“She means ‘mutual,’ of course,” said Grey tolerantly. “You’ll never get Anne to use the right word. After I’d heard her talking about the Four Horsemen of the Acropolis I knew it was no good.”
Kate laughed, as she was intended to do and knew it, but she said, “Grey, I don’t see why you and Anne should suffer because of me. It seems very hard lines. Why don’t you go to Soonhope sometime?”
“Because I don’t choose to see Lucy,” he said, all the Heron obstinacy in his out-thrust chin. “I told her a few home truths before I left, and I’m not going back in a hurry. She’ll have to apologize to you first.”
“Well, it seems that all I can do is wait for that to happen, and accept it with indecent haste when it does,” said Kate. “But I think it most unlikely, Grey. Lucy was never very much good at apologizing.”
“Lucy has never been quite so obviously in the wrong before,” Grey said dryly. “And what with Granny going back to Edinburgh, and Andrew having his chance to be disapproving, Anne says her mother is very subdued these days.”
“Poor Anne! What a lively time she must be having, and newly engaged, too,” said Kate. “And poor Lucy, too. It must be awful, when you’ve always been so certain you were in the right, to be in her position now.”
“‘Poor Lucy!’” echoed Grey in disgust. “Really, Kate, I sometimes wonder if you aren’t a bit saft! Why should you pity her?”
In spite of her brother’s scorn, Kate’s instinct was right: Lucy was most certainly to be pitied. With the boys at school, Anne moving about in a dream of her own from which she only emerged to smile at her father, with Mrs. Barlas gone in displeased silence, and Florence threatening to follow her, Lucy was in a desolate state. She felt disapproval in the polite but rather distant manner of her acquaintances, and she had too much sense to appreciate the barbed sympathy shown by people like Miss Milligan, for she realized its true worth to be less than nothing. Above all, Andrew, on whom she was used to look down as little as being slightly inferior to herself in every respect, was now in the position of judge. Not that he rubbed it in, as she would have done, and indeed, had done; he spoke to her seldom, and always with grave courtesy as to a stranger whom he had no wish to know better; but each time she met his glance she read condemnation in it. This, to Lucy, was unbearable. She grew thin and pale, and quite lost her look of Dresden china youthfulness during the weeks of that Christmas term. No longer was she upheld by the comfortable feeling of conscious virtue which, she remembered now with a tinge of shame, had given her a melancholy pleasure when Andrew left her. She was haunted by the fear that he might go away again, and this time she would know that he had been driven by her, that no one else could possibly be blamed for it.
It was the desperate need of confiding in someone, no matter how unsympathetic, that drove her one chill afternoon to call on Mrs. Anstruther.
That redoubtable lady, seated before an extravagant fire with her black silk skirt turned back over her knees, received her without enthusiasm.
“Pull a chair in and sit down,” she said. “You don’t often honour me with a visit.”
“It seems a long time since I saw you,” Lucy murmured, taking her seat on the small hard chair which she had chosen.
“Why that uncomfortable chair?” asked her hostess dryly. “Is it a stool of repentance?”
Lucy rose quickly. “I suppose you think I ought to be sitting on one,” she said rather resentfully, giving the chair a spiteful push back to its place and drawing up a large cushioned one with an upholstered back and arms.
“That sounds more like you,” said Mrs. Anstruther. “As for what I think, it is of no importance to anyone but myself. It’s a pity, since you chose to call to-day, that you didn’t come a little earlier. You would not have missed one of your most ardent admirers then.”
“I didn’t know I had any,” said Lucy dismally, het resentment already gone. “‘Who was it?”
“Flora Milligan. And if you wanted cockering up, I don’t know why you didn’t go to see her.”
“Because, poor though your opinion of me is, I have enough sense to know that the admiration of Miss Milligan and company is a dangerous thing and not to be encouraged,” said Lucy with spirit. “If you don’t want me to stay, I can go home. I shall not go to the Milligans.”
“No, I don’t believe you would. You’re so extraordinarily silly at times that one is apt to forget that you are really quite sensible,” said Mrs. Anstruther thoughtfully. “Don’t go. Stay here and have tea and hot buttered scones, and we can be disagreeable to each other.”
