Susan Settles Down

by Molly Clavering

  There was no telephone installed in the Manse, but the Cunninghams had never regarded this as a drawback. They found it quite as easy and very much more interesting to dart across the road and use that instrument in the cosy gloom of the post office. The arrangement also suited Mrs. Davidson admirably, for it enabled her to remain up to date with all that happened at the Manse, a privilege which she would have sadly missed had the minister possessed what was locally known as a “foam” of his own.

  Indeed, intending callers on Mr. Cunningham were in the habit of first inquiring at the post office if the meenister was ben the hoose; and more than once, on seeing a chance visitor about to open the Manse gate without observing this ceremony, Mrs. Davidson, leaving her post, had sprung from behind her well-polished counter to shrill across the road: “Ye needna gang up till the hoose. They’re a’ awa’ oot tae their tea!”

  On a Monday morning the village emporium was usually deserted, and Peggy, well aware of this, was abashed by her reception when she came running in with a gay “Good morning, Mrs. Davidson!”

  There was a loud and sibilant “Wheesht!” and the postmistress, a horny forefinger pressed to her lip, nodded vigorously towards the stuffy glass cage which shrined the telephone. It was occupied, as Peggy, her eyes by this time accustomed to the dark interior of the shop, could see, and by a stranger.

  “The new gentleman at Easter Hartrigg!” mouthed Mrs. Davidson, and Peggy, who had politely averted her eyes, looked again. Acute disappointment was her first sensation, for this was by no means what her imagination had led her to hope for. Farewell to the compound of Prosper le Gai and Mr. Henry Edwards which she had pictured to herself. The man who was speaking into the mouthpiece in clear, indignant, and “dreadfully English” tones was only of medium height. His hair was black, his face pale, and well-marked eyebrows were drawn by a scowl into a single black bar above the bridge of a shapely but distinctly large nose.

  “I’ll come back. It doesn’t matter,” she whispered hastily to Mrs. Davidson, knowing that nothing short of an earthquake would drag that lady from her absorbing occupation of listening to the one-sided conversation being carried on in the telephone booth.

  “Juist a meenit. He’s near feenished,” said the postmistress, and as if in answer, the new owner of Easter Hartrigg put down the receiver and came out into the shop, still scowling. He passed Peggy over with one entirely uninterested glance, and addressed himself to the presiding authority.

  “Thanks very much. What do I owe you for that?” he said. His hand was in the trousers-pocket of his brown tweeds, rattling coppers as if in impatience to pay and be gone.

  But that was not Mrs. Davidson’s way, and Peggy found herself pitying his innocence. Did the poor man really suppose he could escape so easily?

  Leaning her arms, bare to the elbows, and above them hidden by the rolled-up sleeves of the grey-and-black overall which covered her capacious person, comfortably on the counter, the most important woman in Muirfoot now proceeded to make amiable talk, chiefly in the form of adroit questions.

  “I doot ye’ll no’ be finding things juist as ye might hae liked up at Easter Hartrigg, Mr. Parsons?” she began.

  “No. I am not,” said Mr. Parsons, some long-smouldering irritation struggling to the surface and making itself heard. “The house was supposed to be ready for me to go into it to-day, and now I find it won’t be fit for habitation for at least a week. And as there’s no telephone, I have to send messages over from the nearest house that possesses one, which doesn’t save time.”

  “Eh, dear me! That’s bad,” replied Mrs. Davidson, uttering a clucking sound indicative of sympathy. “Have ye no’ had a wumman in tae redd up the place?”

  “There have been two able-bodied women there since the last tenants left,” he said grimly.

  “Eh, my, my! They’re surely no’ stirrin’ themsel’s,” said Mrs. Davidson.

  “Quite evidently not.” Thus Mr. Parsons, even more grimly, and with such a scowl that Peggy once more began to edge her way out of the post office. Her departure was stopped.

  “Dinna gang, Miss Peggy! I’ve a message aboot the Women’s Guild for Mistress Cunningham!” cried the postmistress urgently. Peggy halted uncertainly in the doorway, and now Oliver Parsons looked at her with more attention.

  “Mrs. Cunningham? Are you by any chance a daughter of Mr. Cunningham? The vicar—I mean, the minister?” he asked. “I wonder if I might come and see your father sometime? Armstrong said he could advise me about the garden better than anyone.”

  “’Deed, an’ Mr. Armstrang was richt,” said Mrs. Davidson decidedly. “Awa’ you up tae the Manse the noo. Monday’s the meenister’s easy day, an’ ye’ll get him in. Here, Miss Peggy, here’s the message, a’ written doon, an’ say that I’ve ordered the paraffeen frae the man, an’ it’ll be here come Thursday. That wad be what ye cam’ aboot. An’ a dizzen o’ stamps. The meenister aye gets them on a Monday.”

