Prisoner of Love

by Jean S. MacLeod

  “There must be plenty in the rivers—burns!” she corrected herself. “And I’m all alone at Dunraven at present. Alone, that is, except for Mrs. Finlayson.”

  “How is Morag?” Cathie asked, as they walked slowly back along the path with the dogs at their heels.

  The question had eliminated Julius, Laura realized, but perhaps it was only imagination on her part to feel a sense of relief in the atmosphere once she had admitted to being alone.

  “She seems very well, and she is always very busy. This morning we made raspberry jam.”

  “They're Skye raspberries!” Cathie smiled. “Morag brought the canes with her when she first came because Helene was so fond of raspberries. Helene and I were friends, Mrs. Behar,” she added firmly as her brother dropped a pace or two behind. “It seemed the most natural thing.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Laura answered, glad, suddenly, that Helene’s name had been brought into the open at last. “I gather that her death was—rather a tragedy.”

  “It was that and more,” she said, her voice rising little above a whisper so that the man walking behind them could not possibly have heard. “It was an irretrievable loss for many of us. In some ways I feel that I shall never have another friend like Helene.”

  Yet you must have known her for less than two years, Laura thought, because that had been the tragically short duration of Julius’s first marriage.

  And Zachray? Why had Zachray MacKellar to be spared the mention of Helene’s name?

  Then, quite suddenly, she was remembering what Julius had told her about his marriage. “We made a mistake. We were completely unsuited to one another,” he had said.

  She walked the next few steps in a sort of stunned silence, unable to think clearly. What had gone wrong with Julius’s marriage, she wondered, and what had Helene really been like? Was the marriage over—destroyed by something subtle and inexplicable—long before Helene died?

  Before they came to the end of the glen road another path, which she had evidently overlooked on her way up, led over the brow of the hill, and here the MacKellars paused to say goodbye.

  “You’ll come to Garvie?” Cathie asked. “You made a promise!”

  “Of course I’ll come,” Laura heard herself saying as Zachray turned to whistle for the dogs.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The following day a lengthy telegram arrived from Julius to say that he would be returning in the early afternoon with a guest.

  Lance! Laura thought excitedly before she read on to discover that Julius was bringing the patient he had mentioned before he had left for London.

  “The doctor has had this idea in his mind for a long time,” Morag said, busily preparing the guest room for their unexpected visitor. “I’m surprised, though, that he isn’t taking him straight to the lodge.”

  “He must have changed his. mind,” Laura said. “He will have some special reason for bringing him here. This theory he has about the lodge isn’t entirely new. It’s more or less on the broad lines of occupational therapy, but my husband believes that certain cases benefit more by being treated as far away from their ordinary environment as possible. He thinks that the life at the lodge, which will be entirely self-supporting, can give a man back the true zest for living he may have lost in one way or another. And, of course, the patients will be under his direct supervision.”

  Morag said: “Yes, that is so,” a trifle uncertainly. Then she added: “Of course, he’s had patients up there before.”

  The information came as a complete surprise to Laura. She was amazed that Julius had never mentioned the fact when they had been discussing his treatments, and almost against her will, she found herself asking: “Was—the first Mrs. Behar a patient at the lodge?”

  “She was for a while, but then she came to Dunraven.”

  And married Julius, Laura thought.

  She spent the morning on the machar, wandering out as far as the headland across the fine sand that was a faint pink color in full sunlight.

  She had come this way often in the past few days, watching innumerable seabirds feeding along the shore, recognizing no more than a few and wishing that Julius had been there to instruct her. The busy, red-shanked divers and the greedy cormorants delighted her, but far out on the skerries there were other birds and the dark, silky heads of seals she longed to see at close quarters.

  Although the yacht still lay moored in the bay, Julius had never offered to take her out in it, but perhaps that was because they had not had time.

