of the High Street, where encroaching grass thrust slender green spears between the stones. They were so tame that they hardly moved as Miss Milligan passed. The tall old houses, the newest built in the early days of the Georges, rose towards the sky, their upper stories still stately above the shops which had usurped the ground floors. The gaunt stone fronts and small-paned windows smiled down with ineffable disdain even on the flaring ice-cream saloon of Signor Emilio Mazzoli opposite the Bell Inn.
The Town Hall, like a headland between two bays, separated the High Street from Crossgate Street, which ran parallel with it towards the river. West of the Town Hall was Port Street, wide and straight, the Corn Exchange midway on one side behind a row of plane trees, and on the other a few of the best shops in the burgh. Miss Milligan, passing these, came to large houses standing back from the street among gardens brilliant with summer flowers. A little farther on the street climbed a slight hill, turned a bend, and became a road, tree-lined, with the high wall of Soonhope marching along its right-hand side.
At the gates Miss Milligan did her best to peer in without seeming to do so, a difficult feat, but one which years of practice made possible. The glimpse of Soonhope from the gates, however, was always disappointing. The house lay a hundred yards back from the road, obscured by the great beeches on either side of a winding avenue which doubled the distance from lodge to door. Only the slates of the roof were visible above the heavy midsummer foliage, and though the sun had lent them the purple sheen of the feathers on a dove’s breast, Miss Milligan felt cheated. A roof told you nothing, especially when all the chimneys were hidden and it was impossible to see even if they were smoking. As for the painters, an army might be at work in there, and no one the wiser. A woman came out of the lodge just inside the gates and Miss Milligan, bending down, pretended to tie a shoe-lace. Then, rising with a somewhat flushed face, she hurried on. It would never do if the Pows at the lodge were to suspect her of vulgar curiosity. Really, on the whole, it was more satisfactory to brave Mrs. Anstruther, even in a crusty mood.
Mrs. Anstruther, of course, was in, and in a surprisingly amiable frame of mind. Her manner, as she greeted her caller, might almost have been described as affable. Since affability had never been one of Mrs. Anstruther’s strongest suits, a visitor more acute and less nervously flustered than Miss Milligan might have read the ironic amusement behind her welcome. For Mrs. Anstruther found this seeking after knowledge on the part of Haystoun infinitely more amusing than any book. She knew exactly why Flora Milligan had come to see her, and was prepared to give her a fresh packet of information to take home to her mother, but it was not in her nature to deny herself the dry pleasure of watching her victim’s clumsy efforts to come to the point in an easy and natural manner.
At last, after Miss Milligan had made several fruitless attempts to break through a hedge of weather and garden small-talk, her hostess took pity on her. ‘Poor Flora,’ she thought, much more charitably than she ever spoke, ‘she will get her head in her hands if she goes back to that old harridan without having found out anything.’
Aloud she said carelessly: “By the way, I saw Mrs. Barlas yesterday.”
Miss Milligan was quite pathetically grateful. “Did—did you?” she stammered, striving in vain after a decent composure. “That must have been very pleasant.”
“It was,” said Mrs. Anstruther. “She took tea with me, and we had a long siderent, gossiping over old times. She came out for Lucy Lockhart, to see what papering and painting was necessary at Soonhope.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” said Miss Milligan, in a tone which meant, more plainly than she realized: ‘Go on, go on!’
“She also brought me a letter from Lucy, who has decided, I think very wisely,” continued Mrs. Anstruther, fumbling in her black bag. “. . . Now, where did I put my handkerchief? Ah, yes, here it is. . . . Lucy has decided to keep away from Haystoun until Soonhope is ready for occupation again.”
Miss Milligan was more than a little shocked. In Haystoun every workman who entered a house was stood over until his job was properly completed. Such evidence of carelessness on Mrs. Lockhart’s part, however, was only to be expected. “But—the painters?” she hazarded timidly. “Do you think they will do their work if they are not looked after?”
“Personally, I fail to see why they shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Anstruther. “But, of course, it is just conceivable that they might do something foolish. So Lucy has arranged for someone to come and stay here until everything is in shape. Fortunately, she has persuaded Mrs. Barlas’s granddaughter, the Heron girl, to do it. Kate Heron, you know. I really could not have borne with a total stranger, much as I might wish to oblige Lucy and Robina.”
Miss Milligan summed all the courage of her curiosity. “But—dear Mrs. Anstruther, would it matter so much to you who came?”
“As she is to stay in my house—dear Flora,” said Mrs. Anstruther, “I think it would. Now, Flora, you run along to your mother and tell her that Kate Heron is coming to stay with me.”
Miss Milligan, too dazed to feel indignant at this summary dismissal, ran along.
