Master of Glenkeith

by Jean S. MacLeod

  When he looked up Andrew was watching him, and something of the bitterness of gall was in his smile before he turned his eyes away.

  Hester had sat up for them. It was an unusual thing for her to do, but she seemed to have expected something to have come out of this romantic excursion of theirs to Perth, although the word romance felt strange and acrid on her tongue. It was almost breakfast time, she pointed out as Nigel followed Tessa into the hall.

  They drank coffee and ate bacon and eggs with the heartiness of youth, and Hester smiled thinly when she heard that Tessa had slept for the greater part of the journey on Nigel’s shoulder.

  Refreshed now, Tessa poured their coffee, but she could not add her quota to the gossip about the dance. That was left to Nigel and Margaret. Like Andrew’s, it seemed, her evening had been too full of memories to bear revealing.

  “I’ll be expecting you at Gantley next week-end,” Nigel said when he rose to go. “I’ve arranged a small shoot, and there will only be Ortry and the Walshes left. It’s time you saw Gantley, Tessa,” he added, “I want you to see it before the winter sets in up there in earnest.”

  Andrew got up. He had lit his pipe and had been smoking it in silence while Margaret and Nigel talked.

  “Count me out, Nigel,” he said. “I’ve got to go to Aberdeen to lift some cattle.”

  Nigel looked across at him with a sharpened expression in his eyes.

  “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get you to go anywhere these days, Drew,” he remarked. “But if you change your mind about Gantley, you know you’ll he welcome.”

  Tessa did not want to go to Gantley Lodge. Not without Andrew, but it seemed that Nigel had arranged the weekend specially for her benefit and he was not prepared to take a refusal so far as she was concerned.

  “If you don’t want to come out with the guns you can amuse yourself painting along the waterside,” he told her.

  When she mentioned the invitation to Gantley Daniel

  Meldrum urged her to go.

  “It’s a bonnie spot, and it’s not so very far away,” he said. “You’ll pass Tarland, where your grandmother was born, and you can tell me what you think of it when you come back.”

  That seemed to settle the question of her invitation to Gantley, but Tessa was almost relieved when she heard that Margaret was going, too.

  Nigel called for them in the Daimler on the Friday afternoon, and Andrew stood in his grandfather’s room, watching as they drove away. There was a long silence between them after the sound of the car had died on the winding drive. It was Daniel who finally broke it.

  “I could have wished that you had gone with the young folk, Andrew,” he said. “It doesn’t do for you always to be up to your eyes in work day after day. It has a way of blinding you to—other things.”

  “Other things might be less important,” Andrew smiled, coming over to the bed to put an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Less important than Glenkeith.”

  “You’re fond o’ Glenkeith,” Daniel said. “I know that fine, and it will never look back while your hand’s on the tiller.” The blue eyes were reminiscent for a moment. “It’s a grand heritage, lad,” he added slowly, “and it will soon be yours. Glenkeith and all its responsibilities.”

  Andrew had already schooled himself to accept the fact of his grandfather’s passing, but the words smote him with a sense of shock, all the same. It was the same sort of shock which he had experienced that day in Rome when he had thought of Glenkeith and the future.

  “She’s got to stay here, Andrew,” his grandfather said. “She belongs here, whatever you might feel about the past.”

  A vision of Tessa’s eyes, long-lashed and sombre when she had been hurt or could not understand, rose up and smote Andrew.

  “If you wish it,” he said, but he knew that Tessa would go to Ardnashee soon, as a bride.

  “I would be happier in my mind if I thought you wished it,” the old man said.

  “What I wish would scarcely influence Tessa,” Andrew said.

  He went out, restless and uneasy, to walk the glen road till he reached the moor, and he did not return to Glenkeith until long after it was dark and he was physically exhausted.

  The following day he found himself in Aberdeen with little to do once he had arranged for the transport to Glenkeith of the cattle he had bought.