“Must we be disagreeable?”
“It’s warming on a cold day, and I need an antidote to poor Flora. She’s as sweet as—no, not honey or sugar, they’re both of them genuine fattening sweetnesses. I’ll say saccharine, instead. It gives the illusion of sweetening without doing you any good.”
“Very well. We shall be as acid as we can,” said Lucy. “I certainly don’t feel sweet.”
“No, it’s hardly your nature, is it?”
“I suppose not,” said Lucy with a sigh, forgetting to be acid. “The truth is that I have a very nasty nature, and I only just discovered it.”
“None of us can claim to be perfect if we look at ourselves truthfully. Your trouble is that you have always seen yourself in some pose or other, usually noble.”
“You believe in plain speaking, don’t you?” said Lucy, wincing.
“Yes, and that is my particular trouble. It has done me a great deal of harm, let me tell you. But you didn’t come here to talk about me. What is the matter at the moment?”
“I seem to have made the most frightful mess of everything,” said Lucy.
“It’s a sign of grace that you realize it,” was Mrs. Anstruther’s comment. “Don’t tell me any more, or you will be sorry one day. It is a very great mistake to confide in other people. Here is Hannah with the tea.”
“But I thought you might be able to help me,” said Lucy desperately, as the grenadier carried in the tea-tray and placed a covered dish which gave forth warm, tantalizing odours, on a trivet by the fire.
“Have some tea first. You won’t need help so much after that. Tea is a wonderful restorer of morale to a woman,” said Mrs. Anstruther, pouring out a cup and handing it to her guest. “Eat several of those hot scones, too. You are far too thin.”
And when Lucy, with a strange, not unpleasant sensation of being back in the nursery, had obeyed, Mrs. Anstruther looked at her and said: “Now?”
“I do feel better. I’ll try to get out of my difficulties myself. But,” added Lucy dolefully, “I don’t believe Andrew will ever forgive me.”
“I’m glad that you’ve stopped harping on the string of forgiving Andrew. Of course he’ll forgive you. It isn’t in Andrew’s nature to bear malice. You may have to wait for it, you know, and you may,” said Mrs. Anstruther, with a shrewd glance at Lucy’s pretty down-cast face where lines showed now that had been invisible a month before, “you may have to do things that come hard to you, like climbing down and taking back words you have said. In my opinion it would be well worth it, but of course that is for you to decide. And in the meantime,” she went on briskly, giving Lucy no time to speak, “the best way to stop brooding over your own troubles is to brood over someone else’s.”
“Whose?” asked Lucy.
“Robin’s, for a start,” said Mrs. Anstruther promptly. “He must get rid of that frightful housekeeper, and he hasn’t the courage to do it. I believe you could. Why don’t you try? Drive up to Pennymuir and have tea with him and see what you can manage. I can’t see you letting yourself be defeated by Mrs. MacOstrich.”
Lucy rose to go. “Well, I can try, If you like, and I will, because you have been far kinder to me than I expected or deserved,” she said.
“And I just hope,” said Mrs. Anstruther to the empty room when her visitor had left, “that my unexpected kind-heartedness hasn’t made me do a very foolish thing.”
The very next day Lucy, whose reforming zeal have been passed down to her undiluted from some Calvinistic ancestor, drove alone to Pennymuir through the brown hills. She thought that she would be prepared for the worst from what she had heard the boys and Andrew say of Robin’s cook-housekeeper, but the tiny figure which stood in the doorway, and by sheer force of character appeared to block it entirely, rather startled her.
“The Master’s not in,” said Mrs. MacOstrich.
“Then I shall come in and wait for him,” said Lucy, after the first moment, was not in the least afraid of her. “When do you expect him?”
“He’ll be in to his tea.”
“Good, I’ll have tea with him.” And Lucy so evidently intended to enter that Mrs. MacOstrich, foiled for once in her usually successful attempts to intimidate unexpected visitors, fell back.
Lucy walked into the sitting-room feeling exhilarated. A small woman herself, she had all the small woman’s determination and courage, and she now went from strength to strength. “Perhaps you would open a window for me?” she asked, finding it pleasant to be able to say what she liked to this disagreeable and malignant little person without wondering if she would take offence. “After the fresh air it is really very stuffy in here.”