4
Greystiel Heron, his son ‘young Grey,’ and his daughter Kate were the only survivors of an old and obstinate family which could trace back its stormy history almost without a break for five hundred years. A bend sinister on the escutcheon, dating from the time of Charles II, did not worry the Herons. In fact, they were quietly proud of their Stuart connection, and admired the ancestress whose son had borne his mother’s surname, and by a king’s wish had succeeded to the estates—the heirs male having proved themselves true courtiers by getting themselves killed off, one in battle against the Dutch at sea, the others less reputably in various duels and brawls. As the family clung tenaciously to the Stuart cause, and when James II had finally fled the country, continued to drink with fervour to the King over the Water, and to be deeply engaged in every Jacobite plot, fortune turned her back on them. After the ’45 was over, and Charles Edward’s hopes gone out like a blown candle, the only Heron left was a boy of twelve, whom his mother had taken to France just about the time when the Highland army was beginning its disastrous retreat from Derby. His father had been killed at Culloden, his only brother had died of his wounds in Carlisle Castle before he could be condemned to death. His sister had shown a prudence foreign to her family by marrying a prosperous English banker of pronounced Hanoverian sympathies, who satisfied his ambition to become a landed proprietor by buying up the confiscated Heron estates. Their eldest son assumed the name, and so started a new branch of the Herons, which his uncle in France refused to acknowledge. Exiled and penniless, he was still the head of the family, and his descendants continued to ignore their kinsmen, regarding them as robbers both of lands and name. When Charles Edward had been forgotten by the world and remained only a memory in the hearts of faithful Highlanders, a Heron came back to his own country, settled in the prosperous town of Glasgow, married, and took to business. The upstart Herons died out, house and lands were broken up and sold in small lots, but the main line persisted, and though it could hardly be said to multiply, increased the population by one or two at fairly regular intervals.
Never was a family less dependent on its material possessions to assert its individuality. The Herons carried their heritage in looks and character, they did not need the setting of the old house, the slowly gathered treasures, to mark, them for what they were. They made very little money in business, but, remembering their history, held their heads higher than ever.
And now, here was Greystiel Heron, whose proper setting was the eighteenth century, elegant even in shirt and aged kilt, slim and active as a young man at something over seventy, with his bold well-cut nose, fine forehead and beautiful sulky mouth, looking as though his white hair ought to have been long enough to club and tie with a black ribbon. He was cleaning his gun in the dining-room and waiting for his daughter Kate, who had been into Glasgow to
shop.
All he said when she appeared was, “So you’ve got back?” but Kate was perfectly satisfied. She knew that he meant he had missed her, was glad to see her, and wanted her to stay and talk to him.
“It was disgusting in town. Everyone looked hot and sticky,” she said. “Including self. But I got off with a beautiful young policeman on point duty. He held up the traffic to let me cross, and called me sweetheart. The Oxford Group movement, probably. Or don’t Trenchard’s lovely policemen belong to it?”
“Damn’ cheek,” murmured Greystiel Heron from force of habit.
“Which of us, darling? I am going to cultivate the police,” said Kate. “They’d be so handy, don’t you think, if I were taken up for shoplifting or something? Have you had a good day?”
Pretty fair, he answered in his curious grudging way. “Quite a decent bag.”
“It must have been very hot on the hill. You’re sunburnt, Paw.”
“Ay.” When talking to his intimates, Greystiel often relapsed quite naturally into Scots, which had been, after all, the language of gentle as well as simple only a century earlier. He held up his gun-barrels to the light, peered through them with passionate interest, and fell to work again with cleaning-rod and oily waste. Suddenly he looked at Kate, his eyes brilliant with the remembrance of past enjoyment, his caution forgotten. “We had a rare day, Kate. Seventy-one and a half brace.”
“Isn’t that a record bag for Craigdhu?” Kate was properly impressed.
“N—no. We had seventy-three in nineteen-twelve,” said her father. “But it was a good day, and I shot well.”
“You must be up to form for Andrew Lockhart’s partridges,” said Kate with guileless innocence. “I believe they’re very good this year.”
“H’m. They’re not looking too well hereabouts. All that rain we had drowned a good many of the young birds,” said Greystiel. Then he added suspiciously: “Andrew Lockhart? Who said I was shooting with him this year?”
“I did.” Kate met his baleful glance serenely. “You know that he and Lucy and their offspring are to be back at Soonhope by September, and Lucy has asked us and Granny to stay there. The idea being, I gather, to take some of the cold air off their reunion.”
“I don’t know that I want any of you to be mixed up in the Lockharts’ affairs.” Greystiel’s jaw set obstinately. “The fellow deserted his wife and family and behaved like a blackguard. Much better to have nothing to do with them.”
“I expect the whole of Haystoun is saying that,” Kate answered carelessly. “You know how they love scandal.”
“Damned hole. I dare say their talk had something to do with it at the start,” growled her father.
“Very likely, Paw. And of course it no one will go and stay with the Lockharts and they’re left severely alone by their own relations, Haystoun will have all the more to say.”
“Well, that’s Lockhart’s look-out.”
“I know, but it’s rather a pity, and Granny will be so disappointed, when she’s hoping that they’ll be happy again. After all, Paw, you always liked Andrew, and his private affairs are none of our business.”
Greystiel Heron hesitated, torn between his liking for Andrew Lockhart as a good fellow and a sportsman, and his dislike of having himself and his family connected with a man who had run away from his wife with another woman.
“Andrew was always a fine shot,” he said with apparent irrelevance, but Kate was quite able to follow his line of thought.