  Out here on the headland time passed swiftly. When she glanced at her watch it was almost one o’clock and she began to hurry back toward the house, only to be confronted by the car coming swiftly down the hill road long before she had reached it.

  She began to run, but of course, it was hopeless. Julius had driven over the causeway and across the bridge even before she had left the shore.

  The car was pulled up before the front door when she climbed the narrow path from the rocks on the seaward side of the island, aware that she must be looking a trifle wind-blown and bedraggled. She had plunged rather recklessly across the sands, over weed-strewn pools between the rocks, and her shoes were stained with sea-water, but when she saw Julius waiting she ran toward him eagerly.

  “Oh! I’m so glad you’re back,” she cried, holding up her face for his kiss. “It’s been—rather long.”

  “Well, Laura!" he said. “You look almost guilty. Where have you been?”

  Surprise held her silent for a moment. It was almost as if he had spoken to an erring child.

  “I went along the shore. I’m sorry, Julius,” she apologized, “but I didn’t think you would get here quite so soon.”

  She longed to put her head on his shoulder and feel his arms about her, but he drew back.

  “We are not alone,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to bring Cameron here, but he hasn’t weathered the journey so well as I expected him to do. It will only be for a night or two.”

  He turned, and Laura was aware for the first time of the man in the car.

  She had seen Blair Cameron before—only weeks ago, or could it have been in another lifetime? His gaunt height seemed to dwarf Julius as they stood together in the first of the sunshine that suddenly found Dunraven’s shadowed walls, but it was the man’s direct gray eyes that she remembered so well. They were still the mirrors of a turmoil that racked his soul, although he smiled as he held out his hand.

  “We’ve met,” he said, “by accident, Mrs. Behar. One afternoon, in Harley Street, a couple of months ago.”

  She nodded, turning back to Julius, who had been looking at them in some surprise.

  “I was coming to see you, Julius,” she explained, “and I bumped into Doctor Cameron on your doorstep.”

  As they moved towards the house she was struck by the desperate thinness of their guest. His bones seemed to be clothed in such a meager covering of flesh that they all but showed through, and the well-cut tweed jacket he wore sagged loosely across his shoulders. Whatever germ he had picked up abroad had taken its toll of nerves and flesh alike, but she knew that the lack of weight would only be a secondary consideration with Julius. It was the havoc wrought on his patient’s nervous system that was his main concern, and the peculiar, insidious mental deterioration that could take place when a brilliant man considered himself a failure.

  That, too, was the work of the germ. Laura felt suddenly and vitally concerned about this guest of theirs, for Julius’s sake. She knew that he was about to try out some new theory of his own, having explored every other avenue to a cure without success, and she supposed that he was experimenting with Blair Cameron’s full consent.

  Julius saw his patient up to his room and Laura was slipping into a bright cotton frock when he came back along the corridor.

  He came behind her, kissing her first on the nape of the neck in the way that had now become familiar to her.

  “What do you think of Cameron?” he asked unexpectedly.

&nbs
p; She turned in the circle of his arms, fastening her belt.

  “He looks very much in need of attention and—perhaps a miracle,” she decided.

  He laughed at that rather abruptly.

  “There are no ‘miracles’ in medical science, Laura,” he said. “Cures of that sort are left to the romantic novelists. What I want to do here is to prove to Cameron that life needn’t be finished with the ending of an ideal. Even if he isn’t likely ever to operate again, it doesn't mean that he can’t take up some other kind of work and become highly competent at it in time.”

  “But if surgery was his life,” Laura objected, her eyes full of pity, “nothing else could ever be the same, Julius, could it?”

  “Why not?” He asked the question sharply. “We can’t all have what we want from life—everything we want,” he amended.

  “Yet, if he has given everything to his work—if nothing else really meant so much to him—”

  "You are dramatizing the situation far beyond its merits,” he cut in, his smile faintly tolerant now. “It won’t concern you, of course.”

  He drew her to him, his lips hot and demanding against her throat, his free hand in her hair.

