Iain was so utterly wretched, so sore and angry that he wanted to be alone, but Donald’s company did not irk him—to be with Donald was just like being alone, it was almost better.
“There is something the matter, MacAslan,” said Donald at last.
Iain laughed bitterly. “There certainly is,” he replied. “Everything is the matter—”
“Is there anything I can be doing to help?” Donald enquired anxiously.
“No, there is nothing. I can’t even tell you about it.”
“Are you sure of that? There is nothing I would not do for MacAslan—nothing at all.”
“There is nothing to be done.”
“That is a pity, then,” said Donald.
There was a little silence between them, and then Iain began to speak. He spoke at random with unusual bitterness; he spoke because he had come to such a pass that he could not remain silent.
“It’s a strange world, Donald. You and I have been born in strange times. We have been born too late. If we had lived long ago we would have been free to follow our inclinations. It’s nonsense to talk of freedom nowadays—we are bound. Civilization has bound us with invisible bonds—”
He stopped suddenly and glanced at Donald. Donald must not guess the nature of his trouble—he had promised Linda—but Donald could not guess. Donald had no clue to what had happened, no means of knowing, and the thing was far too complicated for Donald to understand. It was perfectly safe to let himself go, to talk in this vague wild way; perfectly safe, and what an incredible relief! Iain felt as if the pent-up rage and bitterness was pouring out of him as he spoke.
“I have shared in your troubles many times, MacAslan,” said Donald a trifle wistfully.
“Nobody can share this,” replied Iain quickly. “Nobody at all. I have given my word.”
“That is a pity.”
“Nobody can help me,” Iain continued with something like despair in his voice as the magnitude of the disaster which had befallen him and Linda came clearly before his mind. “Nobody can help. I can’t help myself. I see the trouble coming and I cannot avert it. I am bound. I must sit down and wait for the trouble to come, and that is a hard thing to do. Oh, Donald, this modern world is impossible for a natural man to live in. I was born with the instincts of my forefathers—their feelings and desires are in my blood. I belong to a bygone age. I would to God I had lived in the days when a man took what he wanted by force and held it, when a man swept his enemies from his path like so many flies—”
“They must have been good days,” Donald agreed. “But even now—”
“You don’t understand,” Iain told him. “All is changed now, and, even if it were not changed, I am bound—I have allowed myself to be bound so that I may not even rid the world of a wild beast.”
That was the thought that was embittering him now. He had allowed himself to be bound. He had allowed Linda to bind him with promises so that he must not touch a hair of Medworth’s head—so that Medworth must go free. Medworth—the mere thought of the man almost choked him with rage. His face grew dark with anger, and his hands were clenched upon the arms of the chair until the knuckles shone white. If he saw the man now, even his sacred promises to Linda would not hold him back. What right had Linda to tie his hands and render him impotent to deal with his enemy?
“A man is not a man nowadays,” he cried with passionate bitterness. “Or at least he may not behave like one. He must bow his head to injustice, he must keep the law—even when he knows it to be false and unjust. Men fight with their tongues now, with lies and deceit. In the old days life was free and simple. A man followed his conscience and was answerable to God alone. He could right his own wrongs by his own power. A blow in the open is better than a lying whisper in the dark. Oh, it must have been good to be a man in those days!”
“Is there nothing I can do for MacAslan?” The grave words fell with strange significance into the little silence which had followed Iain’s impassioned speech.
Iain looked up—he had almost forgotten that Donald was there, so quiet had he been.
“There is nothing,” Iain said. “Nothing at all that you can do—or anybody else. I have spoken wild words, Donald—you must forget them. Nobody must know of this trouble.”
“Nobody shall know,” replied Donald firmly. “It is not likely that I should speak of MacAslan’s secrets to another person.”
Iain was content with the assurance. He knew that Donald was a safe repository for secrets, and, after all, what had he said? He had merely inveighed against the times he lived in and had voiced a futile—and somewhat childish—wish that he had been born in a manlier age. He sighed, and stirred in his chair, and his hands dropped slackly at his sides. He was suddenly very tired—more tired than he had ever been in his life.
“I must be going now,” Donald said quietly. “There are things I must be doing, MacAslan.”
“Did you come to see me about anything special?” Iain asked in a flat voice.
“It is no matter,” Donald assured him. “I will not be troubling you about the small things—”
“Come to-morrow,” said Iain. He felt quite incapable of coping with anything more to-night—even with the small details of the estate—his mind felt heavy and blank.
“We are shooting the south moors to-morrow,” Donald told him, “but I will come in the evening, if that will be suiting MacAslan.”
Iain nodded. He watched Donald cross the room to the door.
“Donald!” he said suddenly. “Donald, you understand—don’t you—I would have told you about this trouble if I could have done so—if I hadn’t been bound by a promise. You are not hurt—”
Donald looked back at him gravely. “I understand, MacAslan, and I am not hurt. There is no question of that at all. It is only that I would serve MacAslan in the trouble—”
He waited a moment, looking at the limp figure in the chair with questioning eyes, and then—as Iain neither moved nor spoke—he went out and shut the door behind him.
