Iain laughed again. They understood each other well, these two; there was deep affection between them, though they seldom, if ever, showed it. Iain’s way of showing his affection was to speak to Janet in her own idiom; he knew that nothing gave her more pleasure than to hear the broad vowels of her Lowland tongue from his lip. He had learnt it from her as a child and he used his facility to coax or tease her as occasion demanded. It was easy for Iain to please, he had a natural charm of manner and he enjoyed exercising this charm. As a child he had used his charm unconsciously, but as he grew older he had gradually realised that it oiled the wheels of life. Everything went smoother, everything was more pleasant when people liked you, and it was so easy to make people like you . . .
It was as natural to Iain to charm as it is for birds to sing. He drew people to him by his personal magnetism. He was interested in people and he let them see that he was interested—it was very simple. He had a careless, almost regal, grace of manner combined with a boyish joy of living. It was the kind of charm that had conquered Scotland in the person of Prince Charlie—the Stuart charm of manner—but in Iain MacAslan it was allied to a sense of responsibility, to an unselfish desire for the welfare and happiness of others, and especially for the welfare and happiness of his own people. Iain was a king in his own domain. His power was absolute within the boundaries of his small kingdom. His word was law in a literal sense. He ruled by right of his ancestry, by right of possession, and by right of the affection which he inspired in the hearts of his people. In the old days the chiefs of Ardfalloch ruled by the first two rights, but conditions were changing now, and, without the affection of his people, Iain would not have found his kingdom so easy to rule.
Iain laughed at Janet’s downright words. He knew it was not lack of sympathy that prompted them. “Yes,” he said, “I am doing it for the money, Janet, because I must.”
“Was there nae ither way?” she asked him.
Their eyes met gravely. He knew quite well what she meant. She meant that he might have married Margaret Finlay. He had thought of that way, of course; he believed that Meg would have married him, and he liked Meg. He was very fond of her. He didn’t quite know why he couldn’t take that way out of the mess—or did he know? Was he deceiving himself when he said he didn’t know? . . .
“There was no other way, Janet,” he said firmly.
Janet drew in her breath and turned her face to the fire. She could not look at him and say what she had in her mind—“MacAslan, pride is a good thing, but dinna let pride be your master. The lassie loves you. Can you not put pride away, and be happy?”
“I might put pride away,” he said, gazing at the fire, and speaking as if he were communing with his own thoughts, “if that were all. But you see, Janet, there’s something else. You would say I was mad to let it stand in the way—there’s no reason—it’s just a feeling—”
“Anither lassie!” she whispered.
“I only saw her once,” Iain continued in the same low tone. “Just once, for a few minutes. But, somehow, I knew that she was everything that I wanted—had always wanted. I don’t even know her name. I don’t know anything about her except that she is beautiful and good. It seemed to me that I had always known her. When I looked at her I felt I knew her all through—knew exactly what she was like. I’ve never forgotten her. Perhaps I never shall. If I could think that I was mistaken—that she was not really as I imagined her—”
Janet was silent. This explained many things that she had not been able to understand. The thing was madness, of course. It was utterly crazy to her matter-of-fact mind, but she knew Iain well, and understood him. It was just like MacAslan to fall in love with a vision, an insubstantial dream, and to let the dream govern his life and wreck him.
Iain was watching Janet’s face. He laughed quietly. “Perhaps she was a fairy, Janet,” he said in a lighter tone.
“Sometimes I think she must have been a fairy to have stolen my heart away so quickly and kept it so long. A fairy woman—”
“Hoots!” Janet cried angrily. “Are you a bairn, MacAslan, to blether of fairies? You ken as weel as I dae there’s no such things—fairies indeed!”
He smiled. It always amused him to rouse Janet, and it was an easy thing to rouse her when you knew the way. Janet was always impatient of anything supernatural. You had only to mention fairies, or kelpies, or witches, or enchantments and she was up in arms at once, with all the strength of her Free Kirk training to back her up. Was there ever such a sensible, downright, practical creature as Janet condemned to live her days amongst a pack of superstitious Highlanders! For himself, he half believed in fairies—half of him accepted the old tales, while the other half of him rejected them as fables, having rise in the visionary brains of his fellow country-men.
