“Croma needs you, that’s certain,” Jane said as Rory drew up with the brake. “I’m glad we’re going to be together for a while.”
“Hullo!” Rory said, coming up. “Had a good crossing?”
“Rough in places.” Jane looked round for her luggage, which was being carried ashore over the stern gangplank. “Where’s Hamish?” she asked.
Rory shrugged.
“Over on Muldoanish, I dare say, with Archie Campbell’s boat,” he answered darkly. “He’ll drown himself in it before long.”
“But at the moment he is amused?” Jane suggested, her eyes going to the distant grey line of the Outer Hebrides where her elder brother was supposed to be. “We must be grateful that he is at least on the island,” she concluded in the tone of someone who had long ceased to struggle against the inevitable.
“Are you coming up in the brake?” Rory asked when he had collected her luggage.
Jane glanced at Christine.
“I’d like to walk,” she decided.
“We’ve plenty of time,” Christine agreed. “Grandma will know that the boat has come in, but she’ll guess we’re walking up to the house.”
Rory turned the brake in the confined area of the pierhead and drove away.
“Pier dues!” Jane exclaimed, fishing in her purse for the necessary coppers. “Haven’t you increased them, Christine? They’ve gone up a penny everywhere else.”
“My grandmother won’t, and she’s still the boss!” Christine answered, forestalling her with the money. “I agree with her there, I think. Increasing dues and taxes won’t bring life back to Croma.”
They went through the turnstile and turned along the narrow road where the dust of the brake’s progress towards Erradale was still hovering above the surface.
“It’s young people Croma needs, Jane,” she added. “People like you and me and Rory and—Hamish.”
“Why count Hamish in?” Jane said. “He wouldn’t stay on Croma unless it was to suit his own purpose!”
“Why are you and Rory so hard on him?” Christine cried. “He couldn’t help what happened.”
Jane’s mouth was still thin.
“Perhaps not,” she said. “Perhaps we are rather bitter.” She walked on a little way in silence. “It’s the people who were forced to go that we need back on Croma,” she said at last, her averted eyes dark and tragic. “The island has been slowly dying for the past five years.”
“Why?” Christine protested. “Why, Jane?”
“Because progress has marched away. Because an island of this size, so remote from the mainland, has to be practically self-supporting, and that takes money to bring about in the first place.”
“In that case, one half of the island is going to be prosperous enough!” Christine said bitterly.
“You mean Ardtornish?” Jane asked without rancour. “Yes, I think Ardtornish’s future is secure.”
Christine turned to stare at her.
“Don’t you mind very much that—someone else is doing all that?” she demanded.
“I don’t think so.” Jane seemed quite convinced. “Ardtornish matters more than me—more than my personal reaction to the changes we’ve had to accept as a family.” There was a little silence in which they climbed the hill, side by side.
“Jane,” Christine asked at last, “what did you mean just now when you said that we were going to be together for a while? I know my grandmother has asked you to stay here as long as you wish, but—well, you haven’t made any definite promise and—I wondered—”
She was floundering because she was remembering Finlay Sutherland, remembering him most vividly, and the arrogant way in which he had said that Jane would be only too pleased to work for him. If he had not used those actual words, she corrected herself, at least that was what he had meant!
Jane hesitated for a moment before she answered.
“I will be staying on the island,” she said. “I’ve had an offer from Finlay Sutherland to catalogue the books at Ardtornish, and I’m going to accept it.”
Christine could not speak. Somehow, she felt that she had been wrong about Jane, about her loyalty and her feelings for her old home. It was almost as if Jane had let her down in some subtle way.
“I didn’t think you would accept,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t think you could—after living at Ardtornish all your life.”
“I’ll be living there again,” Jane said quietly, “at least for a month or two.”
After that Christine was determined not to mention Finlay Sutherland again. Time passed without a reply coming from him to her grandmother’s invitation. He was ignoring it, snubbing them for some reason best known to himself, although she would have thought that he would have been only too pleased to come if only to see how impoverished people met a great occasion in their lives!
And a great occasion it was certainly going to be, if Dame Sarah had anything to do with it. The strength of will with which she had overcome her physical limitations amazed everyone, and when she demanded to be helped downstairs to supervise the decoration of the great hall no one dared to refuse her request.
Old flags, taken from their boxes in the gun-room, were hung from the rafters, and Rory and old Adam Moffat, the gamekeeper, brought in spruce and larch and fir branches from the woods to line the walls. The long banqueting table which had glowed with silver and candlelight on many another family occasion down through the years was polished until it shone, and Mrs. Crammond dared anyone to lay a tool or a flower on it on peril of their lives.
The flowers had been sent from Oban and Jane banked them in colourful profusion at both ends of the hall.
“There!” she exclaimed, standing back to admire her handiwork. “How does it look?”
“Wonderfully in keeping with the great event!”
Christine, who had been collecting stray stalks and wrapping paper, whirled round to find Hamish standing behind them.
He had come in unnoticed while they were busy, standing at the top of the short flight of stone steps leading up from the main doorway to watch them, and in that moment all her pity flooded out to meet him. Silhouetted against the shadowy background of the old grey stone, he seemed to epitomize all the gallantry of the centuries stretching away behind him, the tall, unbelievably handsome laird who had not come into his own.