ARDFALLOCH IN SEPTEMBER
CHAPTER XXV
FACING THE FUTURE
Iain and Linda decided that there was nothing for them to do but wait—wait until the summons came. They were both a little hazy as to what form it would take. They saw each other more often and more openly now that Iain had made friends with Mrs. Hetherington Smith, but they scarcely ever saw each other alone. There were always other people there, and, even if they met in the woods, there was always Richard to debar them from a frank discussion of their position. (Linda could not bear to let Richard out of her sight for a moment.) It was both a pain and a pleasure to see each other, thus, to talk in company about everyday affairs, when their minds were obsessed with the trouble which had come upon them and from which they could find no escape.
Linda went through the days in a kind of dream. Sometimes she was hopeful, pinning her faith upon justice—God’s justice and man’s. Sometimes she was sunk in despair. She had no illusions about Jack Medworth; he would do as he had threatened, nothing would turn him from his purpose. He wanted Richard for several reasons: partly because, as he had said, the child was his son, and partly because he enjoyed bullying Richard, but principally to revenge himself upon herself. He hated her—Linda knew that—and, until now, she had always had the upper hand of him. She thought of the years she had spent with him as his wife and shuddered at the thought. She had loved him to start with, but very soon her love had died. It had died when she realised what manner of man she had married. Jack had killed her love, not only by his unfaithfulness, but by letting her see the underlying coarseness and brutality of his nature. He had come back to her from other women and she had turned from him in disgust. Her cold disdain had maddened him. She could not help that, she had felt like ice. Jack had called her an iceberg, but she knew that the ice was only on the surface; she was human underneath, human and warm, craving for love. When he found her cold he had tried to rouse her by tormenting Richard, until she had been
forced to take action against him—the only action open to her. Linda thought of the divorce—the sordid horror of it all, the exposure of her life, the dreadful publicity. Jack had hated it, too, and had hated her for dragging him into it. This was his chance to revenge himself upon her, to wound her in her only weak spot—through Richard. Linda knew that he would do it, there was no escape, and she saw clearly that it would be far worse this time because she would be arraigned. She and Iain would be questioned and cross-questioned, and their relations to each other debated, every action probed and pried into, until there was no beauty or privacy left—she had done this to Iain.
These were Linda’s thoughts; they went round and round in her head all day and all night. She tossed and turned upon her bed, and sometimes her pillow was wet with tears of despair.
Iain was wretched, too. He marked the shadows beneath Linda’s eyes and knew that she was not sleeping—neither was he for that matter. The tension was so great that Iain felt it would be a relief when the summons came, and they knew the worst. They would go to London, then, and prepare their defence. It would be better to have something definite to do. He watched Linda very carefully during those days, trying to read her thoughts (and her thoughts were not difficult to read). Sometimes he saw her glance fall upon Richard with a passion of protective love, sometimes she caught him up in her arms and held him against her breast as if she would never let him go. It was as though a sword went through Iain’s heart when he saw her distress, and he thought: She will never be happy again if she loses the child—it will kill her. Sometimes it seemed to him that her love for himself had gone—vanished into thin air—she scarcely noticed him, all her heart was bound up in the child. Linda was not normal—he realised that—the strain was driving her mad. It was a further horror to Iain that the strain might injure her brain. He had his mother constantly before his eyes, a dreadful warning of how the delicate balance of a woman’s brain may be upset. Linda was stronger than his mother, her moral fibre was more resilient, but she was being highly tried.
These thoughts and feelings boiled below the surface of life, but, in spite of that, life moved on from day to day, and Linda and Iain, in their different spheres, went about their usual tasks and pleasures, ate and drank, and spoke to their friends as if there was nothing much wrong. Mrs. Hetherington Smith guessed that Linda was unhappy, but she had no idea of the reason. She was more than usually kind and considerate to Linda, making her rest as much as possible and protecting her from the unwelcome attentions of Sir Julius with unobtrusive tact. Meanwhile the Ardfalloch house-party disintegrated. Greta Bastable left to pay another visit in the north, and Desmond Cray went with her. Mr. Proudfoot returned to London. Other people came for a few days’ shooting and went away—Linda hardly noticed them. Of the original house-party, only Mr. Stacey remained, and Jim Wyllie and Colonel White.
One day, when the Ardfalloch house-party had gone to shoot the Cluan Moors with Mr. Finlay, Mrs. Hetherington Smith summoned Iain and told him to take Linda for a walk. She gave them a tea-basket and told them to make a long afternoon of it.
“Off you go,” she said, with her friendly smile. “It will do you both a lot of good. Richard and I will be quite happy by ourselves.”
They went off in silence, somewhat dazed by the prospect of a whole afternoon alone together. It was a lovely day. The sun was golden, and a keen sweet breeze stirred through the heather. Their feet chose the path to Ballochgorm. Linda had not been that way before.
“There’s a bothy up there,” Iain said. “We’ll have tea there, shall we?”
“Yes,” said Linda.
