Yoked with a Lamb

by Molly Clavering

  “Must we go to Edinburgh at all?” suddenly asked Kate.

  “Now you’re being contrary,” he said reprovingly. “I think, if you remember, I asked you to dine with me in Edinburgh. It’s not for you to pick holes in the place once you’ve accepted.”

  “You see, I’m so bucolic,” pleaded Kate. “All my tastes are for the country, and it’s much too lovely an evening to spend in any town, even Edinburgh. Besides, haven’t you had enough of streets and lights after being in London?”

  “I’ll take you over into Berwickshire, then, and if you have to wait a long time for your dinner don’t blame me.”

  “I won’t,” Kate said gaily, her carefully assumed cheerfulness quite forgotten, as he turned the big car into a side road leading south towards the Lammermuirs. They passed farm-steadings, the red roofs of the cottages rosy in the last level rays of the sun, the gardens brilliant with dahlias, they crossed Alewater where willows traded silver-grey branches in the dark water, and as they began to climb, the sun disappeared. Now, looking back, Kate could see all the valley filled with milky vapour behind them. The moon, growing every moment more luminous, hung like a yellow Chinese lantern in the south-eastern sky, the evening star shone, the first hunting owl swept across the road on broad silent wings, plover cried plaintively in the grass fields. It was almost dark in the low ground, but when they reached the ridge of the hills they could still see, and not until they were swooping down the southern slope did Robin switch on the lights, showing scared rabbits scampering before them along the roadside, white scuts bobbing, and the occasional green eyes of a wandering cat.

  The ruins of a castle stood up sinister and jagged against the cold duck-egg green sky, and presently they whirled into a little town and drew up on a large open space of ground before an hotel. Above the modern A.A. and R.A.C. signs on the lichened walls were gilt capital letters, a little out of the straight now, but still easy to read: ‘Post Horses.’ The door stood open and light streamed broadly out to welcome them. Kate, as she went up the steps, said with a sigh of satisfaction: “This is much nicer than “Edinburgh.”

  A competent young woman in a well-cut tweed skirt and hand-knitted jersey assured them that they could have dinner as soon as they had drunk the sherry ordered by Robin, and they were shown into a lounge where a large fire was burning.

  “I’m not at all sure you aren’t right,” said Robin, leaning comfortably against the high mantel. “But of course Edinburgh isn’t much good until winter. Suppose I’d offered you dinner at a really good London restaurant instead of this, which would you have chosen?”

  “This,” said Kate promptly. “I’m not at all smart myself, and smart places usually terrify me. Very occasionally I long to sweep into one of them looking too dazzling for anything but a mannequin, but it never happens, of course. If I am asked, I haven’t a dress worthy of the invitation, and have to slink to the table looking and feeling the complete country cousin that I really am.”

  “You have too much poise for a country cousin,” said Robin gravely, looking at her as he drank his excellent dry sherry. “And then, you walk so beautifully. You know, Kate, the first time you walked into the Soonhope dining-room in front of me in that black dress you were wearing, the only words that fitted it were those hackneyed ones, ‘she walked like a queen.’”

  “Oh, thank you, Robin! Grey always teases me and says I go about like Little-Johnny-Head-in-Air.”

  “Certainly you don’t slouch. Do you want to? I should think that round-backed, head-poked-forward position could be learnt quite easily but I hope you’ll never adopt it,” he said. “Now, what about dinner?”

  It was a simple but well-served meal, and their fellow diners appeared to be a party who were staying in the hotel for shooting, the women not too smart to frighten Kate, the men, their weather-beaten faces very red and brown above their white shirt-fronts, eating hungrily, and when they talked at all, speaking only of bags and drives and beaters.

  “They come here every year,” said Robin, noticing that Kate had glanced across the room at them, “It’s a syndicate, of course. They start with grouse, and about now or a little later they get any number of geese. You ought to see the geese flighting, Kate, it’s a wonderful sight. I’ll speak to Drew about it.”

  Later, as they went back to the lounge for coffee, he said, “I don’t think we’ll stay here for long. I know one or two of these fellows slightly, and if we get mixed up in a poker game or something with them, Lord knows when we’ll ever get home. So we’ll push off as soon as we’ve had coffee, if you don’t mind.”