“It fits the case, Janet,” he continued with feigned gravity. “If she was a fairy woman and stole my heart; stole the substance of me so that nothing but the husk is left. . . . Fairies can look like mortals, you know, Janet; they move noiselessly, and the wind blows them where they will. You know the story of the man who had a fairy sweetheart—they were very happy together, they met in the woods and loved each other . . . then the fairy grew tired of the man—he was only a mortal after all—and she left him. He pined for her for years, and then, at last, he was able to forget her, and he took another woman—a mortal like himself. You know what happened then, Janet. The fairy woman was jealous: she came back and killed him—perhaps that is what I am afraid of—”
“Och, away with you!” Janet cried. “Bairns’ tales, the whole of it. You dinna believe in it yoursel’. Get you a wife, MacAslan, and hae done with such-like noansense.”
There was a little silence after Janet’s outburst, and Iain’s mood changed again.
“Perhaps . . . some day . . .” he said at last in a serious voice. “But not yet, Janet. I must have a little longer. It would not be fair to . . . to any woman, to ask her to marry me, when another woman’s picture is in my heart—you see that? So there was no other way at all but the way I have taken. Something had to be done. We live very simply, but we’re spending more than what is coming in (and there are repairs that must be attended to)—that can’t go on for long.”
She said quickly, “You’re welcome to what I’ve got, MacAslan, if it’s any use—you ken that.”
Iain was too moved to reply, there was a lump in his throat. He had had a wearing day—things had piled up on him until they were almost unbearable.
“Bide here by the fire,” Janet said. “I’ll away to the kitchen and make you a bowl of gruel.” She heaped a few small logs on the glowing peat and hurried away. The man’s fair dommered, she told herself—no supper most likely, and less tea. It’s little wonder he canna thole the idea of letting Ardfalloch . . .
She busied herself in the kitchen, coaxing the fire into a blaze, warming milk to prepare the gruel, and, while her hands were busy with these well-accustomed tasks, her mind was free to wander where it would. It would be a strange thing to leave Ardfalloch, Janet thought, after all these years. She remembered the day she had come to Ardfalloch for the first time. She was young then, young and bonny. She had come to wait on Iain’s grandmother who was a Lowland woman like herself, and who preferred a Lowland girl as her personal attendant. Janet had been unhappy at first-the place was so strange, the people were foreign; their speech, their clothes, their way of thinking were strange, foreign, incomprehensible. Janet pined for her own land and her own people. Only the old lady was Lowland like herself, and, because of the old lady, Janet stayed on. She thought now of the old lady—Iain’s own grandmother—there was a woman after Janet’s own heart, straightforward, uncompromising, direct in speech. There was no nonsense about old Mrs. MacAslan. Her son, Iain’s father, was different altogether. He was Highland to the core, a proud man and not easy to understand. Janet remembered the night that he had brought his bride home to Ardfalloch. She was a dark-haired girl from the Western Isles, with a pedigree as long as
MacAslan’s: But she was not proud (as he was), she was small and timid, with eyes like a deer. There had been something strange about her, even then, something out of the ordinary. She looked as if she did not belong in the workaday world, as if her footing in the world were insecure . . .
How long ago it all seemed, and yet how clear! I’m getting old, Janet thought, it’s old people who see long-ago things so clear. The big kitchen was full of shadows as the grey light of dawn crept in at the window, and the flame of the candle she had lighted leapt and flared in the draught of her movements. Janet straightened her back and gazed before her. In imagination she could see the hall of Ardfalloch, crowded with ladies and gentlemen waiting for the bridal couple to arrive. She could hear the buzz of conversation, the ripple of laughter. The doors were flung open, there was a cheer from the tenants waiting outside, and the big carriage with its pair of well-matched horses rolled up to the steps. Janet saw again the tall, burly figure of Iain’s father in its swinging kilt—he caught his bride in his arms, sprang up the steps and set her down in the midst of the company. She stood there, half dazed by the noise and the lights and the spate of good wishes and congratulations. That was Janet’s first sight of the new Mrs. MacAslan (a dwaibly body, she had said to herself, half in pity and half in scorn.) It was thirty-five years ago, and it was clear in her mind as if it had happened yesterday.
