The Gated Road

by Jean S. MacLeod

  That one look had the power to strip Jane’s evening of some of its perfection. She remembered it as she danced with Adam after supper, and was suddenly tired.

  “Do you mind if we sit out a little?” she asked as they stood waiting for the band to respond to an encore. “I—for the first time my ankle feels as if I’ve been dancing all night!”

  “Of course!” Adam made a way for her through the crowd. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I should have remembered, Jane.”

  “I didn’t feel it till a moment ago,” she confessed, holding on to his proffered arm. “It’s nothing really.”

  “I’ll bring you something to drink and you can sit still for five minutes,” he offered.

  They pushed open the double doors leading to a long conservatory where tables and sofas had been placed at intervals between hired potted plants tall enough to make effective screens. It was lit by the little paper lanterns Helen had sent down from High Tor, and in their dim pink glow two figures stood at the far end, silhouetted against the glass doors which led to the garden. They were in each other’s arms and there could be no mistaking the pale sheen of Penny’s blue satin dress with its soft pink stole or Penny’s clear, high-pitched voice as she said:

  “It isn’t sudden, Nigel! I think we’ve known we loved each other right from the start!”

  Jane tried to smother the little cry of protest that rose to her lips as she turned away. She had felt Adam stiffen where he stood, but the two at the other end of the conservatory were entirely unaware of their presence. Nigel’s fair head came down and hid Penny’s face, and Penny’s slim bare arms slipped up to encircle his neck.

  Adam put a firm hand under Jane’s elbow, propelling her back into the hall where the dancers seemed to whirl in a mad kaleidoscope of color and the music was like an ominous drum-beat in her ears. When she looked at Adam his face was dark and terrible.

  “We’ll dance this,” he said, his mouth bitterly indrawn, yet he held her gently, as if in some way she had suffered, too.

  Of course, if he believed that she was in love with Nigel...

  “If you’d like to go home,” he offered when the dance had ended, “I can run you back in the M.G.”

  “Would you mind?” she said, aware, suddenly, of an overwhelming weariness. “Or will it seem rude of me to leave before the end?”

  “People are beginning to go now,” he said. “It will be only the hard core of the dancing fraternity who will keep it up till dawn.”

  Jane went to take her leave of Colonel Nollis, but she could not see Marion anywhere.

  “She’ll be in the committee room,” Adam said when she mentioned it. “They hold point-to-point post-mortems in there when they’ve given up dancing. I’ll tell her you did look for her.”

  Jane found her coat and they went out together into the star-filled night.

  “It’s so lovely up here among the hills, Adam,” she said shyly. “When I go I’m going to miss it tremendously.”

  She had not meant to tell him that, but somehow the night and the starry sky and the distant, shadowy hills had stripped her of all pretence.

  He did not answer her confession as he helped her into Nigel’s car and got in behind the steering wheel, but she could not believe that the magic of the night had gripped him, too.

  They were on the point of drawing away when a tall figure in a flame-colored dress detached itself from the shadows along the wall. Marion was wearing a dark-colored fur wrap, but above it her face gleamed palely. She had come with her partner—it looked like Roger Malchatt—from the direction of the conservatory, but Adam did not stop to let Jane wish them goodnight.

  He drove swiftly and silently,, covering the distance to High Tor as quickly as Nigel would have done. All the gates were open except the final one leading to the farm itself, but he would not let her get out.

  “You’ll spoil your slippers,” he said curtly.

  When he came back he did not re-start the car immediately. Instead, he sat still and tensed in the seat beside her for several minutes before speaking.

  “Jane, I want you to marry me. I know it can only be second best, but there it is. You’ve just told me that you’re going to regret going away, which means that you must love High Tor. Is that enough for you?”

  He turned to face her at last, his eyes level and demanding on hers, the hard set of his jaw making his face as if it had been chiselled out of granite.

  “For me?” she echoed, wondering if she could really believe that he had asked her to marry him. “But—what about you, Adam?”

  “I’ve told you that I can take second best,” he said harshly. “High Tor needs a mistress and you need a home.”

  Something warm and tender seemed to crumble to pieces in Jane’s heart. She had been a fool to hope that Adam was going to speak to her about love.

  “I couldn’t,” she whispered in a small, choked voice. “It wouldn’t be a real marriage, Adam—”

  “No?” The question came through his set teeth. “Perhaps if we tried very hard we might make it seem real enough,” he suggested.

  “It wouldn’t help. You can’t try to love anybody.” The words were being forced from her now. “You’d always feel that you had been cheated.”

  “I’d take my chance on that.” His voice had hardened with his determination. “High Tor needs you, Jane.”

  But you don’t Adam! Jane’s heart twisted at the thought. She knew that he was still waiting for some sort of answer, but how could she promise to marry him because “High Tor needed her”?

  “Will you give me time?” she begged. “Time to—think it over?”

  “I don’t think so.” Suddenly he had turned her to face him. “I want to announce our marriage when I go back to the Priory.”

  “I see.”