  Leaving Kate by the fire, he went to pay the bill, and having done so, met the two men he knew in the hall.

  “Hullo! What are you doing here, Anstruther?”

  “Dining,” said Robin rather shortly. “No, I can’t stay, Bruce. I’ve got a lady with me. What sort of bags have you been getting this season?”

  “Never mind the bags—they’ll keep. I’ve been hearin’ stories about you, my boy. Hear you’ve taken to roamin’ round Haystoun in the middle of the night with your girlfriends. A bit careless, eh?”

  “I don’t know where you get hold of your gossip,” said Robin, his dark, face unpleasantly pale with anger, “but you’ve been misinformed in this instance.”

  “Oh! Well, it’s all over the place,” said his acquaintance, who had obviously dined very well indeed. “Some old trout dropped in here to tea one day when we happened to be in a bit earlier ourselves, and they were full of it. Couldn’t help overhearin’ them, they were at the next table. All rumour, no doubt, and, anyway, what’s the harm in it?”

  “None, if it happened to be true, which it isn’t,” said Robin. “I’d be obliged if you’ll contradict it the next time anyone says it to you.” Inwardly he was cursing, it was quite evident that some busybody had seen Kate and him on their leek-stealing excursion. First and last, those leeks had been an infernal nuisance.

  “Cert’nly, cert’nly, old boy,” said Bruce obligingly, trying to slap Robin on the back and almost losing his precarious balance as Robin moved aside and he smote empty air. “All between friends. And how’s Lockhart these days? Hear his wife’s taken him back; and he’s up to his old tricks already, carryin’ on with a cousin of his he’s got stayin’ at Soonhope. Damned useful, these cousins, what?”

  “That,” said Robin very gently, “is a damned lie.”

  “Eh? Call me a liar, would you?” Bruce was becoming belligerent. “No man can call me a liar and get away with it.”

  “I can, and I do,” said Robin. “And if you weren’t drunk it would give me great pleasure to knock you down.”

  “What? What? Knock me down? Try it and see—”

  “Oh, take him away and put him to bed,” said Robin wearily to the other man, who had stood all this time looking on with a sardonic smile. “It’s all he’s fit for.”

  As Bruce, still loudly proclaiming that he’d show anyone who called him a liar that he was a liar himself, was dragged off by his friend, Robin turned and went back to the lounge.

  Kate, her coffee untasted, was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes sparkling with anger. “I heard it all,” she said, as he looked anxiously at her. “The girl who brought the coffee left the door open. How dared that revolting man say such vile things? I’d like to kill him.”

  “So should I,” said Robin. “Except that he isn’t worth swinging for. He’s a friend of Fardell’s, which explains a lot. Don’t let it worry you, Kate. What does it matter if the whole of Haystoun saw us that night?”

  “Us? I’m not thinking of that. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t dance a rumba in front of the Town Hall at two in the morning if we choose. It’s what he said about Andrew. Robin, has Andrew always got to have things like that said about him just because of what he did when he was so unhappy that he couldn’t help himself?”

  “It doesn’t matter what damn’ fools like Bruce say. No one pays any attention to him,” said Robin, thankfu
l that she had not noticed her own connection with the piece of slander. The next moment, however, he knew that he had been thankful too soon.

  “Cousin, indeed!” she said scornfully, with a laugh. “Cousin! Was the creature talking about Mother, do you suppose? She’s Andrew’s cousin—” Something in his look stopped her.

  “Think again,” he said.

  “But—but who? Robin, he can’t possibly have been talking about me?”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid he was. I wish now that I had knocked him down, drunk or not, the foul-tongued brute.”

  To his great relief she was astonished and angry, but still for Andrew’s sake. “How absolutely absurd!” she said. “I never heard anything so silly in my life, did you? I’d laugh at it if it weren’t that it’s such a shame for poor Andrew. I wonder they don’t accuse him of making love to Cousin Charlotte!”

  “You’ve taken up the cudgels for Andrew now, I see,” he said. “I thought you were on Lucy’s side?”