She was feeling happier to-day. The moors were so beautiful, and the mountains were so clear and high, her own troubles seemed smaller for the time being. Iain realised that the shadow had lifted a little, and he was glad; he did not want to bring the shadow back, but there was something he wanted to say to her, something he wanted to discuss—a plan had been forming in his head. He thought: I’ll wait a little, I’ll wait until we are having tea.
The path climbed higher, the moor was vast and empty of all life, it was seamed with narrow gullies, peaty water lay in pools, stagnant with green slime. The sky was like an immense inverted bowl of clearest blue glass. The heather was waist high in patches. They came to a clear space of emerald green turf with two black-faced sheep grazing upon it; they lifted their foolish faces and looked at Iain and Linda as they passed. On this high moor the air was like wine, tingling through their limbs. Linda thought that this land was primeval, it was untouched by man’s hand since the beginning of time, untouched and untouchable. There was nothing you could do with this moorland except enjoy it. They walked on and on, scarcely speaking—a grouse rose from beneath their feet with a harsh scream.
“It’s ten days now,” said Linda suddenly.
“I know,” said Iain. “I was just thinking that. It can’t be long now before we hear—I think we ought to have some plan.”
“Some plan?”
“For Richard,” Iain explained.
They had reached a cluster of boulders. Linda sat down on one as if she were suddenly tired.
“I’ve thought of something,” Iain continued, sitting down on a lower stone and looking up into her face. “We could hide Richard. I believe we could do it, Linda. Donald and Morag could take him—we could say he was Donald’s nephew and that his parents were dead.”
Linda looked at him in surprise. The plan seemed the height of madness to her—a child’s crazy idea. She said vaguely, “But how? Everybody in Ardfalloch would know who he was.”
“But nobody would betray the secret,” he told her. “I really think the scheme is worth considering. I’ve thought about it for days now, and I can’t see how they would find him. No stranger coming to the glen would know that he was not Donald’s nephew—how could they? Even Medworth wouldn’t know the child in a few months. He would be browned and sturdy—altered out of all recognition.”
“It’s—it’s an extraordinary idea,” said Linda doubtfully.
“I suppose it would be to you—just at first,” Iain admitted. “The idea grew gradually with me. I went into Donald’s cottage that day-after we had seen Medworth, and Richard was sitting by the fire. He looked so right somehow, so much at home, so happy and peaceful and comfortable. I couldn’t help thinking what would happen if Medworth got hold of him; and, gradually—I can’t explain very well—gradually the two ideas came together and I saw this plan.”
“Yes, I see,” said Linda. She began to believe there might be some sense in the wild scheme.
“He would be quite safe with them,” Iain continued earnestly. “They are both fond of him—Morag worships him and Donald would do anything I asked him to do—Richard would come to no harm there, I am sure of that.”
“They are very nice people,” Linda agreed.
“You see, it’s really a choice between that and Medworth,” Iain said, “unless of course we win the case, which seems—I’m afraid it’s rather doubtful.”
“I know.”
“Linda, we can’t let Medworth have him—it’s unthinkable. Richard would be ruined for life—his nerves shattered.”
“I know, I know.”
“I’ve thought out all the details,” Iain continued. “We could leave Richard with them when we go south. Donald could pretend he was going to his sister’s funeral and come back with Richard. They could say that their nephew was coming to live with them—it’s often done. Everybody in the glen would know that it was not true, but nobody would say a word. In a few months he would be absorbed into their life. We could leave him there for a year, or even two years—it wouldn’t harm him. By that time Medworth might have given up the search, he might have found some other interest. You told me he never sticks to anything for very long—anything might happen in two years.”
“Isn’t there a policeman in Ardfalloch?” Linda asked.
He laughed. “Mac Var!” he said. “Mac Var is Morag’s brother. We don
’t need to bother about Mac Var.”
“This is a most extraordinary place,” said Linda, smiling in spite of her misery.
They discussed the plan further. Iain saw that he had at least given her something to think about. As far as his own hopes went, they were finished. Linda would not be free, he could never hope to marry her. But if they could save Richard it would be something—the other things seemed to matter very little beside that.
“I wouldn’t be able to see Richard,” said Linda at last.
“No,” agreed Iain. “I’m afraid not—it wouldn’t be safe.”
“I could bear that if I knew he was happy.”
“I think he would be happy,” Iain said.
She looked across the moor towards the mountains, and tried to think the thing out. Was Iain’s plan really feasible or was it a fairy tale? She had seen quite clearly from the very beginning, that, if they lost the case, her own life would be finished. She would still be Jack’s wife—the wife of a man who hated her—the only thing for her to do would be to go abroad, to vanish off the face of the earth, and try to bear her misery in solitude. At one blow she would lose Richard and Iain—everything that made life worth while. It did not seem possible that she would be able to bear it, but she supposed that she would bear it. Other people bore heavy burdens and continued to live—or exist. People didn’t die of broken hearts.
Her face was so unutterably tragic that Iain felt his heart turn over in his breast. He said, “Linda, what are you thinking?”
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