Master of Glenkeith

by Jean S. MacLeod

  “There’s no need, Andrew. I’m not going to stay at Glenkeith.”

  His head shot up and he stood looking at her as if he had not quite expected this. Then his mouth clamped down in the old stern line and the look which she had taken for kindness or pity was driven from his eyes.

  “You’ve made up your mind?” he said. “You mean to go to Ardnashee?”

  She could not think what he meant for a moment, but his question seemed to demand an answer.

  “I shall go to-morrow.”

  He drew in a deep breath and put the pipe back into his pocket without lighting it.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Nigel has a great deal to offer you.”

  It was useless to protest, Tessa thought miserably. There was nothing she could make him understand, nothing he wanted to understand. There was nothing about her that would really interest him except the fact that she was leaving Glenkeith.

  Somewhere at the back of her mind she remembered that she had promised to go to Ardnashee. She had made the promise to Nigel the day before Daniel Meldrum had died, but she had not made any effort to keep it until now. She had felt too crushed and unhappy to be able to think or reason clearly and Nigel had come to the funeral and had seemed to understand.

  That was all over now. Andrew had accepted her decision to go to Ardnashee without protest. He had even told her that she was wise. He had agreed that the best thing she could do was to go.

  What she was to say to Nigel was another matter, but she left Glenkeith the following morning, deciding to walk the three miles to Ardnashee to give herself time to think.

  Andrew watched her go. He had not been able to settle to the routine tasks of the farm and had taken the brake out to test a faulty carburetor when Tessa walked down the drive. He slowed up, saying almost aggressively:

  “Do you want a lift? I can take you as far as the Ardnashee gates.”

  Was he so eager to be rid of her, so anxious to make sure that she would go to Nigel?

  “No,” she said. “No, thank you. I would rather walk. I want to think, Andrew. I want to have time to think.”

  He let in the clutch.

  “Just as you say.”

  She watched him drive off as if some final chance had slipped through her nerveless fingers, going in the direction of Glenkeith, where he belonged.

  Glenkeith seemed strange, untried ground to Andrew as he pulled the brake up in the cobbled yard. Nothing was the same. He felt unsettled and restive, without anchor now that the old man had gone, yet there was no reason why he should feel these things. He had lived at Glenkeith all his life; his boyhood had been spent there and he had been happy to contemplate the future stretching out in the same known way until now.

  What was it, then, that had changed?

  The question burned against his mind for the best part of an hour before he found himself in the house, in the business-room, flicking over a sheaf of Ministry notices which he did not really read.

  Tossing them to one side at last, he crossed to the door with his hands thrust deeply into his breeches pockets and his mouth grim. What was he going to do with the future?

  Subconsciously he knew that he did not want to answer that question and, on an impulse, he found himself mounting the stairs to his grandfather’s room.

  It had been tidied and put decently under dust sheets, by Hester or Meg acting on Hester’s orders, and he felt as if he were left staring at the blank pages of an unfinished manuscript.

  The room had nothing to say to him, no help to offer.

  He had come here in the past whenever he had been uncertain about anything and the old man had always given him his advice, but now he had to stand alone, to make his own decisions and profit or lose by them as the case might be.

  Grimly he turned towards the door, closing it behind him. Well, that was that!

  He made his way to the head of the stairs, but before he reached them something made him turn to look at the halfopen door of Tessa’s studio.

  For weeks past she had been working in there, working almost feverishly. What had she been doing?

  Without thought of intrusion this time, he opened the door and went in. The studio had a communicating door into his grandfather’s bedroom and he noticed with a sense of shock that Tessa had packed most of her belongings into a neat pile beside it. There were canvases and boxes full of paints and brushes, and he had a sense of coming upon something that he ought to have known about long ago, although nobody could have expected him to take an active interest in art. It was outside his knowledge, far and away beyond his ken.

  Curiously, he moved towards the uncovered easel in the centre of the floor where Tessa had been working before she had left for Ardnashee, driven to contemplate the portrait which had taken shape beneath her clever brush.

  He stared at it incredulously at first. It was what he believed was called a self-portrait, the artist’s impression of her own personality, probably painted through the big gilt-framed mirror hanging on the opposite wall, and even he could see that it was a remarkable likeness.

  It was not until he looked more closely, drawing back the window curtains with a certain amount of impatience, that he realized it to be the portrait of a much older woman. The years had etched lines on the face looking at him out of the canvas which they had not yet drawn on Tessa’s faultless skin, and the deeply-set, smiling eyes held a hint of tragedy and regret which he hoped that Tessa would never know.

  Shocked beyond measure, he realized that he could only be looking at a portrait of Tessa’s mother, the lovely, faithless Veronique.

  He drew back involuntarily, but something in the painted eyes held his resentful gaze while slowly he reached the conclusion that Tessa must have painted her mother as she had known her to satisfy some desire in her

  own heart, almost, it seemed, to prove something.

  The soft, deeply-shadowed eyes looking back at him from the easel kept him standing there, and they did not seem to be the eyes of a woman who had cheated in her marriage, casting aside every vow she had made to go off with a lover. They were not the eyes of a woman who had abandoned love and affection and a home, flinging them to the four winds of heaven for a whim. They were not the eyes of a woman who could betray overnight all that she had once held dear.

