Prisoner of Love

by Jean S. MacLeod

Julius shrugged.

  “An oystercatcher, perhaps, or a peewit. I wouldn’t know,” he admitted “There are so many birds here, breaking the silence. Shall we go in?”

  She went to hang up her coat, and when she followed him to the study on the far side of the hall she found him filling a hypodermic syringe from a small phial on his desk. A cupboard stood open on the wall behind him, full of a selection of drugs, and she noticed it with some surprise, saying nothing, however, as he held up the syringe to the light to test it.

  “I’ll slip upstairs and give this to Cameron,” he said. “He may want to get to sleep before I finally turn in for the night.”

  “Can I do it for you, Julius?” Laura asked. “It would save your going up if you want to write—”

  He swung around before she had finished the sentence, a light of cold fury in his eyes.

  “Allow me to do my own work, Laura,” he said. “When I want you to look after my patients for me I shall ask you.”

  Stunned and desperately hurt by the harsh and wholly unexpected rejoinder, Laura turned away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a small, shaken voice. "I thought I might be saving you time when I am quite able to give an injection.”

  He seemed to have forgotten that she was a nurse, or did not want to remember, she thought bitterly.

  Going slowly up the wide staircase in his wake, she felt curiously and inexplicably alone. Had she been mad—quite, quite mad to believe that he would ever allow her to take an active interest in his career, to help him professionally where she could?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The morning’s post brought two letters from Lance, one written before he had left for the Channel Islands with Holmes, and the other sent from St. Helier, where he said that everything was “super” and that Holmes was strict but “a very good sort, really.”

  They cheered and reassured Laura tremendously, because it did not seem that Lance was worrying unduly about the postponement of his visit to Dunraven. He would, of course, be expecting them back in London on his return, she thought as she handed the postman the letter Julius had stayed up to write the night before.

  It was a bulky communication, and she watched Will-the-Post cycling away over the causeway with it tucked securely in his red canvas bag, wondering if it contained her husband’s final decision to organize his consultations from this remote fortress.

  During the next few days, however, Julius seemed to have forgotten that he had ever made the suggestion. To Laura’s surprise and instant delight, he decided to use the yacht, but she was even more surprised when he confessed to an inability to handle it without Blair Cameron’s help.

  “Cameron is an expert,” he said, “and, in a good many ways, it will be part of the experiment.”

  They took Callum from the lodge with them, and it was immediately obvious that the simple-minded man offered his first allegiance, not to his employer, but to the man who could handle the ship.

  “The Captain,” he called Blair, to Julius’s obvious chagrin, but Julius smiled and let him have his way.

  They sailed northward, past Rhu Coigach and the deep indentations of Enard Bay into a land that became wholly Norse in character, with its blue lochans and deep fjords biting far into the hills. Suilven stood above them, a long ridge that was more than one mountain and looked inaccessible from the sea. Canisp and Ben More Assynt rose behind it, with a host of other dark and distant peaks, stretching to the far reaches of the Reay Forest and the bleaker mountains of Sutherland that speared the wrathful northern sky.

  When they reached the Point of Stoer and the dreaming islands of Eddrachillis lay before them, remote and lovely in a gulf of unbelievable blue, Laura was standing beside Blair. She saw his hands on the tiller tighten as the sails filled out in a little, unexpected wind. His expression had lost some of the tautness that had characterized it ever since she had known him, and she felt her heart lift on a surge of hope as the grim mouth gradually relaxed and the gray blue eyes narrowed as all sailors’ eyes do when they take in the far distances of the sea. They lifted toward the horizon and there might have been a new hope in them as he said:

  “This is what I wanted you to see. It’s one of the loveliest spots on earth.”

  Laura could not contradict him. She could not even speak. The spell of the sea was upon her, and something more. She wanted to open her heart to it, to embrace its wordless loveliness, and it didn’t seem she had any need to tell this man how she felt. Blair Cameron knew, for this was his own country, the environment he loved more than any other.

  She watched his brown fingers grasping the tiller and thought of their former strength, hoping and praying that it might return, not just for the sake of Julius’s experiment, but for Blair himself.

  Already he had put on a small amount of weight. His cheeks had filled out a little, although the gaunt look was still there, haunting his eyes. Julius, she knew, would be pleased with even this small indication of success, and she supposed that the sea trips would be undertaken as much with this end in view as to satisfying his own desire to be able to handle the yacht. He seemed subtly afraid of the sea, conscious of its power and the terror it could inspire, yet ruthlessly determined to conquer it.

  When they turned back toward Dunraven she was still standing by Blair’s side. He had let her handle the tiller for the past half hour, but now, at the difficult entrance to the loch, with the scattered skerries in their path, she had to appeal to him for help. It had been an exhilarating experience to guide the white Northern Bird around the distant point and in between the islands, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes very bright as she looked up at him.

  “O.K., Skipper! She’s all yours from here!” she laughed. “I wouldn’t take her through these vicious little skerries for a fortune!”

  “You could learn,” he said, smiling. “You have the feel of the sea, Laura.”