“Don’t you remember he used to say that you were the only man he knew who could do a really hard day’s walking among turnips and things?”
“They’re a soft lot nowadays. I used to think nothing of shooting all day, dancing half the night, and then having to walk sixteen miles to catch a boat or a train back to Glasgow early in the morning, so that I’d be in time at the office,” said Greystiel. “Well, your mother’s keen for me to go, and I don’t want to disappoint your grandmother—”
“We all want you to go, Paw. It would be so good for Haystoun to see that the Lockharts’ friends are standing by them.”
“Mind, if I do—” Greystiel put barrel and stock together with a click and shot his daughter a threatening look, “If I do, it’ll only be to please your mother. Not because I want to. I’d far rather potter about here on my own, as you know.”
“Of course, darling. It’s very sweet of you. So would I,” said Kate demurely, but her eyes were laughing. “I’ve promised to go and stay with old Mrs. Anstruther and my wary eye on the doing-up of Soonhope.”
“I don’t like it,” Greystiel said at once.
“I know, Paw. But it’s to help Lucy, who after all is the injured person—as far as we know—and Granny was so keen on it. I really couldn’t wriggle out of it,” said Kate.
“Well, I can’t stop you—” began her father, and got no farther.
“Thank you, darling. I knew you’d see that I couldn’t very well refuse,” said Kate.
“It’s all right, Mother. He’s going, but we’ll have to gang warily,” said Kate, shutting the drawing-room door and sitting down on a chair near the open window.
“How did you do it?”
“Low cunning, or haute politique. Call it as you like it or what you will. I’m not very sure which it is, but I fear low cunning is the answer.”
“Very clever of you,” murmured Mrs. Heron.
She was lying on the sofa, a handsome Paisley shawl over her feet, a stack of cushions behind her head. She had been a beauty as a girl, in the days when there was a distinct line of demarcation between pretty and plain, and still bore traces of it in the straight Barlas nose, the breadth between her soft, short-sighted eyes, and the white skin that had been so striking with her black hair. It always seemed to Kate most unfair that two such well-favoured parents had not succeeded in handing down their good looks to their daughter. Grey, of course, was amazingly like his father. The Heron type was unusually well-marked and had not altered very much in the course of centuries. Kate herself was a throw-back to some more plain-featured ancestor, or so she insisted. Certainly there was a very distinct family resemblance, though her nose turned up. The rather heavy brows, the fine modelling of the mouth with its deeply cut corners, the broad low forehead and stiff chin, the setting of the eyes, could all be seen in one or two of the earlier Herons, photographs or reproductions of whose portraits were all that their direct descendants now owned.
“There they go, the old grey fishers,” said Kate from her coign of vantage at the windows, as two herons flapped past, uttering their occasional harsh angry scream. “I always like to see them, I feel they’re lucky to us.”
“What a good thing it is that there are so many herons about,” said her mother dryly. “Though, judging from the fact that we see one or more practically every day, I can’t help thinking that we ought to be luckier than we are—if your feeling is correct.”
“Oh, probably it isn’t,” said Kate cheerfully. “But aren’t you pleased to know that Paw is going to Soonhope?”
“Of course I am, Kate. But I sometimes get a little tired of all the tact and care required to approach the simplest matter. After all, I’m not a member of the diplomatic corps.”
“Men always ought to be handled with care, like high explosives. I’d have them labelled in large red capitals ‘Dangerous. Highly Inflammable.’ You should know that, Mother. You’ve lived with two of the most difficult men in the world for quite a time.”
“Two? You make me sound like a bigamist.”
“I didn’t say you’d slept with two of them! I mean Daddy and Grey, oddly enough. Charming creatures, but not easy.”
“No,” said Mrs. Heron with a sigh. “Certainly not easy. Perhaps that’s partly why they’re charming.”
“Very likely.”
“There are times,” confessed Mrs. Heron, “when I feel that I could do with a trifle less charm and a little more reasonableness.”
“None of our family is very reasonable,�
�� said Kate.
“Kate! I’m sure I’m always reasonable!”
“Oh, darling!” said Kate reproachfully. Then: “Hullo! Here comes Grey.”
Approaching the house by a narrow path across the moor was Grey Heron, his tweed kilt swinging above a pair of admirable knees and legs of whose symmetry their owner was fully aware. A fishing-rod was in his hand, a creel hung at his back. He was whistling loudly but melodiously the pipe-tune known as Donald’s Away to the War.
Kate, leaning perilously out over the window-sill, hailed him. “Hi, Grey!”
He jumped the low wall dividing the moor from the stretch of rough grass which surrounded the house and refused all attempts to make it into a lawn, and came to stand under the drawing-room window.
“What cheer, my poppet! I’ve got some trout for you to cook!”
“Ugh! Nasty little things!” came in a faintly protesting voice from Mrs. Heron. Kate called cheerfully: “You’ll have to degut them, then, if you want me to cook them.”
“All right. Come and watch me,” said Grey.
“I don’t know that your invitation makes much appeal to me, my love.”
Yoked with a Lamb Page 3
