RETURN TO SPRING
by
JEAN S. MACLEOD
“Through all the drear of winter The year returns to spring.”
L.W.
After her father had been crippled in a car accident, Ruth Farday determined to turn Conningscliff Farm into a guest house so that they wouldn't be forced to leave the home which meant so much to both of them. However, such a venture was not without its hazards, and as one problem followed another Ruth found herself turning more and more to their first guest, John Travayne, in spite of the slight air of mystery which seemed to surround him.
CHAPTER ONE
The road which led to Conningscliff Farm was a natural avenue of trees for more than a mile, giant beeches and elms that were newly in leaf, with here and there a spreading oak casting deep shadows over the hedge into the fields beyond. Last year’s leaves still lay like a thick russet carpet on either side of the narrow gravelled track, for the March winds had not found their way into the tree-lined corridor. Everything was still and quiet, and even when William Farday drove his high cart into the road the wheels had a hushed sound as they rolled over the dead leaves.
Farday watched the rhythmic nodding of the brown mare’s head as she pulled the cart along without apparent effort, and he let the reins hang loosely between his big, work-roughened hands. It was easy going, and he had plenty of time to cover the mile and a half to Conningscliff before dusk. He looked about him idly, and thought once more how much a part of the land he was. The smell of newly turned earth was the breath of life to him. He had farmed Conningscliff for six years now and, when he did think of such things, he knew that he hoped to live to till the soil for many more.
His mind ran into the pleasant track of the future, only to be rudely jerked back to the present by the sound of a motor-horn that seemed to rend the air down the whole length of the leafy avenue. He felt the reins slacken as the mare threw her head up in startled surprise, and then, suddenly, she had bolted. With a roll and a jolt the cart turned over in one of the ruts of the road and the frenzied little mare pulled it madly after her.
Farday was thrown clear, so clear that the two occupants of the long blue sports car whose horn had caused the accident felt sure that the farmer would be on his feet again before they reached him.
“Good heavens!” The man at the wheel applied his brakes. “He’s—not getting up.”
His companion remained silent. He opened the door on his side of the car and was out on the road before it came to a standstill. Bending over the inert form of the fanner, he turned him over very gently on his back.
“He’s unconscious,” he said, as the owner of the car came up. “We’ll have to get him out of here, Hersheil. Do you know who he is?”
Edmund Hersheil’s rather full lips had gone suddenly dry. He moistened them nervously before he replied.
“Yes,” he said. “His name’s Farday, I believe. He farms part of my uncle’s land.”
“How far is it to his place?”
“Not more than a mile,” Hersheil replied. “Do you think we could get him in the car, Monset?”
Victor Monset glanced back at the low-slung sports model.
“It isn’t exactly designed on ambulance lines,” he said curtly, “but we can’t stand about here all day.” He turned back towards the injured man. “Lend me a hand—and watch his back,” he commanded. “The damage seems to be there.”
It was a slow and painful business to lift the farmer and carry him the few yards to the car.
“We should have moved these suitcases of yours, Monset,” Edmund Hersheil panted. “There’s no room in the back for— anything else.”
“I think they’re just what we need, all the same,” Monset said. “We must have something firm to lay him on. You’ll have to go slow, Hersheil—a damn sight slower than you were going ten minutes ago!”
Hersheil flushed.
“I wasn’t going so fast,” he objected sullenly. “I’ve done double that in the old bus before now.”
“Well, don’t bother to repeat the experiment,” Monset said gruffly, as he slipped his folded coat beneath the farmer’s head.
They went forward in silence. Monset was beginning to wonder what impulse had induced him to accept Edmund Hersheil’s invitation to Carbay Hall. With a downward twist of his mouth he acknowledged frankly that he was making a convenience of the Squire’s heir, accepting the Hersheil hospitality, because, at the moment, he was broke. An artist, he considered, might be able to make something out of a few pictures painted along the rugged Northumberland coast.
He glanced at Edmund Hersheil and saw a nervous, shifty individual who, at any other time, he knew he would have avoided like the plague.
The road turned sharply to the right at the end of the avenue, and they passed through the open white gate and on up the cinder track, which led to the first out-buildings of the farm. The place was wrapped in the calm of late afternoon and a comfortable lowing from the byres proclaimed that the last milking was over. The only sound of activity came from the kitchen, where the clatter of china indicated that tea was almost ready.
A man came ambling slowly out of the stackyard as they
approached, but at sight of the car and the prone figure of the fanner, he quickened his pace. Hersheil drew the car to a standstill and turned to the farm hand. “Get a doctor,” he said. “Quickly—
you understand?”
The irritation in his voice was the result of his nervousness, and a sickly colour had mantled his cheeks as he noticed that the farmer
was still unconscious.
The farm hand moved to the half-door of the kitchen and called: “Miss Ruth—Miss Ruth, here, ma’am!”
A girl appeared in the doorway, her grave grey eyes going straight
to the two strangers and then beyond them to the inert figure in
the car. With a little inarticulate cry Ruth Farday ran past them and was at the farmer’s side. “Father—oh, Father ...!”