The next thing of importance in Janet’s life had been the arrival of the baby. Old Mrs. MacAslan had insisted that Janet should have charge of the baby, and had released her from her other duties for that purpose. Old Mrs. MacAslan’s word was law—it was wise law in this case, at least—her own son had been born and brought up amongst Highlanders, her grandson should have the benefit of another view of life. He should experience contact with a matter-of-fact personality, it would enlarge his outlook and minimise the danger of his being spoiled as the head of his house, the little chief, the embryo king of Ardfalloch. Janet was sound and completely trustworthy, she would give him discipline. Old Mrs. MacAslan saw all this quite clearly, but she did not put it into words. She merely said that Janet was trustworthy and was to look after the baby—nobody dreamed of questioning her decision, least of all her daughter-in-law. Young Mrs. MacAslan was too wrapped up in her handsome husband to bother very much about the baby. She was a little frightened of the baby if the truth were told, she could never really feel it was her baby—it was a stranger in the house, arrived from some unknown land. She neither liked it nor disliked it; her whole being was already full. There was no room in her heart for anything or anybody but MacAslan. Janet devoted herself to the baby. It became her very life. She watched the tiny puling thing grow into a thin wiry boy, and from a thin wiry boy into a graceful man. Old Mrs. MacAslan died when Iain was fifteen; she died full of years. There was no tragedy in her death, it was just a passing on. Janet missed the old lady (she had been a good friend and a wise mistress) but she realised that it was inevitable for old people to die. Old Mrs. MacAslan would not have wished to live on and lose her grip on life gradually, she could not have borne to become a burden, a useless burden on her friends. No, there was no tragedy in that death, just a sadness and an emptiness in the house. It was very different when MacAslan died (Iain’s father). The man was in his prime—in full health and strength when he was snatched away. Janet could not think of it now without a shudder of horror. His young wife had been there when the accident happened . . . she had seen him fall . . . the shock was too much for her brain. . . .
So MacAslan had died and the responsibilities connected with his position had passed to Iain—Janet’s beloved boy. He was eighteen, and the burden had been a heavy one for his shoulders. Times were difficult and money was scarce. Janet’s heart was sore for her boy, but she hid her sympathy and gave him a dry bracing comradeship, full of common sense and free from sentiment. She gave him a strong shoulder to lean on, and he leant on it more than he knew.
All these things passed through Janet’s mind as she made up the gruel and laced it with whisky. As she fetched the biscuits from the cupboard, and a spoon, and the salt-cellar and laid them neatly on the tray, her life at Ardfalloch passed through her mind in swift review. Her own personal life had been uneventful. No man had sought her in marriage, she was too forthright, too matter-of-fact for the imaginative people amongst whom she dwelt. They understood her as little as she understood them. They laughed at her behind her back; she despised them.
The tray was ready now. Janet took it up and carried it along the draughty, flagged passage and across the hall to the morning-room where Iain was waiting beside the fire. It was broad daylight now, and, in that clear cold light, his face looked pinched and wan. He had not moved since she left him—and this seemed strange to Janet, who had been such a long journey herself—but when he heard her coming he looked up and smiled. She put the tray on the table beside him, and stood and looked at him with her hands on her hips.
“Drink it up noo, and away to your bed,” she said sternly. “You’re gey and shilpit looking, and it’s small wonder—trapesing off without a bite of supper and coming hame at these unairthly hours—”
Iain sipped the gruel, it was warm and comforting. “Sit down, Janet,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“Can you not talk to me standing?”
