“I’m feeling splendid, thank you, Mrs. Pow.”
“Ye’re no’ thinkin’ o’ gettin’ mairret yet?” asked Mrs. Pow with the privileged curiosity of the old retainer. She had known Kate since the days when a ‘jammy piece’ eaten at the lodge tasted better than cake in the drawing-room.
Kate shook her head, smiling. “No, Mrs. Pow. I’m an old maid. There has to be one in every family, you know. So useful.”
“Hoot awa’, Miss Kate, I’m sure there’s naething o’ the auld maid aboot ye. I’ll wager there’s plenty lads juist waitin’ till ye gie them the nod, eh?”
“Lads are scarce nowadays, especially where we live,” said Kate without bitterness, but it was obvious that Mrs. Pow did not believe her.
“So ye say,” she answered, and added after a brief hesitation: “No, that I’m no’ sayin’ ye’re mebbe better aft as ye are, the way things are nooadays. A’ that die-voarce!” Mrs. Pow’s tone was that of one who finds a slug in the salad. “Little did I think tae see that kin’ o’ trouble sae near hame—”
“Come, now, Mrs. Pow, there’s no divorce in the family that I know of,” said Kate lightly.
Mrs. Pow was not to be diverted. “Aw, mebbe it’s no’ ma place tae be speakin’ o’t, Miss Kate, but ye ken fine whit I’m efter. There’s the maister, decent fally, beguilit awa’ frae wife an’ bairns by yon besom wi’ her big een an’ saft talk. Aye walkin’ aboot the gairden, Pow tellt me, till it was a fair disgrace tae see the pair o’ them, an’ a’ Haystoun wi’ their lang lugs prickit. A bonny-like business tae come aboot at Soonhope! An’ I’ll never believe it was the maister tae blame, na, nor Mistress Lockhart neither. Whit way could yon Mistress Fardell no’ bide at hame wi’ her ain man?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Pow, but there’s nothing to be gained by talking about it, especially now that Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart are coming back.”
There was a slight pause, during which Kate looked about the huge old kitchen with the high dresser running the whole length of one wall, the heavy table, white as sand with much scrubbing, the big range gaping black and cold. In the old days it had been a cheerful place, warm on the coldest winter mornings, filled with the pleasant smell of baking, the firelight throwing a rosy gleam on the shining bowls ranged along the dresser. It was melancholy work, coming back to a remembered house and finding it bare and chill. Kate was glad to think that it would soon be restored to its former condition; but she had a passing doubt as to whether the master and mistress of Soonhope could be as easily settled down again.
Leaving Mrs. Pow to her scrubbing, she wandered through the house. Except for one or two bedrooms there was no papering to be done, for though some of the walls had faded, Lucy had said that they were more in keeping with the old rooms than bright new papers. Privately, Kate thought that she did not wish to change the familiar aspect of the house more than could be helped. Everything, as far as appearance went, was to be as it had been. The solitary painter, a middle-aged man with straggling hair and watery, rather wild blue eyes, was pursuing his task in ‘the big spare-room’ at a snail’s pace, whistling between his two remaining front teeth as he dreamily applied a brush to a cupboard door. He stopped as soon as he saw Kate, and seemed disposed for a refreshing chat on the political situation in Europe, which she brutally nipped in the bud.
“There’s thunder aboot,” he then said in a tone of foreboding. “I heard it reelin’ awa’ up in the Lammermuirs as I cam’ through the toun. Ay, we’ll ha’e a storrum, an’ a storrum aye gangs tae ma heid. I canna be held responsible for ma wurrds an’ acks gin there’s a storrum. Mind, I’m warnin’ ye for yer ain guid. It maitters nocht tae me, but it’s yersel’ I’m thinkin’ o’.”
Kate felt it would be wiser not to linger, but went to the drawing-room, after cordially assuring him that she would keep out of his way during the storm.