  “Laura,” he said thickly, “I believe I’ve missed you more than a little—”

  She smiled, thrusting him from her. “So you should! You interrupted our honeymoon to go off to London on business, and now you bring back a stranger to share the rest of it!” She gave him a swift kiss. “Tell me about Lance,” she demanded, suddenly aware that her hands were trembling as she tidied her hair. “Did you see him? Did he want to come back with you?”

  “No,” he said, turning to change his jacket for a lighter one. “He was still in the Channel Islands with Holmes.”

  “Which means that you had to manage at Harley Street by yourself?” she asked. “Julius, you should have let me come with you!”

  “I think not,” he said. “You were safe enough here.” He came to stand behind her where she sat on the dressing stool brushing her hair. “What have you been doing while I was away?” he asked.

  “Not a great deal.” She hesitated and then said determinedly; “I’ve made two acquaintances, though.”

  Through the mirror she saw his face stiffen, the dark eyes narrowing as he watched her.

  “They’re—old friends of yours, Julius,” she said, conscious of a new nervousness in his presence that increased her pulse beat and heightened the color in her cheeks. “Cathie and Zachray MacKellar.”

  “They are our only neighbors,” he said with what seemed to be a forced indifference. “Apart from the lodge, of course. It was almost inevitable that you should have met them, I suppose,” he added. “They prowl about the district quite a lot, poaching salmon and shooting over the moor.”

  “I liked Cathie,” Laura said defensively. “She was so completely natural, I thought.”

  He left the observation unanswered, turning away from the mirror so that she could no longer see his face.

  “And Zachray?” he asked.

  “He—seemed very nice, too. He had, as a matter of fact, been on the moor, but only to train a young dog to the gun.”

  “So!” he said.

  It was the one small characteristic remark that reminded her that Julius was not wholly English. It held so much of reserve and conclusion, an opinion withheld, perhaps, for confirmation at a later date.

  “I do hope we shall see more of the MacKellars, Julius,” Laura said as they prepared to go downstairs again. “If we are to be up here for any length of time in the future I’m sure Cathie MacKellar and I would get on very well together.”

  “I have no doubt,” he remarked dryly. “Cathie has very few inhibitions. Did she tell you that she and Helene were the best of friends?”

  In the dim light of the long corridor she could not see his expression clearly, but his tone had been light and unconcerned.

  “Yes,” Laura said. “I think she felt Helene’s death very much, Julius.”

  He made a queer, almost inarticulate sound in his throat, and immediately she felt sorry that she had made the observation. She did not want to hurt him unnecessarily by recalling the tragic past, but she could not think of anything to say now that would eliminate her error.

  They found Blair Cameron waiting for them in the hall. Now that the stains of travel had been washed away he did not look quite so desperately tired as he had done when he had first arrived, and when the meal was over Julius suggested that he might like to walk along the shore and “get some fresh air into his lungs.”

  “Laura will take you,” he said unexpectedly. “Then, if you feel like it, we might go up and take a look at the lodge. I have several letters to send off before three o’clock,” he explained, turning in Laura’s direction. “I know you like a walk in the early afternoon, my dear.”

  Laura was only too pleased to leave the house behind. For some reason it seemed to be stifling her because Julius had brought back with him an atmosphere of suspicion which she could not understand. She was glad, though, to be able to do anything to help him, and she was already deeply interested in this first patient of his.

  Blair Cameron measured his long stride to hers as they set out. “All this will be entirely new to you, Doctor Cameron,” she suggested, looking up at his gaunt face and curiously indifferent eyes.

  “On the contrary,” he said, “it’s home ground in many ways. I was born and brought up less than forty miles from here, as the crow flies.”