  “It’s all so difficult,” sighed Kate, her brow puckered in a puzzled frown. She sat down and drank some of the lukewarm coffee. “You see, I still know that Lucy is in the right, but she is so awfully nasty about it. Why is it that so many people who are right have the effect of making you prefer the people who are wrong? I know that Andrew behaved very badly, yet now, every time I see him with Lucy, it’s he who behaves well, and Lucy who is horrible. If I were sure I was right I’d be so pleased with myself that I’d be nice to the other person.”

  “A bit involved, aren’t you?” said Robin, “but I know what you mean. It isn’t a question of right and wrong, really. It’s just that Andrew has the knack of attaching people to him, partly by his own kindliness, partly by what’s rather loosely called ‘character’ these days; and Lucy hasn’t the knack, and so she feels it and takes it out of Drew. It’s been like that all along, Kate. It will always be like that, because you can’t change a person s nature.”

  “Well, I’m dreadfully afraid that unless Lucy is a great deal nicer to Andrew, he won’t be able to stand it. And this time he’ll have Anne and Adam and Henry on his side, right or wrong,” Kate said soberly. “and what will Lucy do then?”

  “God knows, but we can’t do anything. To interfere would only make matters a hundred per cent worse,” said Robin.

  “Can’t we? Couldn’t you? Lucy likes you——”

  “Not a hope,” said Robin firmly. “You don’t drag me into any more escapades, my dear. Do you realize that you’ve got to live down the ’orrid scandal of being seen with me at midnight in Haystoun?”

  “Pooh!” said Kate. “Do you mind much?”

  “I can bear it. Now come on, and we’ll get away before any more of Bruce’s tiddly friends come and annoy us. My temper’s a bit frayed already, and you don’t want to be mixed up in a vulgar brawl, do you?”

  “I’d love it,” Kate assured him. “You may as well know it, I’m a fishwife at heart, and no lidy. I’d take part in a brawl joyfully.”

  “I believe you would,” he said with a groan. “But you’re not going to have the chance. Come on.” He took her by the arm and almost ran her out to the car.

  “We aren’t going home?” she asked disappointedly as they started.

  “Haven’t you had enough excitement for one evening?”

  “No. I want something to take the nasty taste out of my mouth after dear Mr. Bruce. Could we drive rather slowly and go by all the little roads? It’s not much after nine o’clock.”

  “It’ll be after ten by the time we get back to Haystoun,” he reminded her.

  “Ten? What’s ten to a person who is seen out at midnight?” said Kate magnificently. “Unless you’re tired of me?” she added with a sudden drop in her voice.

  “Now you’re talking like a fool,” he said. “I won’t reassure you, you don’t deserve it. but I’ll go slowly, by the side roads, and we’ll probably be lost and have to stay out all night.”

  “That will give Haystoun something fresh to talk about,” said Kate, settling down under her rug and laughing.

  The moon, riding high, was a silver honesty penny, shedding a wan clear light on the fields, which had all been led in this low, sheltered land, and now lay bare, the blonde stubble glimmering faintly under the moon. Hedges and trees and houses were black silhouettes, an occasional signpost at a cross-roads showed like a ghostly figure with arms outstretched. The lights of the car picked out details haphazard—a rat scurrying across the road, evil sharp nose and long tail, a clump of tall grasses, their heads heavy with seed, a hawthorn bush, the polished haws shining, a hedgehog, its spines laid along its round back, toddling doucely homeward. The unpleasant encounter at the hotel began to seem vastly unimportant to Kate, on whom the strange beauty of the country at night was having its effect.

  “Where are we now?” she asked idly after a time.

  “I haven’t the least idea. We’re going vaguely in the right direction, unless this road changes its mind, but beyond that, I don’t know,” he said, as if it did not matter much.

  All that mattered to Kate was that she was sitting beside him sharing this magic. If she had been in the habit of quoting Browning, which she was not, for she had an absurd dislike of him, she would have found her feelings expressed for her with a poet’s easy eloquence in The Last Ride Together.

  “Look, there’s a light!” she exclaimed as they turned a sharp corner. “Oh, Robin—music! Do stop, it’s a dance or something!”