Though she had known that this room must be empty like the others, she must subconsciously have expected to find it as she had always pictured it, for it was a shock to cross the threshold and find it uncarpeted and blank. Only the cupids of the Adam mantelpiece still danced among the garlands that held them entwined, about the carved head of Pan in the centre. The light from a row of windows opposite glanced on his sly grin and budding horns. As a child, Kate had disliked this head because she was secretly afraid of it, but now he seemed friendly and familiar in the deserted room. There was nothing for her to look at except the fresh paint, so she made her way downstairs. Crossing the hall, she stood for a moment to admire the gracious outward curve of the wall, which formed a small bay on either side of the front door. Each bay held a window, curving also, with a wide semi-circular seat below. They gave the hall a character all its own, and were a notable feature of the fine old house, indoors and out.
Mrs. Pow, wearing a coat with a fur collar, and an amazing hat like a green straw coal-scuttle, suddenly appeared. “I’ll awa’ doon tae the lodge, Miss Kate. It’s time for the bairns’ denner, but I’ll be back in a wee whiley.”
Kate nodded absently, and looking from the window, watched her go stumping down the drive. A distant rumble of thunder reminded her of the painter, and for a moment she wished that she had asked Mrs. Pow it he was mentally sound. Then she told herself sharply that she was being simply silly. No one employed an insane painter, even in Haystoun.
She continued her prowling, coming to a stop in what was called the billiard-room, presumably because it had once contained a billiard-table, though not since Kate could remember—to stare at the large photograph of Andrew Lockhart which had been left hanging on the wall where everything else had been taken away to be stored. Nothing, it seemed to her, could so plainly have told the tale of the disaster which had overtaken the Lockharts. A foolish old nursery rhyme flitted through her head, and she found herself repeating it aloud to the photograph of Soonhope’s owner:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.
“Marriage, my poor dear Drew, is uncommonly like Humpty Dumpty. I only hope it won’t be as impossible to put together again!”
A long roll of thunder rattled across the skies, ending in a heavy crash which sounded directly overhead, and shook the windows in their frames. As Kate stared wide-eyed, she saw lightning play wildly over the dark clouds above the trees, and then came a nearer peal, and the whole house seemed to rock.
Feeling that even the painter’s society was preferable to none, Kate ran upstairs, wincing at every jagged flash, and threw open the door of the spare bedroom to the accompaniment of a particularly loud roll of thunder. The painter, his eyes whirling madly in his head until they looked as if they would meet over his nose and merge into one, stood at the window daring the elements with fine free gestures of his hands, one of which still clutched the paint-brush.
“It’s the Day o’ Judgment!” he bawled at Kate, standing transfixed in the doorway. “Did ye no’ hear Gabriel’s trump soondin’? Wumman, are ye prepared tae meet yer Maker?”
“I—I hope so,” stammered Kate. “Are you?”
She put the question innocently enough, and simply because politeness seemed to demand an answer, and she could think of nothing else to say. But its effect on the painter was quite frightening.
“Am I? I wad hae ye ken that Saunders Fergus is ane o’ the Elect!” he roared, advancing on Kate with a menacing wave of his paint-brush.
She thought afterwards that in a normal state she would have stayed where she was and braved it out; but when to religious frenzy was added thunder and lightning, she lost her nerve completely. For an instant she stood petrified, then, with one wild bound, she was outside in the passage, had slammed the door and locked it, and fled down the stairs. Once in the hall, she stood panting and listening to the furious hammerings and bawlings which filled in the gaps between the peals of thunder. “He’ll make such a
mess of the door!” she thought. “This is a grand start to looking after things for Lucy. I wish he’d stop!”
But when the noise suddenly did stop, to be replaced by absolute silence inside the house, though the storm outside continued unabated, she found something sinister about the hush, and longed for the painter to bang on the door again. At least while he was doing that she knew where he was. And: “Oh! fool that I am!” said Kate to herself. “I forgot the dressing-room, and he can get out that way!”
