“Mother intended to come up with the bus,” Margaret said. “She felt that she couldn’t quite manage the whole day.”
“My mother decided against the morning session, too,” Nigel said. “I’ve managed to persuade them both to come out for lunch, though. The car was going back to Ardnashee to bring my mother along so there was no reason why Dawson shouldn’t call at Glenkeith on the way back.”
“No,” Margaret agreed, wondering how on earth he had ever managed to persuade her mother to upset her morning routine even to come to the Games. “It was very kind of you to offer her a lift.”
“Not in the least!” Nigel grinned down at her, mocking her seriousness. “I think we ought to be a family party, don’t you?”
“It’s certainly more—homely,” Margaret confessed awkwardly.
“You’re too like Andrew,” he said. “You ought to let your hair down more often, Meg, and really enjoy yourself. Take a leaf out of Tessa’s book, in fact!” Hester and Mrs. Haddow came in together, and Tessa thought that she had never seen such a marked contrast between two women of the same age. Where Hester was tall and thin and almost gaunt, Nigel’s mother was a small, neat person, beautifully dressed in immaculate tweeds with an amethyst cairngorm at her throat as her only ornament, and bright, shining eyes that were as inquisitive as those of a bird. She carried a large crocodile leather handbag which seemed to contain the accumulated treasures of a lifetime, and her shoes were neat crocodile tie-ups to match.
“I’ve been hearing a great deal about you, my dear,” she told Tessa when they were introduced. “Nigel tells me you have lived in Italy all your life until now. What do you think of Scotland? Is it too great a contrast?”
“I think that must be half its charm for me,” Tessa confessed as they sat down. “I love it!”
Mrs. Haddow patted her hand.
“We must make you so sure of that, my dear,” she said, “that you will never want to go away. I remember your mother.”
It was the first time anyone had spoken to Tessa directly about Veronique, and she felt her throat contract with eager gratitude.
“I feel that my mother must have loved Glenkeith, too,” she said.
Isobel Haddow glanced down the long table to where her son was settling Hester in a chair away from the draught of the tent door.
“She didn’t get a great deal of opportunity,” she observed dryly. “A good many things were against your mother at Glenkeith, right from the beginning.”
Tessa longed to continue the conversation, but Nigel came to sit between them and his mother turned to Daniel Meldrum on her other side.
“Champagne, Tessa?” he suggested, bending over her chair. “We must drink to our future acquaintance!”
He had brought the wine from Ardnashee and had obviously intended that they should be his guests, and Tessa thought it a kindly, neighbourly gesture, remembering how often Luigi used to produce the inevitable bottle of Marsala at their picnics and how merrily they would laugh as they drank it.
When the children were old enough they had wine, too, and it had always seemed to make an occasion of their parties.
Nigel filled her glass to the brim and sat down beside her again.
“What do you think of our show?” he asked.
“It is perfect. And you all look so well in your kilts!” Tessa told him.
“A collective compliment this time!” he mused, his eyes half-sardonic, half-pleased as they smiled down into hers.
He was handsome in a different sort of way, Tessa thought. Different from Andrew, she supposed she meant. Nigel carried his kilt well enough, but perhaps he was just that fraction too lean and rangy to set it off to perfection. He had, however, an easy grace and assurance of manner which Andrew lacked, the acquired polish which his way of living had set on him like a seal.
“Now that old Mr. Meldrum is more or less out of the wood, you must see something of Aberdeenshire,” he told her. “You must come to Ardnashee. We’re having a shoot before the Walshes go back to Edinburgh, so I’ll send Andrew a chit and he must bring you along. Margaret, too,” he added as if as an afterthought.
“I’d like to come to Ardnashee,” Tessa confessed as he filled up her glass for the second time, “but I don’t think I’m going to make a very good sportswoman.” Her face had sobered and her eyes were deep pools of violet shadow. “I don’t like to see things shot down.”
“Tessa,” he said under his breath, “You’re a sweet child and I love you when you look like that, all downtrodden because of the poor little birds! At other times, though, your eyes have far more sparkle than the champagne, and I love you like that, too! Your eyes change so easily. They are such a reflection of all you think and say!”
“Which means that you consider me transparent,” she challenged. “While I long to be intriguing and mysterious!”
He caught her hand under cover of the tablecloth.
“I refuse to believe that,” he said. “You couldn’t be anything other than yourself. Tessa, you do something to me!” he added with sudden deep vibration in his voice which suggested that he might not be speaking wholly in jest, as she supposed. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.”
“I only look different because you are seeing me through champagne bubbles!” she teased.
“That’s unfair, you know!” He leaned nearer to look into her eyes. “You do know it, don’t you?” he persisted.
“I don’t pay pretty compliments just for the fun of it as a rule.”
“Men say these things, always!” Tessa countered. “You are the sort of person to whom compliments come easily.”
“I wish you wouldn’t throw that up at me,” he said. “If you do, I shall never be able to convince you how serious I really am.”
Tessa’s laughter rippled out. She could not possibly take Nigel seriously at the moment when, by her standards, he had already had too much champagne to drink, and as if the thought had reached her from some other source outside her own mind, she looked up and saw Andrew watching her from the far end of the long table.