  It was the first time that he had used her Christian name, although he called Julius quite freely by his. Laura felt it like a gentle touch against her cheek, a tentative hand stretched out in friendship, and responded immediately.

  “This has been a wonderful day, Blair!” she said. “I would not have believed that anything so perfect could really have happened. Scotland is my country from now on!”

  As he took over the tiller their fingers touched and she felt his, warm and strong and capable, fastening on her own for a moment before she drew her hand away.

  Back on land again, they walked from the bay to the house in a strange little procession: Julius and Laura in front, carrying their oilskins and fishing tackle, and Blair with a canvas sailbag slung over his shoulder full of an assortment of things, followed closely by Callum, carrying the dinghy’s oars and the rowlocks dangling by a lanyard around his neck.

  When they reached the end of the causeway Blair and Callum prepared to take their leave. Blair had gone up to the lodge in the glen the day before, and Callum had appointed himself his faithful guardian.

  “Shall I run you up in the car?” Julius asked. “It won’t take me many minutes to get it out and I can give you a quick checkup while I’m up there. You look fairly fit, though, even if you have had a strenuous day.”

  A small pulse was working high in Blair’s cheek, as if the casual reference to his health had set up some sort of unexpected reaction on his mind, and then he said briefly:

  “As you say. I don’t feel that I have overreached myself just by sailing a boat for an hour or two, I suppose we had better check.”

  Julius went in search of the car and Laura said:

  “You won’t come in for a while, Blair? Morag is sure to have a meal ready. She would have seen us coming into the bay from the kitchen windows.”

  “I think not,” he said almost bluntly. “Julius can’t want a patient inflicted on him all the time.”

  Laura hadn’t thought of it like that. She watched Julius bring the car and drive away; when it had disappeared between the trees at the far end of the c
auseway, she turned toward the house with a little sigh. She was so pleasantly tired, so blessed by sea and air and sunshine, that she could have gone happily to sleep there and then and dreamed away the hours till morning.

  Instead, she went through the shadowed hall and met Mrs. Finlayson at the dining room door.

  “There’s a batch of letters waiting for the doctor,” Morag said, “and a telegram that looks as if it might be important. I wondered if I should have opened it, and then I thought what good would that be doing and you away there on the boat and nobody able to go after you to be telling you about it!”

  Laura picked up the telegram and looked at it. It was addressed to Julius, so that the first wild bound of fear her heart had given as, she had thought about Lance was mercifully stilled. She was oversensitive about Lance, she supposed, because he was all the family she had—unduly sensitive, Julius had said.

  “I’m going up to change, Morag,” she called along the passage to the kitchen. “Will you see that the doctor has the telegram as soon as he comes in?”

  “I’ll see to it,” Morag assured her. “I’ve boiled far more potatoes than we’ll need,” she added. “I thought young Doctor Cameron would be coming in with you for a decent meal. It’s not right, him fending for himself up there with just that poor half-witted Callum Dhu for company.”

  “It’s part of the cure, Morag,” Laura told her as she mounted the stairs. “And I think it may be starting to pay dividends even now!”

  When Julius came up to the bedroom it was obvious that the contents of the telegram had disturbed him.

  “Not bad news?” Laura asked, turning from the dressing table where she had been brushing her hair.

  “Not exactly,” he said, “but it means that I shall have to go south again.”

  “Oh! Then it’s important?”

  “Quite,” he told her in a tone which suggested that he had already removed himself to London at least in thought.

  “I don’t mind going,” Laura said, conscious of a vague struggle between desire and reluctance. “We didn’t mean to stay as long as this in the first place—”

  She hesitated, aware of impatience in him, the suggestion almost of irritation.

  “I’m not taking you to London with me, Laura,” he told her. “There’s no need.”

  “But I ought to come,” she protested, “to take care of you.”

  He smiled thinly.

  “I have Holmes,” he informed her dryly. “I prefer that you should stay where you are.”

  “But, Julius—”

  “Please don’t argue the point.” His tone was coldly decisive. No amount of argument on her part would alter his plans. “If it will make you feel any better about staying behind I shall send Lance up as soon as I get there. They are returning from Jersey tomorrow.”

  “Oh!”

  She wanted to thank him, to say that Lance’s coming put a different face on the situation, but perhaps it wasn’t exactly the right thing to say. Not to Julius.

  The fact that Lance was coming, however, completed her golden day. Dreamily she began to plan for him, and all these plans unconsciously included Blair Cameron. Blair would teach Lance to handle Northern Bird, to trim a sail and take in a reef in a strong wind, and anchor her securely; and if there was time left from all that adventuring he would show him how to cast a fly and play a salmon in the deep brown water of the burn where the foam lay like creamy flower-petals between the rocks. He would name the wild fowl for him along the shore and take him out to the skerries to watch the seals.

  “You seem to feel most adequately recompensed for my absence,” Julius observed as they went down to the meal Morag had prepared. “But I realize that we did promise the boy a holiday up here.”

  Laura wished that he could have spoken about Dunraven as Lance’s home, if it was, indeed, to be their permanent home. Although he was anxious enough to obey Julius and eager enough to go to the new school that Julius had chosen for him, she knew that her brother needed the suggestion of roots more than anything else. He needed a home atmosphere, the assurance that he was wanted and loved.