  Union Street was crowded with the usual Saturday morning shoppers, and when he went to see about a shipping permit for some cattle due to leave Glenkeith for the Argentine the following week, he found the wind in the dockland area bleak and cold. As he walked briskly along Regent Quay he began to think of the open moors with the sun on them, of Gantley and then of Tessa.

  Well, why shouldn’t he?

  He phoned Glenkeith and, to his passing surprise, Hester did not put forward her usual objections to such a hurried change of plans. She promised to pack him a week-end bag and have it ready when he reached the farm.

  “You and Meg should have more time together,” she said.

  He thought of Margaret as he sped towards Glenkeith, Meg who had always been there, assuring himself that there was no reason why she should ever find it necessary to go away, and then he had left Glenkeith behind and was on his way to Gantley, driving north towards the shooting lodge on the moors, his hands gripping the steering-wheel as if time itself was his enemy.

  The guns were out when he reached the lodge and he followed them on to the hill. Gantley was seventeen miles from Ardnashee and fourteen from Glenkeith, a compact and well-appointed hunting lodge built of native grey stone with a thatched roof and a timbered verandah running round three of its sides.

  It stood just below the tree line, sheltered on the north and east by giant spruce and larch and commanding a wide view to the west to Glen Avon and the Spey.

  The country round and above it was rugged and wild, the haunt of the red deer and the golden eagle, and all about it the grouse rose, whirring, into the sky. Rivers flowed everywhere and in every direction, the swift-running, noisy Highland burns that Andrew loved and had fished from earliest boyhood.

  He was quick to see what Tessa would find in a place like this with its trees aflame with autumn leaves and the colours of the moor defying description, but he thought that he would find her more readily beside the burn. There was a laughter in the water that echoed her own, a swift free quality about it reflecting her impulsive nature as in a clear mirror for all to see.

  Drawing the brake up on the edge of the moor-road, he went forward over the rough grass, pausing now and then to listen for the guns, but there was no sound to break the stillness. Nigel had probably taken his shooting party up over the ridge and it was quite possible that they might have called it a day by this time.

  When he reached the head of the little glen he stood for a moment in the shelter of the trees, looking down across the moor to where his keen eyes had picked up a moving object against the rock.

  It moved again, and presently a single stag stood silhouetted against the sky, sniffing the air suspiciously before he called the hinds up after him. It was a magnificent sight. Andrew was down wind from where they stood and they came slowly towards him, moving gracefully down the incline to the defile of the burn. The stag had a splendid head, the strong, branching antlers rising to a perfect crown, and they were so near that he could almost see the soft black eyes as they looked timidly about them for a place to graze.

  Then, suddenly, on the ridge of the moor behind them, he saw the first of the shooting party, and almost simultaneously Tessa came up from the burnside with her sketching-block in her hand. She was between him and the herd, on the far side of the burn, and the deer were between her and the guns.

  For a split second Andrew watched. There was no real danger so long as the deer did not see the men on the ridge behind them, but suddenly, to his horror, a shot rang out, echoing and re-echoing against the hills.

  The stag reared his head, poised for an instant on the mound where he ha
d been watching, and then he plunged forward, away from the guns, leading the terrified herd in a wild stampede down the incline to where Tessa stood.

  He moved then as if he had been impelled from a catapult, only to see Tessa drop in her tracks as she turned before the advancing herd. When he reached her, leaping the burn in one determined stride, there was blood on the half-completed sketching-block which she had dropped as she fell.

  Breathlessly he threw himself to the ground, shielding her body with his, holding her so that she could not move with her head pressed close against his shoulder, but, as he had expected, the hinds had scattered wildly at the sight of him and the fleeing, pounding hooves divided on either side of them, fanning out across the open moor to safety.

  It was over in a moment, but it had seemed an eternity.

  He raised himself to look at Tessa and her utter pallor sent the blood rushing before his eyes for a moment. It had been a stray shot that had scattered the deer, a badly-timed effort on someone’s part as a lone bird had flown up from the cover of the bracken, but it had found an unexpected mark. Tessa had been caught in the shoulder by the shot and he picked her up in his arms as the others rushed to meet them.

