They began, and as Henry lost his first self-consciousness and desire to giggle, the drama of the scene took hold of him, and he and Kate thundered at each other to their mutual satisfaction.
“It’s great stuff, really. Old William’s not as sickly as those poets they make us read,” said Henry condescendingly when they stopped for a rest. “I say, Kate, let’s do it again—”
Once more they were ‘within the tent of Brutus,’ two Roman generals quarrelling fierily. Kate had reached Cassius’ most dramatic speech, and declaimed with much feeling.
“Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,
Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,
For Cassius is aweary of the world:
Hated by one he loves; brav’d by his brother:
Checked like a bondman; all his faults observed.
Set in a note-book, learn’d, and conn’d by rote,
To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep
My spirit from—”
“‘Enter Caesar, in his nightgown,’” observed Henry incorrectly.
“You little monster! You’ve spoilt my best bit!” cried Kate in a rage. “I hadn’t even time to offer you my dagger! Oh—” she broke off, seeing for the first time that they had an audience of one. Andrew, approaching silently on the turfed path, stood near them, with one hand on the old pear tree.
“Excellent, Kate,” he said. “Henry, your mother is looking for you. Something about red stockings for school. She wants to know if the old ones are to be thrown away. You’d better go and see about it for yourself.”
“Gosh, I’d better. Those stockings are to be refooted. I’m not going back with new ones,” said Henry. “‘Thou shalt see me at Philippi,’” he muttered to Kate, and fled towards the garden door, Virginia dancing round him.
Andrew smiled, but Kate thought he looked tired and hipped and altogether forlorn. “Sit down and talk to me,” she said. “It’s nice here in the sun.”
“I’m not very good company to-day,” said Andrew, but he sat down beside her on the bench. “What was that speech were in the middle of when I interrupted?”
“Cassius and Brutus. You must know it.”
“I’d like to hear you say it again. You’ve got a good voice for Shakespeare, Kate.”
A little against her will, Kate repeated it. He said nothing for a moment, then:
“‘All his faults observ’d, set in a note-book, learn’d and conn’d by rote, to cast into my teeth,’” he murmured. “Oh, well, I suppose I deserve it.”
“Andrew!” cried Kate. “Surely no one does that?”
“You don’t certainly. You’ve never cast my misdoings in my teeth,” he said. “Though I can’t imagine that you approve of them.”
“No, I don’t,” Kate answered honestly. “But I think that you probably don’t care for them much yourself.”
“My God, if you knew what an utter cad I feel!” he muttered, so miserably that Kate was distressed.
“Oh, Andrew, don’t take it so to heart,” she said. “After all, you’ve done what you can to put it right. You’ve come back. Surely Lucy—”
“Lucy? I’m not thinking about Lucy!”
“Not?”
“No. It’s Elizabeth. Think what a cad I’ve been to her.”
This was quite a new point of view for Kate. Up till now, if she thought of Mrs. Fardell at all, it had been as the temptress, the woman who had made Robin unhappy, who had lured Andrew from his home, his wife and family. That she might also have been wronged simply had not occurred to her, until Andrew spoke. Then her imagination began to picture what it might be like for Mrs. Fardell. She had thrown away the security which every normal woman prizes for Andrew, and now had lost him too. It was her own fault, of course. How easy it had been to leave it at that, thought Kate, until one’s eyes were opened to the consequences. Quite possibly Mrs. Fardell had not been happy with her husband, who looked so like a handsome carp, and, as far as could be told from one casual meeting, was as cold-blooded and dull as the fish he resembled. But at least she had had a home in a most lovely countryside, a settled position, friends and acquaintances. To Kate the worst thing was that not being able to return to the familiar shadow of Lammermuir, the rolling miles of hill and valley, the jagged sea-coast, Alewater winding between old willows, Haystoun dreaming in the sun. . . .
Happy the craw
That biggs i’ the Trotten Shaw
And drinks o’ the Water of Dye,
For nae mair may I.