Victor Monset moved forward.
“Your father was thrown from his cart.” He paused, conscious of a tension in the atmosphere as the girl looked slowly from one to the other and then back at the car. It was as if she were reconstructing the smash and could see with uncanny clearness of vision the cause of the accident. There was no point in dressing up the truth, Monset thought. “I’m afraid he’s badly hurt,” he said. “Can you turn down a bed and send your man to the village for a doctor?”
She turned to the man who had called her to the door. “Will, take my bicycle and bring Doctor Emton as quickly as you can.”
Only the trembling of her lips as she turned back to the car gave any indication of the shock she had received. She was instantly practical, as if she were accustomed to think and act in all things by herself.
“If you wait," she said to Monset, “I will bring something we can use as a stretcher.”
She disappeared within the house and came back in a few minutes with a long board covered with a thick travelling-rug. Silently she helped them raise the unconscious farmer and preceded them into the house.
“Will you bring him in here?”
She indicated a room which led off the kitchen, and the two men carried their heavy burden through and laid the farmer down on the little bed with its sprigged cotton valance.
“I’ll get some brandy,” she said.
“I might have taken the car to the village for the doctor,”
Hersheil said, moving uneasily towards the door.
Monset did not reply as the girl re-entered the room with the brandy, which she had poured into a rough kitchen tumbler. She slipped her arm under her father’s head and held the spirit to his lips. She seemed unconscious of the two men as she worked
feverishly to bring the farmer round.
Monset followed Edmund Hersheil from the room. He found his companion contemplating the car from the small window of the kitchen, but he did not join him at this viewpoint. Instead, he stood with his back to the fire and tried to curb his desire to tell the heir to Carbay Hall just what he thought of him and his method of driving along a country lane.
When the doctor arrived, Ruth came out into the kitchen to meet him. She looked neither at Monset nor Edmund Hersheil as she crossed the stone floor and took the doctor’s hat and gloves.
“He’s in here, Doctor Emton,” she said. “I thought it better not to carry him upstairs.”
“We’ll have to wait,” Hersheil said gloomily, as the doctor disappeared into the bedroom and Ruth closed the door behind her, shutting them out. “It’s hardly a cheerful welcome to Northumberland for you, Monset.”
Monset moved to the open door of the kitchen.
“I don’t think we need to worry about the nature of my welcome to Northumberland, at the moment,” he said. “The most important issue seems to be what damage we have done in there.” He nodded towards the bedroom door.
When Ruth Farday came back into the kitchen her face was pale and drawn. She stood against the closed door of the bedroom as if she were guarding something infinitely precious.
“I don’t think there is any need to wait,” she said, and her voice was edged with ice.
Hersheil took a step forward.
“Look here,” he began, “I’m sorry about this, Miss Farday, but I had no idea the horse would bolt when I sounded my horn. How is your father now?”
Ruth had been holding her breath, but now it escaped between her parted lips with a little rush.
“My father is not dead,” she said, in a curiously flat tone. “He will live, but he may never walk again.”
Hersheil drew back, staring at her as if he only half grasped her meaning, then, seeing the expression on her face, he said:
“Are you blaming me?”
Ruth’s eyes flashed and her hands clenched suddenly by her side as if she made a last effort at self-control.
“No ...” She drew in her breath, and then the words came pouring out like a torrent that had been pent up too long. “I’m blaming what you stand for—the selfish, idle, useless lives you represent—tearing about the countryside in fast cars—drunk for speed—thoughtless of life—thoughtless of everything but your own selfish amusement ...” She paused, looking from one to the other. “There is nothing to wait for.”
She was gone with that, the door of the bedroom closing with a soft click of finality.
CHAPTER TWO
Ruth Farday crossed the red-tiled floor of the kitchen and paused outside the door of her father’s room. It was two days since the accident, and the farmer had not been moved from the small bedroom where he had been laid that fateful afternoon. Although Doctor Emton had visited the farm every day and sometimes stayed for more than an hour beside the farmer’s bed, he had not been able to alter his first verdict. The injuries to the lower half of the spine were serious, and he feared that nothing further could be done. A personal friend of the Fardays for the past six years, it had come hard to tell Ruth that her father might remain an invalid for the remainder of his life.
Ruth, determined that the truth should be kept from her father as long as possible, summoned a smile and opened the door. The farmer was lying flat on his back with his head raised only a few inches above the level of the mattress, but he smiled acknowledgment of his daughter’s greeting as she bent over him. “Well,” she questioned, “how do you feel this morning?”
His gnarled hand found hers above the counterpane.
“Not so bad,” he said. “Sit down, Ruth, lass, I want to talk to you.”
Ruth obeyed, struggling hard to veil from him the concern in her grey eyes. She did not know how much the doctor had told her father, and the strength of the big bronzed hand that clasped her own wrung her heart with pity. She knew what it would mean to a man like her father to know that he might never work again on the land he loved so well.