He was seated between Alice Walsh and a girl in grey, to whom Tessa had not yet been introduced, and there was a most baffling expression in his eyes. She could not decide whether it was disappointment or contempt, but certainly he had not given her any answering smile. For the remainder of the meal he seemed to give all his attention to the girl in grey. She was a friend of Alice Walsh, and he had probably known her for as long as Nigel had known Alice.
“We mustn’t miss the sword dancing,” Alice said, coming over to claim Nigel. “It’s my especial favourite, but if you really want to go and see the hammer being thrown or that great caber thing being tossed, I’ll come with you!”
Nigel glanced round at Tessa.
“Let’s all go,” he suggested.
Tessa looked across the tent to where Andrew was standing, but she could not tell from his expression whether he wanted to remain in the Ardnashee party or not. He looked indifferent, she thought, her sudden hurt as suddenly swept up in anger.
“I’m ready, Nigel!” she smiled. “I’ve never seen a caber being tossed. What does it look like?”
“An uprooted telegraph pole,” Hammond Orty supplied dryly, and they all laughed.
“Who else is coming?” Nigel asked. “You, Gavin? And what about you, Celia?”
The girl in grey looked hopefully at Andrew.
“I’d like to. What about the others?”
“I think my grandfather would be better in the enclosure,” Andrew said, moving towards Daniel Mel-drum’s chair. “I’ll see you later.” He paused for a moment. “Perhaps you will all come back and have tea with us?”
“We’ll be glad to,” Nigel accepted airily, taking Tessa by the arm. “See you soon!”
The champagne must be taking effect, Tessa thought, because she wanted to let Andrew see that she didn’t care. She wanted to tell him that he couldn’t hurt her by his indifference, that it didn’t matter what
he thought of her. She was determined, almost desperately determined, that his sudden coldness was not going to spoil her day.
Before half an hour had passed, however, she knew that the first half of her wonderful day had been the golden part, when she had wandered with Andrew up the grassy slope on the far side of the arena to look down on the gathering crowd and had felt herself isolated with him in a new world of better understanding.
If they had come close in that moment, why should it suddenly be so different now? She felt the smile frozen on her lips, as if she had to keep it there somehow because she owed it to Nigel, who was doing his best to entertain her, but there was no corresponding lightness in her heart.
The old barrier between her and Andrew was raised again and perhaps it had only been in her imagination that it had been lowered earlier in the day.
When they joined forces again for tea he was dutifully attentive to his guests, but Tessa felt that he was avoiding her with the same sort of grim determination which he had brought to all their relationships in the past.
She saw Hester watching him and thought that she looked satisfied, and Hester even smiled when he eventually sat down beside Margaret to drink his tea.
In spite of the laughter and the continuous flow of conversation all about her, Tessa felt alone, curiously alone, and suddenly she realized that only Andrew could make her feel wanted. He had only to look at her to send the quick blood pulsing through her veins; he had only to speak to increase the foolish beating of her heart. She wanted Andrew’s respect and his liking, but more than anything, she wanted his love.
His love! The word beat about her with the sound of a thousand seas, surging over her head, engulfing her, leaving her breathless, like some half-drowned thing cast up on a strange, deserted shore. If Andrew could not love her she would always have to walk alone.
How long had she known this? How long had she waited and hoped for his love? Since he had come to her that day in Rome, perhaps, but deep down in her heart she knew that she had waited all her life.
“I’ve told Tessa that I’m sending you an invitation to our next shoot, Drew.” Nigel’s pleasant, friendly voice seemed to reach her from a long way off. “I’ve told her that you will bring her across to Ardnashee next week and make a day of it. Bring Meg, too, if she will come,” he added.
“Of course she’ll come,” Hester said. She had been standing near Tessa, not speaking, but ever watchful, making sure that nothing went wrong with her plans. “Andrew and Meg have always liked a day at Ardnashee.” “Tessa can bring her sketching-block,” Nigel smiled. “She has refused, point-blank, to come out with the guns.” “I don’t blame her,” Celia Craven remarked. “I don’t like to see the birds come down, either.”
“Yet you’ll quite cheerfully wear a pheasant’s tail
feather in your hat,” Alice Walsh pointed out sardonically.
“That’s different,” Celia declared.
“But why, darling?” Alice persisted. “You really ought to be prepared to explain such a rash statement, you know! I shall certainly come with the guns, Nigel,” she added, turning to her host. “You can very definitely count me in. I’ll even offer to load for you,” she added playfully. “Half a crown an hour. How’s that? You wouldn’t get anyone so cheaply if you searched for a week!”
“That’s true,” Celia retorted in her turn. “But perhaps Nigel isn’t looking for a bargain.”
Tessa hated it all, the thinly-veiled animosity, the scarcely-sheathed claws of these exquisite society women who attempted to hide their primitive urges under a cloak of sophistication and culture and sometimes failed as dismally as the most backward peasant. Alice Walsh wanted to marry Nigel, but she had no way of telling whether he would ask her or not. She had set about her campaign with a ruthless determination to succeed, however, which took very little into account, and certainly not the feeling of a rival in the field. And every other woman within sight was a potential rival, Tessa supposed.