She knew what had brought Andrew back, that love of the land which was stronger than any other tie. It had all been made comparatively easy for him because he was a man. . . .
“Oh, it’s so unfair!” she burst out.
“What, particularly?”
“That you could come back, and she can’t. Did she—was she fond of this country?”
“Yes, very. But leaving it could never have meant to her what it meant to me, you know, Kate. It’s in my blood, while she was an in-comer. An old aunt of her husband’s left Darnhall to him, or they’d never have come here. Sometimes I wish they hadn’t.”
“You left it for her, but you couldn’t stay away. I know,” said Kate. “I’ve always known that it must have taken something very big to make you desert Soonhope.”
“It was something pretty big, all right,” muttered Andrew. “Of course, neither of us was happy at home, and that drew us together to start with. We knew, without a word said. But we weren’t so happy once we’d gone,” he added, talking, Kate saw, more to himself than to her. “I suppose we’ve all got consciences, and ours were continually bothering us, spoiling what little happiness we had. All for love and the world well lost didn’t apply to us. Perhaps we weren’t young enough for that. Not that we minded about the world, but we had responsibilities, and I kept dreaming about Soonhope. she who made me write to Lucy. I’d have stuck it out, but she said she’d rather send me away than watch me hankering after home, and gradually blaming her for everything. I don’t believe I would have done that, though, but I couldn’t help my homesickness. . . . Oh, well, it’s all over now. We might have been happy if things had been different, but happiness isn’t life by any means.”
“Everyone has the right to be happy,” said Kate rebelliously.
“No doubt. But snatching at happiness that’s out of reach doesn’t do any good, Kate. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
“But suppose Lucy had divorced you, and Colonel Fardell had divorced his wife, you could have come back together and lived here—”
“And what about Adam? This place will be his some day, you know. It is his right to live here, and it couldn’t have been done any other way but this. Lucy was right when she refused me a divorce,” said Andrew with grim fairness.
“I’m very, very sorry for all of you,” was the only thing Kate could find to say. “For you, and her—yes, and Lucy, too. “
“Why not add Fardell to your list of pitied? Isn’t he in the same boat?” asked Andrew, laughing harshly.
“I don’t believe he is. I don’t feel sorry for him, somehow. If he was hurt at all it was only in his vanity,” said Kate.
“As it happens, you are perfectly correct. Did you hear, by the way, that he is divorcing Elizabeth? Yes, now. After waiting for four years.”
“Now? I wonder why—”
“Oh, he has probably seen someone he’d like to marry, and as, legally, he is merely an injured husband, a righteous man wronged, I haven’t a doubt he will find a wife who will sympathize with him and tell all her friends that his first wife didn’t understand him,” said Andrew bitterly. “Now can you begin to see how I feel? Here am I, restored to my home and family, forgiven—on the surface, anyhow—by my long-suffering wife. There’s Fardell, quit of a woman he drove almost mad by his selfishness and lack of all human feelings, free to marry anyone he fancies. And Elizabeth—Elizabeth carries back the can!”
Kate, her heart sticking somewhere at the back of
her throat, her knees turned to pulp, gulped and said in a thick voice: “What—what about Robin? If Colonel Fardell divorces her, she could marry Robin.”
She spoke so huskily that she was afraid that he wouldn’t hear, and then he would ask her what she had said, and she would have to repeat the words that clamoured in her ears: “She could marry Robin.” But Andrew had heard, and turned an amazed face to her.
“Upon my word, Kate, you’re the most astonishing young woman. I didn’t know you knew about Robin, poor devil. Who told you?”
“Remember, Andrew, this is Haystoun,” said Kate with a flippancy which sounded lamentably false to her. “Who told me? Old Mrs. Milligan, of course. She knows everything that goes on. Nothing is hid from her, from people’s most private love-affairs to what they pay for their Sunday joint.”
“Old bitch! Sorry, Kate, I meant witch, but the other is more suitable.”
“Poor Virginia!” murmured Kate pensively, and was rewarded by hearing him laugh.