  What, he wondered, was the real secret of Veronique?

  He even thought, in that moment, that Tessa might have been trying to show him the truth about her mother until he remembered that Tessa was on her way to Ardnashee, to Nigel and the future as Nigel’s wife.

  Baffled, he found it impossible to reconcile the two events, and because he had failed to think clearly and objectively for the first time in his life, he turned on his heel and left the portrait to the empty room.

  Margaret met him in the hall, and because she had known him for so long she saw that something unusual had disturbed him.

  “Can I do anything, Drew?” she asked impulsively.

  Andrew looked at her as if he had only just seen her.

  “Do anything?” he repeated. “Why should you? You are not Tessa’s keeper, nor am I.”

  So, it was Tessa! She might have guessed as much, Margaret thought, looking down at her hands as if she found them suddenly empty.

  “Has she gone to Ardnashee?” she asked.

  “What else could we expect?” he said without answering the direct question. “We made it too uncomfortable for her here at Glenkeith.”

  “But surely,” Margaret cried, “you didn’t throw her into Nigel’s arms!”

  He moved abruptly so that she could no longer see his face.

  “If she wanted to be there nothing could have kept her from going.”

  Margaret stood where he left her, watching him ride away on Lucy, down the drive and out of sight. She wondered if he remembered that he had last saddled the mare for Tessa so that she could ride out on to the moor with Nigel Haddow. Was he torturing himself with that thought as he dug his heels into the mar
e’s red flank and galloped her recklessly down the glen road?

  “So, you’ve let him go! You’ve let him slip through your fingers, at last!”

  She recognized the grimly scathing voice but did not turn. Her mother, she knew, was standing in the doorway behind her and had overheard all that had passed between her and Andrew. Well, what did it matter, Margaret thought. It was only the truth and her mother would have had to hear it, sooner or later.

  When she looked at her, anger and near-defeat burned in the gaunt face which she could never remember softening, even as a child, and the cold eyes were fastened upon her with ill-concealed contempt.

  “You are a fool, Meg!” Hester said beneath her breath, as if she would not be able to restrain her. “You could never see any farther than what was right in front of you. You never looked to the future, to being here at Glenkeith for the rest of your life! You’ve always been content to let things drift, to wait till they came to you!”

  Margaret looked at her and her eyes were suddenly full of unshed tears.

  “Andrew would never have come to me,” she said simply, “if I had waited all my life. He is not in love with me.”

  “Love,” Hester informed her stonily, “never brought anything to Glenkeith but disillusionment. It’s high time you realized that, madam, as I had to do! It’s time you thought of the future without worrying so much about

  ‘love’!”

  “You married for love,” Margaret sought to remind her.

  “And where did that get me?” Hester demanded bitterly. “Back here in my father’s house, where I was never wanted!”

  “Please, Mother!” Margaret pleaded. “You must have been happy at some time in your life.”

  “I sometimes wonder when that was! It wasn’t when I first came back to Glenkeith and realized what a mess I had made of my life, but it may have been after that when my father had ceased to cast my mistakes back in my teeth

  and had accepted me.”

  “As mistress here?” Margaret felt that she was beginning to understand and a cold sort of horror took possession of her. “That’s what you always wanted,” she whispered. “That’s what you’ve been—planning for all along.”

  “Can you blame me?” Hester’s face was pinched and grey. “I sank my pride and came back here when my brother’s wife died, and I promised to bring up his child so that you and Robert should have a decent home and a good upbringing; and then the reins were taken out of my hands by a chit of a girl he picked up in France.” “Veronique!” Margaret said beneath her breath.

  “I did these things for you, Meg, and for Robert,” Hester went on relentlessly. “And then Robert was killed. That was a blow in the face to me, but I meant you to stay at Glenkeith. I was determined that we should both stay, and I am still determined. I have no wish to be told for the second time in my life that a chit of a girl from a foreign country is about to take my place!”

  “But I can’t see what right we have,” Margaret protested. “If Andrew wants to marry Tessa—”

  “How can he want her,” Hester demanded harshly, “when he knows the truth about his father’s death?”

  “You told him that!” Margaret gasped. “It was you who told him!”

  “He had to know, sooner or later,” Hester returned ruthlessly. “He would have heard it from some other source if it had not come from me, so I would advise you not to waste your time thinking about such things.”

  Margaret did think of it, however. It was constantly in her mind so that she found difficulty in sleeping and concentrating on what she was doing. The daily task became laborious and when she met Andrew in the house she was awkward and tongue-tied in his presence.

  “Meg,” he said the day after Tessa’s visit to Ardnashee, “I’m going to the Perth sales. I’ll be away for two days. Would you like to come with me? The Gilchrists will put you up and we can do a show or two while we’re down there.”

  She looked at him uncertainly, but, after all, it was the sort of thing she and Andrew had done often enough in the past.

  “Do you want me to ask Tessa?” she said.