Muttering balefully but indistinguishably, Mrs. MacOstrich flung a window open far wider than she needed to, and tramped from the room.
Lucy shivered. She infinitely preferred the cold air to the now vanishing smell of dog, but it seemed to her unnecessary that she should shiver when a fire, ready laid, only asked for a match to be applied to it. Was the wretched Robin doomed to come back to this smelly, airless ice-house? She lighted the fire, and as it blazed up, piled coals and wood on it and sat down in front of the leaping flames to warm her toes.
Presently the housekeeper came slowly and heavily in again carrying a meagrely appointed tea-tray which she set on a table. She glared at the fire in speechless fury, and Lucy said: “You may shut the window now.”
“And who may you be that’s giving me orders?” demanded Mrs. MacOstrich.
“I am Mrs. Lockhart from Soonhope,” Lucy said in pleasant, impersonal tones. “Though it is hardly your province, is it, to ask questions like that?”
“Never heed the provinces. It’s my business to ken why married women comes here without their lawful husbands.”
“It is your business to be polite to your master’s visitors,” Lucy told her. “By the way, do you dust this room yourself?”
“And what if I do?”
Lucy looked round with eyes that missed no speck of dust. “I thought so,” she murmured. “Please shut the door as you go out.”
Mrs. MacOstrich realized with helpless fury that she had been dismissed, and she was baffled. Never before had she met such composure, such calm certainty that an order given would be obeyed at once. “Brazen!” she muttered, tramping out once more and banging the door viciously behind her; but she felt defeated.
Lucy had time to wish more than once that Robin would come, before she saw him pass the window and enter the hall. Mrs. MacOstrich must have been lurking to waylay him, for her voice could be heard talking at length and violently, and then Lucy heard Robin say: “Very well. At once, if you like.”
The sitting-room door was thrown open and he came in, kicking it shut as Henry might have done. “Lucy!” he cried, not waiting for greetings, but seizing her in his arms and kissing her heartily on each cheek. “You marvel, how did you manage it? Mrs. MacOstrich is leaving to-night. Thank God for it!”
“Well, I didn’t look for quite such an easy victory,” said Lucy with a faint smile. “One of the advantages of being a shrew, I suppose. Did she give notice just now?”
“Did she not? She’s shocked at your coming here as if the place belonged to you, all alone, without either an invitation or your husband. And as she’s not ‘used with these loose-like ways’ she’s going. I can never thank you enough. What put it into your head?”
“Your aunt. And I’m glad I’ve done something to make you grateful to me,” said Lucy nervously. “Because I know I am in your black books, and I’m sorry.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It was such a damned silly thing to think,” he said. “I should have thought you’d have known Andrew—and Kate—better than that.”
“Who told you?” she asked, flushing the unbecoming red which betokened anger or, as in this case, extreme embarrassment. “Andrew?”
“There you go again. Of course Andrew didn’t, nor Kate. But I could see the whole thing boiling up, and I did nothing. I trusted that your own good sense would stop you from playing the fool. My mistake.”
“No,” said Lucy. “Mine. I admit it, Robin. I’ve admitted it to myself for weeks, but I don’t know how to put things right. Perhaps Kate won’t accept any apology I make now.”
“Yes, she will. Kate’s generous. She and Andrew are alike in that. And she won’t want to punish him, or Grey and Anne, just to spite you. If I were you, Lucy, I’d apologize. Even if they don’t take it, you’ll be right with yourself again. But they will, of course. You’d never appeal to either of them in vain. And besides,” he added with a laugh, “who are you to say anything? Look at us alone together, and Mrs. MacOstrich shocked to the core—if she has a core, which I doubt. I suspect her of being galvanized iron all the way through.”
“But this is quite different,” argued Lucy, showing a trace of her usual self.
“Not a bit, to other people’s eyes and tongues. I dare say they were all at the kitchen window watching me kiss you just now. I always have thought that window directly opposite the side one in this room was a mistake. You’d better sing very small, Lucy. This little excursion of yours will be published all over Haystoun by to-morrow.”