Still there was no sound from upstairs, and her heart was beginning to beat more steadily, when she heard a heavy step somewhere near the kitchen, in the passage. The painter, full of religious fury! He must have come down the back stairs, and by this time was probably thirsting for blood. Sheer panic overcame Kate. If she could only lock, him up in some place from which he could not escape. . . . She remembered the deep cupboard just beside her, which he must pass if he came through the swing-door dividing the dark kitchen passage into two parts. As always when badly frightened, she grew angry, and the welcome warmth of rage steadied her nerves. Her coat still hung over the end of the banisters, where she had untidily thrown it, and with some vague idea of muffling his head in its folds and shoving him into the cupboard while he struggled to free himself, she picked it up and crept towards the swing-door, with the cupboard gaping black at her left shoulder. The thunder was roaring too loudly for her to hear him now, but a flash of lightning lit up the dim passage for a moment and showed her that the door was being pushed open. Kate drew a long breath and clutched her coat tightly. Now for it . . . !
3
“What the hell—!” muttered Andrew Lockhart, struggling blindly in smothering folds of Harris tweed. He was pushed into a small space, a door was banged, hitting him a smart crack on the side of the head, and as he heard a key turn, a feminine voice said in tones of breathless satisfaction: “There, you brute! You can wait there until I can fetch the police to take you to the nearest asylum!”
“What the hell!” said Andrew again. He had succeeded in freeing himself from the tweed garment, but he was still, in every sense, in the dark. Once more he decided that he had been a damned fool to make this sentimental detour on his way north to shoot; but he could not pass Soonhope within a few miles without coming for a private view of the old place, and it had all been too easy, driving the car along the Loaning, unseen by any of Haystoun’s gossiping inhabitants, and sneaking in by the garden and back door. And now he was in a pretty fix, locked into one of his own cupboards by an excitable female, who must be quite loopy, to wait until the local police discovered his identity. This would make a magnificent story for Haystoun, and so jolly for Lucy. He wriggled with discomfort in the narrow confines of his prison. Lucy would, quite justly, consider it all his fault. It would be another black mark against him, even if she did not find this last straw too much to forgive, it was so ridiculous, so undignified. If only he could escape before someone found out who he was! But push as he might against the heavy door, the stout lock and bolts refused to give. Raging, he stood still and longed passionately for a cigarette, but he could not move enough to get at his case.
Meanwhile Kate, in high feather at her own cleverness and courage, went springing upstairs to see what sort of mess the painter had made of the spare bedroom in his frenzy. Even the thunder did not frighten her now, and she unlocked the door and threw it gaily open to the sound of a peal which she hardly noticed. Neither noise disturbed the ‘awfu’ slow warker.’ Recumbent on the floor, his grizzled head pillowed against the newly coated door, the painter lay wrapt in profound slumber, a beatific smile on his face, the brush fallen from his hand. Kate, blinking, stared at him in a wild surmise, then rubbed her eyes hard. If the painter was here, then whom had she locked into the press in the hall? However, that problem might wait for the moment while she dealt with what appeared to be some sort of apoplectic seizure. A powerful smell of whisky, which filled the air with every stertorous breath he exhaled, disclosed the cause of his stupor, and Kate’s alarm promptly became rage.
“Wake up, you pig!” she cried, stamping her foot on the bare boards.
The painter, looking remarkably unregenerate for one of the Chosen of God, merely sighed in his sleep and continued to snore. Kate, deciding that violent measures were necessary, advanced, took him by his paint-smeared shoulders, and shook him hard.
He opened bleary eyes and groaned. “Eh, thae weemen!” he mumbled. “Never let a puir fally—hic—lie. Hic. Aye nig-naggin’, nag-niggin’. . . . Lassie, can ye no—hic—me bide?”
“Pig!” cried Kate, losing her hold so that his head fell back against the fresh paint again.
“Ay. Ay. Bonnie wee—hic—pigs,” said the painter blissfully. “Bonnie wee hics.”
It was quite useless. Kate left him to his dreams and went downstairs, wondering how she was to deal with the prisoner in the cupboard. Listening with her head close to the panel of the door, she could hear nothing, and fear that he might be smothering assailed her. With a trembling hand she knocked on the cupboard door.
“Let me out, whoever you are!” said a voice from within, muffled but apparently not suffering from lack of air. “Who are you, by the way?”
“Who are you? is more to the point,” retorted Kate.
“My good woman, what does it matter?” said the voice impatiently. “Let me out and you’ll see who I am soon enough.”
“I dare say, but I don’t propose to open this door until I know who you are and what you’re doing in the house at all.”