“Yes, you’re right. We’ll leave it at witch. But about Robin—Lord, how angry he’d be if he guessed that it was public property, and no wonder. This place is a cess-pit of gossip and scandal,” said Andrew angrily. “What made you say that Elizabeth could marry him, Kate? She always liked him. I never could see why she didn’t prefer him to me, but she didn’t and she doesn’t love him. She’ll never marry again, I’m pretty sure. If she did, it wouldn’t be Robin. Anyhow, I think he’s getting over that affair now. It’s four years ago now, remember.”
“‘Love’s not Time’s fool,’” said Kate.
“I fancy that wasn’t written about love that was not returned,” said Andrew shrewdly. “And though your solution sounds excellent, a fine easy way out, happy-ending sort of business for all concerned, there are so many holes to be picked in it that it would soon look like a fishing-net.”
“You know far more about it than I do,” said Kate meekly, though she was not convinced of this. “It was just an idea. I hoped it might make you feel better about it.”
“It wouldn’t if I believed it. We’re selfish brutes, Kate, and I can’t say I fancy the thought of Elizabeth and Robin married. Dog in the manger, of course, but there you are! Don’t you worry, anyhow, bless your kind heart. I do feel better after making my moan to you,” he said, putting his arm round her and giving her a hearty hug.
It was unfortunate that this innocent and brotherly act should have coincided with Lucy’s appearance.
“Andrew!” she exclaimed, her voice sharp with annoyance, her eyes darting suspiciously from one to the other. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I sent Adam and Henry to find you, and finally had to come myself, though it was most inconvenient at the moment, when I am busy going through the boys’ school clothes.”
“Well, Lucy, I’m sorry. I should have thought I was easy enough to find. I haven’t been hiding,” said Andrew good-humouredly, though his brows had drawn together in a displeased pucker. He disliked this hectoring tone of Lucy’s at any time, and before Kate he considered it in the worst of taste. “And now that you’ve discovered me, what am I wanted for?” he ended dryly.
“A man has come down from Pennymuir with some bullocks, and wants to know which held they are to go into,” said Lucy, her annoyance changing to sulkiness as she realized that she had roused Andrew to temper. “I can hardly be expected to know about the farm as well as everything else.”
“Certainly not,” Andrew agreed with a smoothness which struck Kate as dangerous. “I’ll come.”
“By the way, Kate, there was a note for you, from Robin, brought by the cattleman,” said Lucy, producing a letter from her jersey-pocket. “I thought I might find you with Andrew.”
“Thank you,” said Kate, and watched them walk away. ‘I know Lucy was hoping I’d ask if I could do anything to help her, so that she’d have the pleasure of refusing,’ she thought.
As she turned again on the garden-seat, she kicked something at her foot, and found that it was Henry’s forgotten copy of Julius Caesar. “Now lies he there,” she murmured, picking it up. A loose page fluttered out, and as she stooped again, she recognized it as the one used by Virginia as a mat, with the speech which she had repeated to Andrew on it. She put it back in its place, and her eyes fell on Brutus’s reply, and she read it through.
“‘Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,’ she said aloud. “For ‘Cassius’ read ‘Lucy,’ and it’s true. I know he didn’t treat her as he should have, but I wonder if it ever, ever enters her head that she is behaving absolutely abominably to him?”
When she heard the click of the garden door shutting, and knew that she was quite alone, Kate looked at her letter, the first she had ever had from Robin Anstruther. The envelope bore several excellent impressions of the cattleman’s prints, but that did not matter. There was her name: ‘Miss Kate Heron’ in a decided black handwriting . . . At last, after she had turned it over and examined it thoroughly, she opened it and read:
My dear Kate [wrote Robin],
It seems a long time since I saw you except at dinner parties and such, which don’t count, do they? I have to go to London for a few days—deuced awkward with the harvest in full swing—but when I get back, will you dine with me in Edinburgh and go to a show if there’s anything decent on? Say Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Send me a note to Pennymuir. Yours, Robin.