  “What’s happened?” Hammond Ortry’s rather vacuous face loomed before Andrew so that he longed to drive his clenched fist into it. “I say, did that last shot of mine really hit Miss Halliday? I’m so frightfully sorry, old chap. So frightfully sorry! I—haven’t—injured her, have I? I mean to say, I just saw the bird rise and I took a potshot at it—”

  “And scared a herd of deer right in our path,” Andrew finished for him contemptuously. “I don’t suppose you would give that a thought. There would be nothing on your mind but the wretched bird.”

  He could not hide his contempt nor his anger and he did not even try. Nigel, looking utterly ashamed of the whole business, came to his side and knelt down beside Tessa as she opened her eyes.

  “Tessy,” he said harshly, “are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was no more than a whisper, but she could feel Andrew’s strong arms about her and see Andrew’s dark, set face above her own. “Yes—I’m all right.”

  “The shot must have raked her shoulder.” Andrew pulled back the torn sleeve to look at the wound. “Your friend made a good job of it, didn’t he?” he added dryly.

  He rose to his feet with Tessa still in his arms.

  “I’ll send for the car,” Nigel said rather desperately. “It won’t take us very long to get back to Gantley.”

  “There’s no need.” Andrew sounded brusque but businesslike. “I’ve got the brake with me. It’s parked down there on the edge of the moor. I’ll take her back to Glenkeith.”

  Nigel stared at him incredulously.

  “Are you mad, Drew?” he cried. “You can’t take her fourteen miles in the back of a brake without doing something about that shoulder. We’ve got a first-aid outfit at Gantley and a doctor within call, if we need one. I’m not letting you take any risks with Tessa, whatever you might say.”

  “She’s my responsibility,” Andrew returned doggedly, still holding his burden and standing firm in the attitude he had adopted.

  “That’s balderdash!” Nigel informed him. “You must be mad even to think of Glenkeith. Besides,” he added, “I have a right to take care of her, a right to be with her.”

  As if he had been struck across the face, Andrew stood staring at him for a full minute before he turned on his heel and strode with Tessa down the narrow path beside the burn to the waiting brake.

  He felt chilled and no longer defiant. Nigel had “a right” to be with the girl in his arms. He had just said so.

  He laid Tessa in the brake, his firm hands moving gently over the hurt shoulder before he shook his head.

  “It means Gantley, Tessa,” he said. “You’ll be all right once we get there.”

  His voice had been harsh, almost rough, but there had been an underlying tenderness about it that probed shatteringly into Tessa’s heart. She lay in the brake with her eyes closed and Nigel by her side, remembering Andrew’s voice and the look that had been in his eyes when he had first lifted her up. She could not think it tender: there had been anger in it and contempt, and no doubt he had felt that she had done the wrong thing in a difficult situation. He probably thought that she should never have come to Gantley, but Nigel had been so kind and he had wanted her to come more than anything else. Nigel’s kindness stood out in that moment like some necessary haven which she must reach before the tempest of Andrew’s anger finally overwhelmed her. She put her hand out, feeling small and weak and utterly at a loss till Nigel’s thin fingers closed tightly over hers in a gesture of the utmost assurance.

  “Don’t worry, Tessy!” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Margaret and Mrs. Haddow were sitting out on the verandah when they reached the lodge. They had prepared tea in the hope that the shooting party would return early to share it with them, but they were instantly all concern when they saw Nigel helping Tessa down from the brake.

  “There’s been a slight accident,” Nigel explained, and Margaret’s eyes flew instantly to Andrew.

  “What happened, Drew?” she asked.

  “Someone shot out of turn,” Nigel explained hastily. “Tessa had been sketching along the burnside and she came up to look at some deer, I think. We came over the ridge on the windward side of them and—that was that.”