“Oh, my God!” groaned the voice. “So we’re no forrader than we were.”
“There’s nothing else for it. I shall have to go for a police-man,” said Kate in despair. “Oh, dear, what a nuisance you are! Now there’ll be all sorts of fuss, and Lucy will be annoyed—”
“Lucy?” roared the voice, so loudly that Kate jumped like a chamois. “Are you talking about my wife?”
This was too much. The man must be a lunatic. “Certainly not,” Kate said in what she hoped were soothing tones. “Not your wife at all. Mrs. Lockhart, to whom the house belongs.”
“It belongs to me, damn it!” bawled Andrew from within, almost bursting a blood-vessel in his efforts to make himself understood. “Do you hear? This is MY HOUSE!”
Instantly Kate forgot her newly-made resolution to deal with the madman in a politic fashion. “How can you talk such utter balderdash?” she screamed at him. “I suppose you’ll tell me next that you are Andrew Lockhart?”
“That’s just who I am!” shouted Andrew furiously. “And Lord knows who you are, but you must be mental!”
Before Kate could think up a reply, a new voice broke in. “What under the sun is going on here?” said Robin Anstruther. “I could hear you screaming like a peahen in full cry from the back door. You’re making far more noise than the thunder, and you look like a fury.”
“There’s—there’s a man in that cupboard!” gasped Kate, clinging to his solid arm in her ecstasy of relief. “I think he’s mad!”
“In that cupboard? How did he get in there?”
“I locked him in,” said Kate, not without pride. “He was prowling about the house, and—”
“Who’s there?” called the voice from the cupboard. “Is it Robin Anstruther, by any blessed chance? If so, for God’s sake, Robin, muzzle that female and let me out!”
Robin Anstruther gave one look at Kate, one at the cupboard door, and began to laugh. His shoulders quaking, he advanced and turned the key.
“What are you doing?” cried Kate.
The door opened, and a dusty, dishevelled figure burst out, cobwebs clinging to his hair, Kate’s tweed coat still about his neck.
Often though Kate had pictured her next meeting with her cousin Andrew, and wondered how embarrassing it would be, her wildest imaginings had never drawn anything approaching the present situation. Dumb with amazement, she watched the two men grin and clasp hands, vaguely she heard the owner of Soonhope murmur as he
brushed the cobwebs and dust-fluff from his head: “Who is she, Robin? And is she really loopy?”
Robin was thoroughly enjoying himself. “Not more so than most people,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “This is Kate Heron, Drew. Second cousin of yours, isn’t she?”
“Kate Heron! Kitty. . . . Good Lord, so it is. I recognize her now, of course,” said Andrew dazedly. Then, as his eyes met Kate’s, his mouth began to twitch, and he broke into half-unwilling laughter. “Upon my word, Kate, I never thought you’d turn out such a termagant!”
“I dare say not,” Kate retorted, laughing too, thankful that the ice was broken and that at least she no longer had to dread meeting him. “But there’s a drunk painter sleeping in the big spare bedroom—the carnation room, I mean, and with the thunder and being alone in the house with him, I rather lost my head. I do hope you weren’t horribly squashed in that cupboard?”
“Squashed? I know just what pressed beef feels like,” he assured her. “And I’ve swallowed pounds of dust. I’d give all I have for a pint of beer.”
“I’m afraid that what the painter was drinking must have been whisky, and from his condition it’s probably finished,” Kate said sadly. “And I haven’t any beer—”
“I have. I brought a couple of bottles and a lot of sandwiches along,” said Robin Anstruther. “I thought a picnic lunch might be a sound idea, and Aunt Jean rose to the occasion. There’s only two bottles of beer, but they’re screw-tops, and anyhow you deserve to hand over part of your share to Andrew for locking him in one of his own cupboards.”
“He can have it all,” said Kate generously, “as far as I am concerned. What I want is a cup of tea. Several cups.”
“Tea!” both men exclaimed with a look of horrified pity.
“Tea,” said Kate. “I’m going to brew it now, in the kitchen, on the oil-stove. We’d better picnic in there. It’s the most cheerful place, and a nice distance away from the painter.”
Yoked with a Lamb Page 5