  “The hoodie crow!” she laughed. “I’ve just heard of him. Only yesterday, in fact. I made his acquaintance while he was doing his dire work up on the moor, and I must confess he scared me. I had no idea he was quite so vicious, but I am assured that he is a regular bird of prey in these parts.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “At first. I met a—neighbor of ours later on and he told me it must either have been a hoodie or a kestrel I had seen. We haven’t many neighbors here,” she added almost lamely.

  “No. That’s rather the point of it, isn’t it?” He looked at her searchingly for the first time. “It’s certainly the point of the lodge, at any rate,” he added.

  “You’re our first patient,” she commented, picking the last of the sea-pinks as they went along. “Julius has great faith in this experiment, Doctor Cameron.”

  “I believe so.” He still sounded unconvinced—or indifferent, perhaps. “I’m the initial guinea pig, as you say. I hope your husband isn’t going to be disappointed in me.”

  Laura turned to face him. She had tucked the sea-pinks into her belt and she looked very young and, somehow, very gallant as she stood there with the wind filling out her cotton skirt and the sun touching the red-gold fire in her hair.

  “It’s up to you to help,” she told him bluntly. “You can’t expect Julius to do it all. We’ve all got to pull our weight, whether it’s in this sort of thing or something else. Unless you hope Julius is going to cure you, it won’t be any good, Doctor Cameron.”

  He looked down at her and smiled, but not with indifference this time. “You know most of the answers, don’t you?” he said. “But I’m not a straightforward case.”

  “I know that, too,” she said quickly. “But that’s what makes it imperative for us to succeed. You do want to—live, don’t you?” she challenged.

  “I’m not so sure.” His mouth twisted in an ugly way. “You see, I have never been very tolerant of failures.”

  “That’s absurd!” she protested. “You haven’t failed. Not in the way you mean. This has been an unfortunate business, I understand—something that could have happened to anyone. If Julius thinks he has a cure you must have faith in him.”

  “How long have you lived up here?” he asked.

  “Little more than a week. I feel,” she added, “that I have been here much longer, though, that I could stay here all my life, in fact. There is so much to learn.”

  “Such as?” he queried, throwing her an odd glance.

&nb
sp; “Oh—about the sea, for one thing! I’m longing for Julius to take me out among the islands.” She nodded toward the yacht sunning itself in the hidden bay ahead of them. “I want to be able to recognize all the different birds I’ve seen along the shore—the waders and the larger birds that fly out over the skerries. There are myriads of them, and they appear to be particularly unafraid.”

  “They have very little fear of man in an isolated place like this,” he agreed. “Their only enemies are their own kind. Watch!” he commanded taking her lightly by the shoulders to turn her toward the sea. “Over there. That big bird with the enormous wing-span chasing the gull! He’s an Arctic skua, and the gull has something he wants. He’ll compel it to drop whatever it is—probably food—and he’ll be off with it before you’ve time to see what he’s about. It’s the same law, I’m afraid, as the law of the jungle,” he added dryly. “The big fellow always wins.”

  Laura’s gaze was fixed on the contestants. The skua was far swifter than the gull and immeasurably more powerful. He swooped and attacked ruthlessly until the smaller bird was forced to capitulate. The gull dropped his prize with a raucous squawk of rage, but there was no real defiance left in him. As the skua swooped on the tid-bit he swerved and flew away. It was the same sort of thing as she had witnessed on the moor only the day before, and it left her curiously disturbed. She shivered.

  They spent over an hour on the far side of the headland, and she was surprised at how much he knew about the flora of the shore and the marsh land beyond. He knew, too, about the seabirds and the breeding places of the gray Atlantic seal. Out on the skerries, he told her, she might even find the snow-white pups of the common seal, which were born earlier than the gray ones.

  Walking back, she knew that she had lifted him out of his Slough of Despond for an hour, at least. This return to the things of his youth had helped him put the present away, if only for a little while.

  If it should prove to be only a temporary escape, it still could not do any harm. It might even help Julius find an avenue of interest to work along. Blair Cameron glanced at his watch.