Iain smiled. “No, I can’t. You’re like a giant in the room. It’s an uncomfortable thing to talk to a giant.”
“Hoots!—you and your giants!” Janet said; but she complied with his request, drawing a little stool before the fire and seating herself upon it.
“It’s about—about my mother—” Iain said in a difficult voice, and, again, at the word there was a little silence. Janet looked at the fire—the logs on the top of the peat were blazing merrily, the small flames were leaping up the wide chimney.
“Aye,” she said, after a little, “and what were you thinking of, MacAslan?”
He understood all that was implied in the simple question, and answered it in a word which was in itself another question.
“Edinburgh?” he suggested tentatively.
Janet nodded. “I was thinking the same, masel’. A wee flat maybe—just for the three of us. We’ll not need a gurrl. I can manage easy enough. I’m thinking she will like it fine when she once settles—”
“There will be just the two of you, Janet. I’m staying here!”
“Staying here!”
“In the old cottage by the loch-side.”
“You’ll no can stay your lane!” Janet cried, her Doric gaining in strength with the violence of her emotions. “Why, you’d be jist meeserable—with strangers in the hoose, and all—” Her breast rose and fell stormily beneath her grey gown with its white, starched ruffles—and me not here to see to him, she thought!
“Well, we’ll see,” Iain said. His mind was made up, but it was no use fighting with Janet to-night. There was time yet before the question need arise—three months of peace before he need hand over his home to the London man with the money—three months.
Janet left the subject, too, with much the same thoughts at the back of her mind. When the time came he would find it impossible to stay here alone and he would come with them to Edinburgh. She would have him with her in Edinburgh—the three of them together in a wee flat. It would be kind of cosy, Janet thought, a holiday from the struggle of running the big house with insufficient means. It would be a rest from the pinching and scraping and the worry of trying to put a good face on things before the world. It would be a kind of holiday from all that. They would see the shops, and, maybe, a picture or two, and hear the band playing in the Princes Street Gardens. And there would be folks to speak to, folks of her own ilk—sensible, douce, respectable bodies. Last, but not least, she would get a rest from the raw Highland queans that composed her meagre staff, from the eternal fault-finding and nagging which was the only method she had found to get the work of the house accomplished by these happy-go-lucky damsels.
Iain had been watchi
ng her face. “I believe you are looking forward to it, Janet,” he said with a little sigh. “I don’t blame you—it must be dull for you here.”
She turned towards him quickly and put her hand on his knee—it was a large-boned hand, roughened by hard work in his service, but well-shaped and flexible still. “I’m wae for ye, MacAslan,” she said softly.
CHAPTER III
MARGARET
Iain allowed several days to elapse before taking advantage of the Finlays’ invitation. He was not looking forward to telling them that he had let Ardfalloch, and he could not go over and see them without telling them his news. He had a suspicion that they would think it foolish and unnecessary. He and Meg had so often fulminated together upon the folly of landowners who let their places for the season and loosed a horde of ignorant Sasunnachs upon the innocent country-side. And now he had done this very thing himself. He was loath to visit Cluan at all, but he must go. The Finlays would think it queer if he did not go over and see them, and welcome them home.
At last he felt that he could put it off no longer. He had no excuse for putting it off. It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny and bright, with a fresh breeze. He walked down to the little harbour through the woods. There was a pair of cuckoos in the woods somewhere above the house, they had been calling to each other all the morning and they were still at it. “Cuckoo, cuckoo,” said one, and a moment later came the reply—if such it could be called—“Cuckoo.” Then came the first one again, “Cuckoo, cuckoo.” It went on and on interminably, it rasped his nerves, it was a weariness of the flesh. Even so must the psalmist have found the grasshopper a burden. . . .
Donald was mending the roof of the boat-house, perched on a high ladder, struggling with a piece of tarpaulin that flapped and wriggled like a live thing in the wind.
Smouldering Fire Page 3