  He could scarcely have heard the whispered words, yet she felt his fingers tighten on her arms till their grip was almost painful. “Do you?” he said. “I doubt it, Jane.”

  “If you—want it so much,” she said, her voice trembling, “I’ll give you my promise.”

  He drew a deep, hard breath. Jane was still imprisoned between his hands, but he did not speak. The seconds seemed to tick away into a dull eternity, and then, very slowly, very deliberately, he bent his head to seal their bargain with a kiss.

  His dark face came near, obliterating the star-filled heavens, blotting out time and place and thought as his mouth came down, hard and possessive, against her own. She felt her senses swim and there was no protest in her now. She lay in his arms, surrendering completely to his touch, taking this moment without thought or concern for the future because it was entirely hers.

  When he put her away from him at last his face was still stern but he looked almost content.

  “You won’t regret it, Jane,” he said abruptly. “I shall see to that.”

  He did not kiss her again when he left her at the foot of the stairs. Some of his remoteness had returned, although he said gently enough:

  “Don’t lie awake and think. You’re tired. Try to sleep, Jane. Goodnight, my dear.”

  She could not form an answering “goodnight”, but she held out her hand to him and he took it, carrying it swiftly to his lips in a gesture which seemed wholly foreign in him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll make out some way.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Was that enough? Again and again Jane faced the question when she woke the following morning to look out on a graying sky and hills. Was it enough to “make out” with second best?

  Those were the words Adam had used, the terms on which she had accepted the future, and she could not pretend that they had no power to hurt her. He had been blunt about their acceptance of one another—almost brutally so—letting her see so plainly what his first love had meant to him.

  Yet he thought they could be happy, in a secondary sort of way, serving High Tor. He thought that she needed his protection and he had offered her a home.

  T
he bitter fact would not let her rest. Penny stayed in bed all morning, and Marion had gone back to the Priory immediately after an early breakfast, to supervise the catering firm’s activities, Jane supposed. She had not seen her since that glimpse in the Priory garden, but she could not forget the look in Marion’s eyes as they faced each other earlier across the buffet table.

  The memory sent a quiver through her that held all the chill of a bleak foreboding, yet it seemed ridiculous to let Marion dominate her in this way.

  She had not seen Adam to ask him if he had made the announcement of their marriage on his return to the Priory, as he had said he would, and she felt nervously uncertain of her ground as she went toward Helen’s room for her first visit of the day.

  “Adam has told me!” Helen said immediately she opened the door. “Jane!” She held out both her hands. “I’ve never been so happy before. I knew Adam and you were made for each other!”

  Jane averted eyes that were suddenly full of tears.

  “It’s—turned out quite differently from what we expected,” she said huskily, and then suddenly she was kneeling at Helen’s bedside with her face buried in the soft folds of the patchwork quilt. “Oh, Mrs. Drummond!” she cried, “I will try. I will make Adam happy! If he could only forget the past.”

  “My child,” Helen said, smoothing her hair with a gentle hand, “of course he will! Adam loves High Tor, and I’ve thought from the beginning that you could make up to him for a great deal. It’s complicated, I’ll admit, having Penny here,” she added frankly. “She must remind Adam very forcibly of the mistake he made.”

  “Mistake?” Jane echoed.

  “I think he made a mistake of becoming engaged to your sister at such short notice and before he had brought her to High Tor,” Helen said decisively. “A man should always let a woman see him in his natural environment before he asks her to share his life.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Jane’s voice was quite steady. “Adam knows I love High Tor.”

  “That’s all he’ll ever want,” Helen smiled. “That and your love in return for his.”

  Jane struggled to her feet. She could no longer meet the bright confidence in Helen’s eyes.

  “We can’t fail,” she said. “Not with your trust behind us and—and—so much to do for High Tor.”

  No one seemed to want any lunch. Penny came downstairs at twelve o’clock, looking sleepy but lovely, and Nigel whisked her off in the car “to show her the Borders” before they had anything to eat.

  “Marion won’t be in,” he told Jane almost as an afterthought. “I saw her galloping up over the fells as if a horde of demons was at Thunderer’s heels. She often does that when she’s in a black mood. Rides it off, I suppose.”

  He was still guarded and reticent when he spoke about Marion, but he did not seem to fear her so much now. Neither he nor Penny had mentioned Jane’s engagement to Adam, so perhaps Adam hadn’t announced it at the Priory, after all.

  As the afternoon wore on she became aware of a deepening restlessness. Adam had not put in an appearance all day. His absence was nothing new, of course. He was often away from the farm from dawn till dark, but somehow today it appeared to hold a strange significance.

  She tried to tell herself that he could not be regretting the impulse of the night before when he had asked her to marry him. Adam didn’t do things and then regret them immediately. He wasn’t made that way.

  In spite of all argument, however, the restlessness persisted, and when Helen retired for her afternoon rest Jane wandered out to the stable buildings to look at the horses.

  Satan had been turned out into the paddock and was grazing contentedly, although he turned wicked eyes in her direction as she approached and laid back his ears. There was no sign of the Dalesman, which meant that Adam must have taken him out to ride across the moor. She wondered if she should saddle the pony he had given her, but decided against the adventure of riding alone for the first time.