  He looked away from her gently questioning gaze. “There wouldn’t be any point, would there? It looks as if she may be going to announce her engagement to Nigel Haddow at any moment.”

  And you don’t want to be at Glenkeith when she does, Margaret thought, with the agonized certainty of someone who can see so clearly through the eyes of love.

  “If you want me in Perth, I’ll come,” she told him, although she felt that there would be no pleasure in the trip for either of them.

  Tessa accepted the news as she did most things these days, in a frame of mind that left her sick at heart but curiously insensible to added pain. Saturation point seemed to have been reached long ago in that respect and her misery would not overflow in the relief of tears. She saw Margaret in love with Andrew and he with her, accepting it as the natural, the inevitable result of their long and mutual attraction to Glenkeith, and she told herself that she had no right to grudge Margaret such ultimate happiness.

  Hester looked pleased when she heard about the proposed visit to Perth.

  “The Gilchrists have been asking you to go for months,” she pointed out. “You should have gone in the summer, when Jessie got engaged to John MacFarlane.”

  Her glance in Andrew’s direction suggested that engagements might be in the air, and Tessa turned away disconsolately, wondering how long it would be before she could look at Andrew and hear his voice without that gripping sensation in her throat which threatened to choke back utterance every time she tried to speak.

  The brake set out for Perth early on the Thursday morning and she stood at the front door waving till it was out of sight. The gesture was purely mechanical because her heart felt crushed and her thoughts refused to turn to the ordinary events of the day.

  Hester had gone into the house ahead of her, but she found her lingering in the hall, as if she had something of importance to say.

  “Are you going to Ardnashee this afternoon?” she enquired stonily. “Or will Nigel Haddow be coming here?”

  “Nigel won’t be coming.” Tessa’s voice was flat and unemotional. “We—haven’t made any arrangements.” Hester’s greying brows came together in a quick frown. “Maybe you wanted to go to Perth,” she suggested. “But Andrew wanted to take Meg alone. They must want to be on their own some time. If I know Andrew,” she added, “he’ll have his own reasons for this trip.”

  She looked steadily back at Tessa, her blue eyes narrowing determinedly. “Their engagement has been in the air for months, and this should just about settle it, she intimated. “They’ll marry in the spring, though Andrew can’t be looking forward to having two women in the house.”

  “You and Meg?” Tessa asked, surprised that Hester should have thought of showing so much consideration to the young married couple.

  “I have always been at Glenkeith,” Hester retorted. “It was you I meant. You and Meg. You can’t expect a man to want to support two women when one of them has no claim on him whatever.”

  White-lipped, Tessa turned to face her.

  “I never expected Andrew to do that!” she cried. It never entered my head. I have always been willing to work for a living. I would have worked here at Glenkeith if only you had let me, but you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t,” she added passionately, “for some reason of your own. You didn’t want me at Glenkeith, Mrs. MacDonald! You didn’t want me right from the beginning.”

  Hester moved then with the swift, cunning movement of the panther who sees the moment ready for the kill.

  “Do you think that Andrew wanted you any more than I did?” she demanded. “Do you think he liked the idea of living with you in this house?”

  “What had I done?” Tessa whispered. “He didn’t know me till he came to find me in Rome.”

  “But he knew your mother,” Hester reminded her. “He knew all about her. He knew how she killed his father, not in cold blood, p
erhaps, but as surely as if she had driven a knife into his heart.”

  “It isn’t true!” Tessa sobbed, bewildered and struggling with anger and injustice. “You are saying this for your own ends.”

  “What motive could I have to twist the truth?” Hester demanded coldly. “Andrew hates the thought of you at Glenkeith and always will,” she added brutally. “How could he help it when your mother betrayed his father and sent him to his death? He’s been brought up with that truth all his life, remember!”

  “Because you told him! Because you wanted it that way!” Tessa cried.

  “Someone else would have enlightened him if I hadn’t. Someone outside the family,” Hester said. “It was common knowledge at the time, a nine days’ wonder that spread like wildfire between here and Aberdeen. There’s nobody on Deeside who wouldn’t remember all about it if they were asked,” she added convincingly.

  “I won’t believe it!” Tessa said again, but she knew that she could no longer hammer against the granite that was Hester MacDonald.

  “Whether you believe it or not hardly matters,” Hester assured her. “Andrew knows that it is true.”

  “Why did he keep it from me?”

  “Would you expect any man to tell you a thing like that unless you found out about it for yourself?” Hester asked. “He lived constantly with the thought while his grandfather was alive because the old man was in his dotage and wanted you here. He had been in love with your grandmother, it seemed.” Hester’s laugh was unpleasant. “Love has played a few strange roles at Glenkeith, even in my day,” she added sourly.

  “If you’ve ever been in love,” Tessa said brokenly, “you would know why Mr. Meldrum brought me to Glenkeith. I was the past to him, something left of it that he could hold on to at the end, and I’m glad of it. I’m glad I was able to come to Scotland for that reason alone! But now—”

  Hester waited, not trying to help. She knew that she had won her victory, for all the signs of defeat were there on the girl’s pale face, coupled with the agony of sudden resignation.