“Ruth!” His voice had an unaccustomed note in it, an anxious, groping note. “Ruth, what did Emton tell you?”
The question Ruth had dreaded for the past two days had come at last and William Farday read the truth in her face before she had time to reply.
“You needn’t tell me,” he said slowly. “I know. I think I’ve known from the beginning.”
“We can get another opinion,” she said dully.
Farday shook his head.
“Emton knows his job,” he said. “We must make the best of
it.”
Something about his calm acceptance of this burden which had been placed upon his shoulders so suddenly broke down Ruth’s own resistance. Her dark head went down on the pillow beside her father’s iron-grey one, and the tears which had been held back so bravely for the past two days overflowed at last.
William Farday let her cry, stroking the dark, waving hair on her bent head with his big hand.
“There, there, lass,” he said, at last. “You’re all strung up. Don’t take it to heart so, Ruth, girl. We must face our troubles better than that when they come.”
“But it was so needless—!” Ruth cried. “He had no right to be speeding along a country lane like that ...”
“It wasn’t entirely the lad’s fault, Ruth,” Farday explained. “I was maybe as much to blame as he was. Perhaps the old mare and me were taking too much for granted when we thought we could amble along the road in a day-dream.”
Ruth was silent. She thought of her outburst of two days ago, and of how she had accused Edmund Hersheil. She realised now that she had said more than she had meant to in the heat of the moment.
The thought brought her mind back to the farm and the problem of the future. She had shared her father’s confidence ever since her mother had died four years ago, and she knew that it had been a fairly hard struggle to make Conningscliff show any great profit those past two years. As if her father’s thoughts had been taking that direction, too, he said rather abruptly:
“It means we’ll have to leave Conningscliff, lass.”
In spite of himself, there was deep regret in his voice, and it touched Ruth to the heart to hear it. She knew how fond her father was of the farm, and that the ties of sentiment bound him even closer to it. It had been William Farday’s ambition to save enough to buy Conningscliff. Born and bred on a south Yorkshire farm, he had found it difficult to live with his overbearing elder brother when his father died, and six years ago he had brought his wife and seventeen-year-old daughter to start anew at Conningscliff.
Ruth had been a pupil in a Scottish agricultural college when her mother had died two years later, and she had come back to the farm immediately to be with her father in his need of a comforter and helpmate.
Such bonds bound father and daughter, and, because of them, Ruth determined that William Farday would not leave Conningscliff. She must carry on the farm somehow, but even in that first moment of decision, she realised that it was a task that might take more than a girl’s stout heart to carry through.
She rose from her knees and sat down on the low chair by the bed, still retaining the farmer’s hand in hers.
“Father,” she began, “I’ve had a notion for a long while that— perhaps we could do something else with Conningsdiff.”
Her father looked up at her with a fond smile.
“What can we do but farm it, lass?”
Ruth hesitated, and then took the plunge.
“I’ve thought of this scheme before—when things weren’t paying too well—that year of the drought and the time the mangold crop failed ...”
“Yes?” he prompted.
“I’ve often thought of the idea of a Guest House. It could be run very simply—just as we are living now. A holiday on a farm on a large scale, with one or two little luxuries thrown in! Don’t you see that if we get the right people to
come we’d make a success of it? There’s nowhere like the Northumbrian coast for scenery.”
Farday’s eyes met hers.
“How long have you had this in mind?” he asked, without passing any comment on her suggestion.
“It must have been in my mind for a long time,” Ruth confessed, “but it’s only taken shape now—when we need it! What do you think of the idea, Dad? Do you think it’s worth a trial?”
Her eagerness was so obvious that the farmer had not the heart to tell her he strongly doubted whether her Guest House would have any great appeal for the holiday- making multitude.
“What would all this cost?” he asked.
“It wouldn’t cost much,” Ruth said eagerly. “I’d want to keep Conningscliff as like the real thing as possible. We might need more help in the kitchen, for I would want to keep the dairy and poultry on—giving the people our own butter, cream, and eggs. You know the idea? We’d need very little, really, Dad. Mother had a beautiful stock of linen and a great lot of it hasn’t been touched yet. Besides, if there was anything else to get, I’ve got that money Mother left me. I could use that.”
William Farday frowned for the first time.
“No, lass, I won’t have you touching your own money,” he said. “I’ll let you have all you may need for a start.”
“Then you do mean to let me try!”
Ruth jumped to her feet, relief in every line of her vivid little face.
“I’m willing,” Farday replied. “You’ll have to get the Squire’s permission, though. It’s his land, you know.” Ruth had not thought of this, but she was now so sure of the ultimate success of her project that she would not consider the Squire’s permission a stumbling-block. “I’ll manage that,” she said lightly, and went back through to the kitchen, happy in the thought that she could see her way to do something constructive at last.
Peg Emery, the woman who helped Ruth at the farm, was coming in from the dairy, a great slab of fresh butter straight from the churn in her hand. She was a round-faced, stout little woman who bounced rather than walked but she was agile and quick at her work, and she could turn out a churn of butter that many an expert might have envied.
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