  Margaret did not ask who had fired “out of turn.” It was scarcely necessary and, anyway, it did not seem to matter. All she saw was Andrew’s set jaw and a look on Nigel Haddow’s face which had never been there before. Were they both in love with Tessa, she wondered, her heart contracting at the thought.

  “This is terribly unfortunate, my dear,” Mrs. Haddow was helping Tessa into the lodge. “We must hope that the shot hasn’t gone too deep. Blood always looks badly at first.” She turned to Andrew who was just behind her.

  “I know you’re good at this sort of thing, Drew. Will you have a look at it till we can bring a doctor?”

  Andrew followed her into the sitting-room where a log fire flared and crackled on the open hearth.

  “I’m so cold!” Tessa sighed thankfully, kneeling down in front of the comforting blaze.

  She felt exhausted now and the heat soothed her, making the pain in her shoulder numb so that she hardly felt it. Her jarred senses were returning to normal and she accepted the hot tea Margaret brought with a smile.

  “I’m being a terrible nuisance,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly!” Margaret put the cup down on a low stool where she could reach it while Andrew worked.

  “You couldn’t possibly have known that someone would pop up with a gun and shoot at the wrong moment.”

  Andrew bent over Tessa.

  “This may hurt,” he said, “but it has to be done. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

  Again there was that tenderness in his voice which made her want to cry, and when she looked up at him his eyes were no longer remote but warm and sensitive to her pain.

  Nigel had brought in the first-aid box and some extra bandages from the gun-room and his mother was hovering with a basin of hot water into which she had poured a few drops of strong disinfectant.

  I can’t bear it, Tessa thought. I can’t bear Andrew being kind just because he is sorry for me while all the time he really despises me for being so silly!

  While he probed gently for the shot she turned her head away and Nigel took her hand again.

  “Soon over!” he whispered. “Drew is the best man among us for a job like this.”

  The probing of the tweezers was as nothing to the pain against her heart. I can’t go on loving Andrew like this, she thought, knowing that he doesn’t care. He was angry up there on the moor, angry and impatient when he found me.

  “That’s all,” he said, straightening. “Her shoulder can be bandaged now.”

  He sounded as if he had lost interest, as if he ha
d done the job expected of him and was relieved to find it over, and it was Nigel who strapped the bandages in place.

  When the doctor came, driving up in a battered old Ford which had almost shaken itself to pieces on the moor roads, he said that he could not hope to improve on what had already been done.

  “It might have been worse!” he beamed encouragingly. “You’d better rest for an hour or two and after that you should be all right. How long are you here for, Miss Halliday?”

  Tessa looked at Andrew, but he refused to make the decision for her.

  “I think I would like to go back to Glenkeith in the morning,” she said.

  “We’ll all go back,” Nigel decided. “I’m not taking any more risks with you, Tessy! You ought to stay in bed for a day or two.”

  “Oh, no, please!” Tessa protested, thinking of Hester for the first time. “I don’t want to spoil your party.”

  “We can have other parties, my dear,” Mrs. Haddow said, putting an affectionate hand on her sound shoulder. “Let Nigel have his way, Tessa. He feels responsible for what has happened.”

  So many people felt responsible, Tessa thought wanly, remembering that Andrew had chosen to accept her as his responsibility out there on the moor, but she did not want Andrew to accept responsibility where she was concerned. She did not want him to feel it weighing him down every time he thought about Glenkeith. She wanted him to be free.

  Sitting round the fire when the darkness had gathered and sent them all indoors, they spoke mostly of Gantley and the wild country beyond it, and Tessa found herself listening to the tales Nigel told with nonchalant ease and forgetting the pain in her shoulder and the throbbing, answering pain in her heart.

  Andrew said little, leaning back in a long hide chair in the shadows while the others talked, and smoking his pipe with the air of a man whose thoughts are deeper and more disturbing than the things going on about him.'

  At ten o’clock Mrs. Haddow rose.

  “All cocoa drinkers are on kitchen duty to-night!” she informed the circle with a smile. “Except Tessa, of course.”