She was certain that he must be thinking about that now as he watched the preparations for her coming-of-age, and even the sardonic smile which tinged his lips as he looked at his sister’s efforts with the flowers could only be a mask for the heartache he could not show.
She went swiftly towards him, taking his arm to draw him farther into the hall.
“We’re almost finished,” she said. “Come and say ‘hullo’ to my grandmother!”
Dame Sarah greeted him with the usual warmth which she kept for all the Nicholsons, although Christine was sometimes aware of a reserve in her approach to Hamish which was baffling. Her sorrow at his plight might almost have been tinged with scorn, and quite often the old lady eyed him warily, especially when he was airing his views about the Highlands.
“Well,” she asked, “have you had a good day’s sport?”
“Excellent!” He smiled into the quizzical old eyes which saw far more than even he suspected. “The birds are getting sparse, though. Perhaps I have been too energetic in that direction. I must try the sea for a change.”
“Which means you intend to stay with us after the end of the month?” Dame Sarah reflected. “It won’t be to much purpose,” she added bluntly, “if you’re only going after the sharks. They’ve never been anything but a waste of time and money, as far as I can see. People have tried to make a living out of shark fishing before and failed,” she warned.
“I wasn’t exactly thinking of a living,” he answered lazily. “It’s an excellent sport, and I’m still on holiday.” He smiled disarmingly. “Sometimes I think I might have settled quite happily at Ardtornish,” he said, “if things had been differe
nt.”
“More in your favour, do you mean?” Dame Sarah queried when she saw that the others had drifted towards the far end of the hall and were out of earshot. “You could have stayed at Ardtornish, but it would have been a struggle,” she pointed out. “All the same, it might have come off, with a little determination.”
“Determination doesn’t pay debts,” he suggested patiently, charmingly. “I had no other option than to sell, I’m afraid.”
Dame Sarah made a small, guarded sound in her throat that might have been a sigh of agreement or a grunt of disapproval, although he did not stop to consider which as he joined Christine at the other side of the hall.
“I hear our neighbour at Ardtornish has removed himself to Edinburgh for the time being,” he observed with an oblique glance in Jane’s direction. “When do you expect him to take up residence again?”
Jane bit her lip.
“I had no idea he was away,” she confessed. “He wrote asking me to go to Ardtornish whenever I was ready to start work on the library, and I thought I might go as soon as Christine’s party was over.”
“Which he won’t be attending?” Hamish’s raised brows indicated his surprise. “Wasn’t he asked, or is this just a direct snub on his part?”
Christine felt the colour rush into her cheeks, not quite able to account for her sudden anger nor for the sense of humiliation she felt. Humiliation or disappointment? Of course, it wasn’t disappointment! She had known from the beginning that Finlay Sutherland wouldn’t come. She had told her grandmother so when they were writing out the invitations.
“Whatever Mr. Sutherland’s reasons may be,” Jane was saying, “I’m sure it isn’t because he wants to snub anyone. He’s not the sort who would offer an intentional hurt. He may have had business to attend to in Edinburgh which he could not afford to neglect.”
“Even for Croma!” Hamish smiled. “Yes, I should imagine that business might come first.”
“Why shouldn’t it?” Christine demanded, tossing her head. “After all, my birthday can’t be all that important to him. He’s an absolute stranger—an incomer!”
She saw Jane looking at her in an odd sort of way and was vaguely ashamed, and Hamish turned away to help Mrs. Crammond with the tea tray.
They gathered round the fire, speaking of old times, and it was only when the sconces were lit high on the wall above them that she realized how tired her grandmother looked.
“We’ll come and have supper in your room, Granny,” she suggested. “There’s nothing more that we can really do tonight.”
Urgently she rose from her chair, aware that Dame Sarah was finding the utmost difficulty in moving, but in an instant Hamish had taken everything in hand.
Rory and he supported the old lady between them, with Jane following behind, a small, anxious frown pencilled between her brows. Christine had rushed on ahead to open the door of the turret room, and a sharp stab of fear pierced her heart as she looked back at the little procession mounting the stairs.
There was no colour left in Dame Sarah’s cheeks and her halting steps seemed to drag on the shallow stairs even with the adequate support she was given. Before they reached the top she was almost a dead weight in the men’s arms and Rory could not hide his concern.
He left them immediately they had settled the old lady into her armchair before the vast stone fireplace which dominated the room, and several seconds later Christine heard the estate car drive away.
Wondering if Rory had gone for Doctor McIlroy, she helped Jane and Mrs. Crammond to get her grandmother into bed, but by the time she was settled among her pillows Dame Sarah had waved their anxiety aside.
“I’m fine,” she declared. “There’s no need for a fuss! I’ll be all right in the morning after I’ve had a rest. I suppose the excitement has affected me,” she added, “but I’ll sleep it off. Yes,” she repeated, her voice dropping to a drowsy murmur, “I’ll sleep.”