For a long time Kate sat, the letter in her hand, staring at the garden without really seeing it. Gladiolus, dahlias, first of the Michaelmas daisies, all danced before her eyes in a brightly coloured haze. Robin had written to her, Robin had said that it seemed a long time since he had seen her, Robin had asked her to go out with him, just the two of them.
If the unwelcome thought crept into her mind that this was all because she was like his lost love in some ways, she pushed it determinedly away again. Nothing was going to spoil this for her, nothing!
Something did, of course, as it so often does. Feeling happy, and wanting to please other people if she could—Kate was never so good as when she was happy, adversity had the most souring effect on her—she accompanied her grandmother to tea with Mrs. Milligan. She had not been asked, and thought both her hostesses looked at her very queerly indeed. And in that hot room, where human voices buzzed like flies caught in the web of Mrs. Milligan’s gossip, she heard the old woman say, with many meaning nods of the head and wavings of the fat useless hands: “I hear that Robin Anstruther has hurried off to London. Of course we all know why. With harvest going on and everything, it would take a good deal to drag a farmer away from home at this time of year. Yes. Mrs. Fardell is in London. I have it on the best authority. A friend of mine saw her in Harrods’s and mentioned it to Flora in a letter. And you’ve heard . . .”
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Kate, trying to talk to someone else, straining her ears against her will to catch the rest of this piece of news, only heard the end of it.
“. . . Divorce all arranged, and much as I dislike and disapprove of it, one can hardly blame Colonel Fardell, poor man. Once she is free, of course. . . . Of course that is the reason of this hurried dash to London—really a trifle premature, but what can one expect? You know he always cared for her, though I must say I never saw anything very remarkable about her looks. And as for her morals . . .”
2
“There’s nothing worth bolting dinner and giving ourselves indigestion to go and see,” said Robin cheerfully as be drove Kate towards Edinburgh. “So I’ve brought you out under false pretences. Do you mind?”
“Not a bit,” answered Kate with equal cheerfulness. Her first impulse, after bearing Mrs. Milligan discoursing to her friends on the reason for Robin’s going to London, had been to write to him and contradict her acceptance of his invitation. But a very little thought had shown her that this must lead to questions, and she left it alone. Now that she was with him, friendliness and the gaiety proper to the occasion must be her line, and it was not proving as difficult as she had expect
ed.
The Post Road stretched straight in front of them, the car ate up the miles as if trying to catch the sun, which was sinking, a globe of fiery orange, into the invisible Firth. Already in the east a large primrose-coloured full moon was floating in the hazy sky, there were drifts of mist in the hollows, the Lammermuirs were cut of pure amethyst.
“Well,” said Robin, glancing at her for a moment, “what shall we do? Just sit and talk, or have sixpenn’orthhand of hot hand at the movies, or dance? I seem to remember your once saying that all your brains were in your feet.”
“Whatever you like. I really don’t mind a bit. You choose,” said Kate, the cheerfulness stop pulled out to its fullest extent.
“I don’t seem to recognize this meekness,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you, Kitty. I don’t think I care for you meek.”
“‘Yoked with a lamb,’” murmured Kate, but he heard her and gave a short laugh which sounded extremely heartwhole and free from care.
“Which is the lamb?” he asked rudely. “No one could have been less lamblike than you on your leek-stealing expedition.”
“That was a special occasion,” said Kate with dignity.
“I refuse to be yoked with a lamb this evening,” he said. “So you’d better hurry up and say what you want to do.”
“Dance, then, if you’re good at it. If not, sit and talk.”
“That’s more like you. ‘If I’m good at it!’ My dear child, I was dancing before you were born.”
“Perhaps that’s what I’m afraid of. Dancing has changed a lot since then. And anyhow, if you were dancing before I was born, it must have been at a dancing-class for little boys,” retorted Kate. “And you were the worst-behaved of the lot.”
“Quite wrong. As a really little boy I was surprisingly good,” he told her. “All right, we’ll dance. There’s a do on at one of the hotels, a gala night of some description. We’ll go there.”
Yoked with a Lamb Page 22