She liked Celia better than Alice, although she could not pretend to understand either of them. They were both hard in their separate ways, highly polished products of a way of living which she would never know, and they bewildered her in consequence.
“Why so pensive?” Nigel asked. “Or is it that you are just sad because it will be a whole week before we meet again?”
She was forced to smile at his incredible effrontery.
“Without doubt, you are the most conceited man I have ever met!” she told him, and Andrew saw the smile in her eyes and the light in them and was conscious of sudden black anger in his heart.
Tessa, it seemed to him, was throwing herself at Nigel Haddow’s head. She had been doing that all afternoon, laughing at everything he liked to say to her, drinking too much champagne, and laughing again. Her happy laughter seemed to have taken on an edge of mockery in his brain and he could not see her without remembering how she had looked at Nigel.
The reason for it all was, of course, money. Nigel had money to burn, and he also had position. The Haddows of Ardnashee owned a thousand acres of pasture along the Dee, and deer forests and the land at Gantley besides. A wonderful “sitting down” for any girl, as his aunt had reminded him only the day before.
He found himself making excuses to Nigel, finding reasons why he could not go to Ardnashee, although he had shot with the Ardnashee guns for years.
“There’s a lot to do at Glenkeith. We’re busy getting ready for the sales.”
“Please yourself,” Nigel told him. “But remember you’ll always be welcome if you change your mind. My mother has a soft spot for you, Drew!”
Andrew knew that, and the knowledge succeeded in making him feel churlish and unkind to an old and valued friend, so that he drove most of the way back to Glenkeith without a word.
Hester found room enough for herself in the brake on the way home. She seemed almost pleased with her day’s outing, but contentment sat uneasily on Hester at all times.
“You’ll go to Ardnashee, of course,” she said to Tessa as they turned in at the farm gateway. “Nigel Haddow is the catch of the neighbourhood and he seemed to be doing his best to please you this afternoon,” she added thinly.
Tessa stared unhappily at Andrew’s unresponsive back, thinking that she did not want to go to Ardnashee, or anywhere else, without him, ever.
“It was very kind of Mr. Haddow to ask me,” was all she said.
Non-committal, playing for time because she wondered what Andrew was thinking. Yes, it was all that, but it was bewilderment, too. She could not think or know what she must do while her heart still quivered with the first sweet ecstasy of loving, and she could not look too far into the future because the present was so bafflingly confused.
Andrew put the brake away and she found herself lingering in the last of the sunshine, knowing that he must come that way to reach the house.
The sun’s rays had set a dusty gold on the fields, staining the west in flame and scarlet against a backcloth of turquoise sky, and all along the peaks of the Cairngorms the banners of departing day lay in soft streamers of violet mist. There was scarcely any sound.
Even the cattle lay still under the trees, chewing contentedly, and the dogs were too lazy or too trusting to bark as they heard Andrew’s sudden footfall on the cobbles of the yard. He had taken a long time to put away the brake.
He came towards Tessa almost reluctantly, but he could not very well pass her.
“It’s all so lovely,” she whispered tremulously as he leaned on the white-barred gate beside her. “All this glorious colour and the trees and hills so near!” “You talk as if you have grown fond of Scotland,” he said, “but surely you miss your warm Italian skies?” “Of course, I miss Italy,” she said. “All my growing-up was done there, but it was never really my own country. I always felt—different without really knowing why. Scotland could mean so much to me, if only—” He waited, but she could not tell him what she had been about to say and he felt goaded to add: “
No doubt it is Glenkeith that is at fault. When you visit Ardnashee you will find it a very different proposition, I assure you. The people are civilized up there.” Tessa could not answer that, and he turned and left her
without another word.
CHAPTER VII
“I’m going down to the village,” Tessa said the following morning. “Is there anything I can bring back for you?” Hester looked up from her baking board with the hostile stare in her blue eyes which Tessa had come to recognize as part of her habitual expression.
“I can see to my own messages,” she said bluntly. “I rarely forget anything when the vans come round, and Meg will be going into Ballater with Andrew.”
It was always a point with Hester if she could mention those weekly excursions which Andrew and Margaret took to the railway terminus where Andrew picked up stores or extra fodder for the cattle while Margaret did her marketing. It seemed to fling the two young people more definitely together if Tessa knew about it, and to-day Margaret had gone off without her customary invitation to Tessa.
Feeling slightly left in the lurch, Tessa had decided to
walk to the village to explore its possibilities for her brush, but she was still eager to help Hester if she could.
When she reached the village she walked slowly down its one main street, liking what she saw of the row of grey stone cottages, each with its tiny, walled garden in front and late roses still blooming over the door.
Most of the cottage doors were open, with sturdy housewives scouring their whitened steps or polishing brass knobs and letter-boxes to an even greater degree of brilliance, and the glimpses she caught of the interiors of these humble little homes made her want to step inside.
At the last cottage in the row a woman stood holding a small child against the gate and Tessa smiled at her.
“Good-morning,” the woman said shyly. “It’s a lovely day.”
Master of Glenkeith Page 10