  Julius left by car the following morning, intending to leave it at the railway station, where he would pick it up on his return. He had not offered Blair the use of it, which was perhaps natural in the circumstances, although Laura had heard him suggesting a partial ascent of Suilven on his return. She supposed that there must be a less adventuresome way up the mountain than the climb over the precipitous rock face they had seen through the binoculars from Northern Bird’s deck, but she had not questioned Julius nor mentioned the attempt to Blair.

  Left to her own devices again and waiting impatiently for the message heralding Lance’s arrival, she made up her mind to visit the MacKellars at Garvie Lodge. Cathie’s invitation had been sincere, even pressing, and Morag said she should go.

  “It’s a long day for you here alone, and the road to Garvie is beautiful. If you go over the hill,” she explained, “you should do it in little over an hour.”

  Morag never seemed to feel the loneliness of Dunraven. She had a young girl in the kitchen with her called Ruth MacAulay, and they chattered together in the Gaelic for hours.

  Going up through the glen, Laura wondered if she would see Blair. He could not be aware that Julius had left for London, but they had not made any arrangements to take Northern Bird out again, so that he probably wouldn’t come to Dunraven for a day or two.

  Where the paths divided she hesitated. Should she go to the lodge and tell him about Julius’s unexpected recall to London? Finally she decided against the visit, her cheeks flushed a little as she walked away in the direction of Garvie.

  On the brow of the hill the wind met her in a great gust whipping the color in her cheeks to a wild rose and her rebellious hair into loose curls about her head. It was a day for the moors, bright and clear, with high white clouds sailing away to the west and a panoramic view of the Hebridean Islands from the dark, serrated line of the Cuillins in the south to the distant shadow of Harris and the lower line of Lewis in the north.

  Then, almost part of the natural sounds of hill and moor, rising and falling as if it had been borne on the wind from a great distance in time and space, she heard for the first time the sound of the Highland bagpipe being played in its perfect setting. It was a Piobaireachd, an ancient classical piece whose lovely notes seemed to soar to heaven, bearing the very soul of the music up with them and reverberating against the green bosom of the hills. The slow, deliberate theme lingered and dwelt there ahead of her, waiting and holding the utmost sorrow in its depths, and Laura heard it as if it had been played for her alone.

  Standing quite still, with the wind in her face, she listened till the end, caught in the grip of an emotion that shook her to the depths of her being. The silence after the last drone had ebbed away could almost be felt, and the very hills seemed trapped by the poignant beauty of the theme.

  She could not name the piece. She had never heard it before, but she knew that she would remember it all her life as the expression of the most unutterable sorrow, the full overflowing of a heart in anguish.

  When she reached Garvie Lodge Cathie was there alone. She was making butter in the vast, stone-floored kitchen and, since it was “just turned,” she told Laura that they would have to talk while she worked.

  With her sleeves rolled up above her elbows and a big white apron tied about her waist, she looked practical and oddly different from the dishevelled creature who had clasped a wet salmon to her straight out of the burn. Laura found herself chuckling at the recollection.

  “The first time I met you I wasn’t quite sure what to think, Cathie.” she admitted. “You looked like a brown ‘Kelpie’ straight out of one of Blair’s Highland legends!”

  Cathie’s merry blue eyes came up to meet hers.

  “You like Blair Cameron, don’t you?” she asked. “We think he’s grand. He was over here this morning.”

  Laura looked her surprise.
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  “He walked over to see the sheep being dipped,” Cathie explained. “I believe he would have offered a hand, too, only we were just about through.”

  “I’m glad he came," Laura said. “On his own, I mean. That’s what Julius wants. It’s going to be half the battle if he will take the initiative in that sort of thing himself; and new friendships will bring him confidence.”

  “Will they bring him the confidence he needs to start again?” Cathie asked. “As a doctor, I mean. Because that’s all he really cares about.”

  Cathie, it would appear, had come to know a great deal about Blair in a very short space of time, but perhaps insight came more swiftly up here among the hills and the silences, Laura thought.

  When the butter had reached its final stage and a blue-eyed dairymaid had taken over in the kitchen, Cathie made tea and carried the tray into a long, low-raftered room with windows facing the moor. They were all wide open, the narrow lattices letting in the sun and the scent of the heather; snow-white curtains swayed gently in the breeze.

  “Have you always lived here, Cathie?” she asked.

  Cathie glanced up from her task of pouring out the tea.

  “More or less,” she answered laconically. “I was away at school for a few years, of course, on the east coast, but I was glad to come back. There’s true freedom here.”

  “And it never seems lonely? You’re quite content to go on living for the rest of your life at Garvie?”

  There was a short silence before Cathie answered.

  “If that is to be the way of it,” she agreed. “Yes.”

  Laura turned from the window to look at her.

  “Supposing Zachray were to marry?” she suggested, and was instantly sorry she had asked the question when she saw the pain her words had inflicted.

  “I don’t think he ever will,” Cathie said. “You see,” she added after the barest of pauses, “he was very much in love with someone in the past.”