  I’ll walk, she thought, and meet him on his way home.

  But which way to take? The thought of intercepting Adam had been an impulsive one and it persisted at the back of her mind even after she had walked for over an hour.

  When she reached the fork in the road high on the moor she hesitated. Could he have gone to the Peel Tower? It was agony to imagine him there, to think of him remembering Angela and how happy and settled he would have been now if she had not died.

  She wondered if Adam reasoned like that. Did he live in the past, secretly, unable to break away, unable to give anything more than second-best to the future?

  Without quite realizing what had impelled her, she took the steeper path that led to the Tower.

  If she found Adam there she would discover the truth. Somehow she felt sure of that. He had not forbidden her to go. He had looked distressed, but suddenly she knew that, if her marriage was to be a success, the Peel Tower could not remain closed to her. It could no longer continue to be a remote sanctuary for Adam alone.

  She climbed steadily until the Tower came into view above her, the gray guardian of the surrounding fells which she sought to conquer with her puny love.

  Her heart began to beat hard and fast against her ribs. There was someone at the Tower. A riderless horse cropped the grass some distance away, and the door, when she came to it stood open.

  She could not see the horse now. It had moved away toward the back of the Tower, but she did not doubt that it was the Dalesman. He was accustomed to waiting for Adam untethered and he must have carried his master to the Peel Tower many times.

  She pushed open the door. It was heavy and seemed reluctant to let her through.

  “Adam!” she called, and waited.

  There was no answer.

  Inside the Tower, the grayness of the storm that had been threatening all day seemed accentuated a thousandfold. There was no sound, no response to her call, only a silent, tensed waiting as if the Tower itself menaced her. The Tower and the coming storm.

  She shivered involuntarily, drawing back from the shadows which crowded the hall.

  “Adam—!”

  Her voice held a first faint tremor of fear. Something had happened. Adam was here. The door had been open and the Dalesman—yes, she was sure it was the Dalesman!—was cropping grass outside. There was no way out of the Tower but the way by which she had come in. Adam must be here!

  Fear strengthened. She could feel her heartbeats, quickened and heavy, hammering out their message of urgency, and her throat had gone suddenly dry. Somewhere, at the far end of the hall, a door creaked, and she had to stifle the shrill cry of panic which rose to her lips. It was only the wind. In that high, gaunt outpost the wind penetrated remorselessly. She could feel it sweeping about her feet as she reached the far door and began to climb the inner stair.

  In here it was almost dark, but she stumbled blindly on. Adam! she thought. Adam, I must get to you—somehow!

  In the hall above there was more light, but still no sign that the Tower had an occupant. The rooms leading from the hall were empty.

  There was only the final stair going up to the battlements. Could Adam be up there?

  A thousand fears crowded into her mind, and she called his name again, but there was still no response. When she opened the door she realized that no one up there could possibly have heard her over the fury of wind that swept through the lonely turret.

  It tore at her with savage fingers, greedily, viciously, and the first spatter of rain broke in on her as she struggled up the treacherous, winding stair. It came from the long arrow-slit on the wall above her where the stonework had crumbled and broken away and she saw to her, horror that she could easily have fallen through it in the darkness.

  It was still light enough to see, however, although the rain had brought with it a dark pall of cloud to settle down across the hills.

  Suddenly she knew that Adam was not there. There was no sense of security, only the cold breath of evil blowing in with the rain.


  She had almost reached the top of the stair and the gap in the wall was beneath her. No one could have come farther than this.

  With a small, involuntary shiver she turned to retrace her steps.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The voice came from beneath her out of the grayness and the hollow well of the stair. It was Marion’s voice, so harsh and strained with passion as to be almost unrecognizable. Jane’s heart lurched in momentary relief, although fear still lurked somewhere in the background of her mind.

  “Marion!” Her voice was shaken. “I had no idea it was you!” she tried to laugh, but mirth in any form seemed incongruous in a place like this. “I thought I would find Adam.”

  There was no reply. Marion advanced slowly up the winding stair toward her. Now that she could see her, Jane noticed how pale she was, as if she had not slept. She had taken off her velvet riding hat and her hair was dishevelled. It was the first time Jane had ever seen it out of place.

  The thought was irrelevant. It seemed to drift into her mind as she stood waiting, tensed and uneasy, for Marion to reach for her. Then, as if she had bounded up the few remaining steps, Marion was there, close beside her, catching her wrist in a grip like vice.

  “He told me last night,” she said. “Adam told me. He’s going to marry you!” Suddenly she was laughing, hoarse, demonical laughter that echoed and re-echoed through the hollow tower. “Do you think I’ll let you have him?” she demanded. “I told you once before that you should go. I told you what would happen if you stayed!”

  “Marion!”

  Jane’s voice trailed away as she was pressed slowly and relentlessly backwards. Behind her she could feel the rain and the cold from the broken arrow-slit, and suddenly she was struggling, fighting desperately to ward off her attacker as Marion’s terrible purpose became abundantly clear.