“I don’t know that I mind so much,” said Lucy. “No, Robin. I won’t wait any longer. I am convinced that your MacOstrich isn’t going to allow me any tea, and if she did it would probably be poisoned. I must go home.” She stood pulling on her gloves, fitting them to her slim fingers with care. “Try to help Andrew not to mind too much,” she said suddenly. “I don’t want him to go away again.”
“He won’t go. I know Andrew. But look here, do have a drink if you won’t have tea. You’ve come a long way—”
“What? Turn this illicit meeting into a debauch? It would never do. And I’m in a hurry now. I want to write to Kate before the last post goes this evening,” said Lucy.
And at that he let her go, watching her car cross the bridge and turn out of sight. It was a very strange conversation to have had with Lucy, of all people. He had never seen her out of her protective shell of conscious rectitude before; and he had a feeling that he would always like her better now, however stupid she might be in the future. Then he fell to wondering when Kate would come again to Soonhope, and whether it would do him any good if she did.
2
It was on a still, cold December afternoon not long before Christmas that Kate sat in the slow train, once more travelling to Haystoun. There was a powdering of snow on Lammerlaw now, and it was too cold to have the carriage windows wide open. Kate was sitting with her back to the engine, looking westwards along the way she had come at the last sunlight gilding the sky.
After a great deal of consideration, she had made mind that not to see Robin at all was much less bearable than seeing him; it would have astonished and slightly annoyed Lucy if she had known how little her suspicion and her sincere apology for them really counted with Kate. She had used the awkwardness of meeting the Lockharts as her chief argument against going to Soonhope when she spoke about it to Grey, but nothing counted, when it came to the point, except seeing or not seeing Robin. And now she was going to spend Christmas in the country she loved better than any other. In the end, it had been decided for her. An old friend of Greystiel Heron’s had asked him and his wife to stay over Christmas, and though the parents had demurred at leaving Kate and Grey, it was plain that they wanted to accept.
“So you s
ee, Paw,” Kate said to her father, as he wound the clock, a ceremony which had taken place in the dining-room every Sunday morning for as long as she could remember, “if you and Mother would only be pets and go, Grey and I could stay at Soonhope. Grey is dying to, poor boy, but we didn’t want to desert you.”
“Oh, well, if you’re so keen on going to Soonhope,” said Greystiel, his eyes brightening to an almost unbelievable blue in anticipation, “I don’t see why your mother and I shouldn’t accept George Buist’s invitation. She would enjoy it.” And after a pause, dreamily, his keen look wandering to the gun-case in the corner: “Wonderful pheasants he’s got, Kate. If the weather’s any good at all, we should have a couple of days’ fine shooting.”
Kate, in the train, laughed at the memory of this conversation, so exactly like a hundred others, so exactly like Greystiel that she could shut her eyes and see him there, the clock-key in his hand.
And her mother, too, saying resignedly: “Greystiel will love every minute of it, and I shall eat far too much rich food and put on weight, and be bored to death by George Buist’s dull wife. I do wish that your father’s friends hadn’t all married such worthy women.”
“But you and Paw are coming to Soonhope to bring in the New Year,” Kate reminded her. “You’ll have that to look forward to, darling.”
“I shall need it,” Mrs. Heron had said.
Starting that morning, early, with the stars not yet gone from a sky of polished steel, and the smell of frost making the nostrils prickle, Kate had thought it was a good sign that, as she got into the hired car to drive to the station, she had heard a harsh, angry cry far above her, and looked up to see two herons, dark, angular shapes with strongly flapping wings, fly slowly over the house towards the loch-side wood. It had cheered the first chilly bit of her journey, and she still liked to think of them now, when the stars were beginning to sparkle above the Lammermuirs, above the roofs of Haystoun and the leafless beeches round Soonhope. The train gave its last loud toot, gathered speed, and rushed noisily into the station, and Kate, fumbling with the carriage door, had it torn from her grasp, and almost fell into Henry’s arms on the platform. It was difficult to recover her balance, as Virginia, attached to a lead which she most bitterly resented, instantly wound the slack of it round and round both Kate’s and Henry’s legs, so that they tottered unsteadily and were only saved from collapsing in a heap by Adam’s timely support.
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