  Resigned and amused, he stopped the car beside a small building which from its shape and size seemed to be one of those wooden, corrugated-iron-roofed huts so frequently erected as village halls in remote parts of the country. “I believe it’s a kirn. They don’t have many nowadays,” he said, as the sounds of music, the stamping of many heavy feet, came more clearly to their ears.

  “A kirn?”

  “A harvest-home dance. We might go and have a look at it.”

  “What fun they’re having!” said Kate, as the Flowers of Edinburgh, recognizable only from the short snatches of tune heard at intervals, pounded gaily on. A middle-aged bearing the fine hall-mark of shepherd from his keen, clear eyes to his enormous boots, saw them, and tramped relentlessly through the dancing crowd to speak to them.

  “Ay, it’s a kirn. This is Wideopen an’ Seefew ha’. Step ben, sir, an’ the leddy. It’s no’ sae warrum ootbye as it is in here. By! if it’s no’ Maister Anstruther o’ Pennymuir! Ma maister bocht in three score Cheviot yowes aff Pennymuir a fortnicht syne at Bo’sel’s mart! Ye’re welcome, sir,” as Robin, thanking him for the invitation, went inside. Kate was already over the threshold, her foot tapping in time to the merry air ground out by a piano and two accordions.

  “Ou, it’s juist a sma’ affair, oor ain, an’ nae incomers,” explained the shepherd, producing, as if by sleight of hand, a hard wooden chair, and setting it for Kate out of the draught from the open doorway. “There’s singin’ tae. They’ll be giein’ us anither sang in a meenit. It gies them time tae get their breath, an’ pleases the auld fowk. Sit ye doon.”

  As it was one of the dancers who, wiping his face with a large red handkerchief, and panting visibly, jumped on to the tiny platform as soon as the dance ended, Kate felt that he, at least, was not being given much opportunity to ‘get his breath;’ but he seemed delighted with his importance, and burst without pause into a long chant about an ‘Ah-rab steed.’

  “Ma bee-autifu’, ma beautifu’

  That stahndest meakully by,” he bawled mournfully.

  His audience sighed in an ecstasy of sentiment, and the shepherd, with pride, muttered in Robin’s car; “Ay, he’s the lad, is Dand. it’s aye a sang aboot horse he gies them, him bein’ horseman at Wideopen, ye ken.”

  It seemed an excellent reason, and satisfactory to everyone, for when the singer, having given up his Ahrab steed, announced the fact in a last bellow of manly resignation, and jumped off the platform, he was applauded with such vigour that the dust, which had subs
ided a little, swirled through the place like a sand-storm.

  “Are you being choked?” said Robin, as Kate sneezed several times.

  “Yes. But it is worth choking for. It’s grand entertainment. Do please let us stay,” she answered before another burst of sneezing checked her.

  “They’re wantin’ anither sang, an’ there’s no’ a soul can oblige,” said the shepherd, who appeared to be master of ceremonies, anxiously. He turned his appealing eyes on Robin, who affected a fine air of unconsciousness. “Sirr?” he murmured hopefully.

  “No, no. They don’t want to hear me. Let them, sing themselves,” said Robin hastily.

  “Robin, do you sing?” asked Kate in surprise, for she had never suspected him of this accomplishment.

  “I make a noise,” he said most reluctantly. “I have never called it ‘singing.’”

  “Then make your noise!” Kate turned to the shepherd. “Mr. Anstruther will sing,” she said, heedless of Robin’s frown.

  “You take a good deal upon yourself, don’t you?” he growled, as the shepherd made a suitable announcement from the platform.

  “I want to hear you, Robin. Don’t be cross.”

  “Well, you’ll have to vamp an accompaniment and help with the chorus,” he said, taking her by the hand and helping her up the single high step to the stage, where he led her to the piano stool. He did not seem in the least nervous as he turned to face his hushed and expectant audience, and said in his careless, commanding voice: “I’m going to sing my one and only comic song to you. Phil the Fluter’s Ball, and you can all join in the chorus, or I’ll stop singing.”

  Kate, wildly picking out what she hoped were appropriate chords on a defective piano, had not much attention to spare for the singer, but she liked his voice in the cheerful piece of Irish nonsense, and it was plain that everyone else liked it too from the continuous stamping of feet in time to the music, and the thundering cheers which nearly lifted the tin roof at the end.