Christine stayed in the room, sitting in the shadows beyond the firelight, waiting. When the doctor came she rose to her feet, but she could not go to meet him. He saw her and nodded, not speaking as he crossed to the bed.
His examination of his patient seemed swift and perfunctory, as if he had known what to expect before he had come.
“Keep her in bed as long as you can to-morrow,” he advised when he had replaced the thin hand under the coverlet. “Nothing on earth will keep her up here during the main part of the celebrations,” he added, “and I’m not the man to attempt it! Her own wonderful stamina and willpower will see her through.”
“We could call it all off,” Christine suggested with a catch in her voice. “If she’s done too much—if there’s any real danger, Doctor Mac, you’ll have to say so. We can keep people away. We can have a quiet celebration on our own—”
He took her hand, smiling into her clouded eyes.
“It would finish her completely to call it all off,” he said with the utmost assurance. “This is what she has been living for—this one day—for the past two years. Neither you nor I have any right to deny it to her now. I shall be here,” he added reassuringly. “I’ll see that she doesn’t do anything rash.”
Christine thanked him, but she was far from happy about the situation. When he had driven away towards the flag-bedecked Port she stood for a long time looking after his departing car, wondering if he had really offered her a warning.
Standing there in the gloaming, she felt once more the spell of the island drawing close, making its demands of her, spreading out the future before her like a challenge, yet, inwardly, she still felt something of the old uncertainty. At first it had seemed to be the will to escape, the desire to go her way and lead her own life elsewhere, but now it was more than that.
She struggled with it and lost as heavy footsteps crunched across the gravel behind her and Hamish came to stand by her side. In the uncertain light he looked taller even than he actually was, big and strong and dependable and full of certainty.
“Oh, Hamish!” she cried, “it’s all so difficult!” Suddenly, weakly, she was hiding her face in his coat. “She’s so old and frail really, though she won’t admit it. I think Doctor McIlroy has been trying to warn me that she might die—”
“These things happen,” he said, drawing her to him. “I’m afraid we’ve got to accept them, Chris.”
Struggling, she thrust him from her.
“I can’t accept them!” she protested stormily. “I can’t do without her! I have so much to learn—”
He permitted himself the faintest of smiles, pitying perhaps. “You are too intense,” he told her soothingly. “Things mean too much to you, my dear. You allow events to frustrate your own desires, and that’s always an uncomfortable way to live.”
She stared back at him, only half understanding what he meant because the events of the last half-hour had left her numbed and heavy of heart.
“Isn’t that a selfish way to look at it?” she protested, and was deeply hurt when he laughed softly against her cheek.
Once more he was pulling her, half-resisting, towards him.
“Chris! Chris,” he said, “we are all selfish, deep down! We go for what we want most and try to leave our scruples behind for our own comfort.”
“That isn’t true!” she said, but she allowed him to kiss her. “I don’t suppose for one minute that you believe it, either. You say the most outrageous things to—to affront people, but you don’t really mean them. You couldn’t! It’s just a—a sort of a mask you wear to hide your deeper feelings.”
He smiled in the dimness of the overhanging trees.
“By all means,” he agreed, “invest me with a halo if it suits your fancy, my dear. But don’t blame me entirely when it begins to fade!”
She would not linger out there with him after that. The night was too full of conflict, too suddenly dark for her to remain there, waiting for Hamish to tell her that he loved her.
That was what she wanted, of course. To be loved and cheri
shed by him and to love and understand him in return. She had always wanted it, even when he had seemed to be so remote that he moved and had his being in a different world. But now, miraculously, he had come close within her orbit. He was here on Croma again, waiting for her to come of age, kissing her in the gloaming, holding her with tenderness and all but telling her that he loved her!
It should have been the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Why, then, should it seem to be spoiled by some nameless thing in the darkness? Why did it seem that the island itself was against their love?
She turned towards the house, curiously chilled by the thought and scarcely aware that Hamish had not followed up his words with a final, demanding kiss.
“Good night,” she said as she reached the door.
“Good night, Fair Lady!” he answered. “See, you tomorrow—on the great day!”
In the hall she found Jane waiting for her. The wood fire which Mrs. Crammond had built up was bright and inviting, but she did not want to linger in its enticing warmth.
“I’m tired,” she confessed. “I think we ought to go to bed, Jane. All sorts of people will be arriving bright and early to-morrow morning.”
“Except Finlay Sutherland,” Jane mused, almost as if she were speaking to herself. “I wonder why he hasn’t even replied. There must be some reason.”
Christine turned sharply away. “Need we consider it?” she said briskly. “He—isn’t important.”
“No,” Jane said absently, making it sound more like a question. “I think he’s going to be the right sort of person for Croma, though. What the island really needs, you know, Chris, is new ideas and someone who can and will carry them through.”
“Someone with the necessary money, I suppose you mean,” Christine observed, making a great task of setting out their supper tray. “Someone quite unlike us, in fact, who can afford to indulge the whim of the moment but who could quite easily leave Croma flat when the first enthusiasm cooled off.”
“I don’t think Finlay Sutherland came to Croma in that frame of mind,” Jane defended quickly. “He’s been working hard since he got here, too, so Rory says.”
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