  In a minute Peggy and Oliver Parsons, the latter slightly dazed, were outside on the road in the pale January sunlight, staring at each other.

  “Lord, what a masterful female!” said the man, smiling for the first time, and showing a glimpse of white teeth, a sparkle in dark eyes. “I thought we’d never get away from her, didn’t you?”

  Peggy dimpled in reply, but said sedately: “I’m used to her. You see, I’ve lived here all my life.”

  “Have you, though?” Oliver said, thinking with faint amusement, “I suppose that means about fourteen or fifteen years at the outside! She seems a nice child, but painfully shy.”

  As they crossed to the Manse gate, Peggy noticed that he limped slightly and that above his ears the dark hair was beginning to go grey. When he was not talking, his brows drew together in a frown, his expression was bitter, his eyes gloomy. “I wonder why?” she thought, filled with half-pitying curiosity.

  “Are there many of you?” asked Oliver Parsons, more to make conversation than from any interest in the subject.

  Peggy’s ingenuous face clouded. “The Infantry went away yesterday and won’t be back for six months,” she said dolefully. “It’s horrid without them, so dull and quiet.”

  “The Infantry?”

  “Yes. My niece and nephew,” said Peggy.

  “Good Lord! Are you an aunt already?”

  “Of course I’m an aunt. Why shouldn’t I be?” she asked indignantly, forgetting her shyness of this strange gloomy Englishman.

  “Well, you haven’t left the schoolroom yourself yet—”

  Peggy drew herself up. “I left school,” she said with immense dignity, “very nearly two years ago. I am nineteen.”

  “I say, I’m frightfully sorry, but you do look rather young for your age, you know.”

  “I know I do,” said Peggy mournfully, her dignity fled. “It’s a great trouble to me in the parish. Everyone treats me as if I were a child.”

  They were almost at the Manse door by this time, and Oliver Parsons stopped for a moment in his halting walk to say seriously, “I wouldn’t let it trouble you, Miss Cunningham. Believe me, you’ll grow old quite quickly enough, as you will find.”

  Peggy could find nothing to say in answer. Something about the effect of sudden intimacy produced by his earnestness frightened her. She wished desperately to make a laughing reply, to restore the conversation to its former lightness, but she lacked the necessary savoir-faire. She could only stand tongue-tied, her blue eyes staring at him in resentful perplexity, while he, on his side, was conscious of acute embarrassment and annoyance at having allowed a momentary impulse to get the better of his reserve.

  He spoke first, though it was only to say “Well?” with an interrogative glance at the hall-door.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Peggy, blushing from chin to broad white forehead. “Do come in.”

  She led him into a long, rather dark hall, and opening a door to the left, showed him into a small room where a fire burned cheerfully. “I’ll go and tell father,” sh
e said, and was gone.

  Oliver was relieved. This was not the kind of girl to whom he was accustomed, and though at first, supposing her to be the schoolgirl she looked, he had been willing to be amused by her unsophisticated chatter, this passing interest had vanished. With a far greater liveliness he looked about him, glad to be alone.

  The room in which he stood waiting was evidently the minister’s study. A high book-case, crammed with theological works, filled one wall entirely, and on a large business-like desk opposite the window was a pile of church magazines in paper covers of an unprepossessing pink. There were photographs on the walls and mantelpiece: photographs of men in clerical collars, photographs of what he took to be former Manses, groups of grim-looking parishioners, stiff in their Sunday blacks. Not an aesthetically pleasing room, yet it had an atmosphere which soothed and attracted Oliver. The hall, and this cool, prim, high-ceiled study, were plain enough, and spoke of genteel poverty, yet everything was kept with a scrupulous spotlessness which gave the house a curious modest charm. “Susan would like this,” he thought, and decided to spend the evening which passed drearily for him at the Kirkhouse Inn, in writing to her. She would be worrying about him, wondering when she could come and keep house for him at Easter Hartrigg. . . . Well, at the present rate of progress there, it would be a deuce of a long time, he thought ruefully.

  The door opened with a brisk rattle of the handle, and Mr. Cunningham strode in, his ruddy face, so like that of a prosperous farmer that his dark-grey clerical suit and dog-collar seemed a little incongruous on him, beaming a welcome. Below a thatch of silver hair his shrewd but kindly blue eyes darted keen appraising glances at the young man who moved to meet him.

  “Ah, poor fellow! He’s seen trouble and disappointment,” was the minister’s immediate summing-up, made even while he shook hands. Aloud he said with a genuine cordiality which was one of his most endearing characteristics, “Mr. Parsons, I’m delighted to meet you—or should I be calling you ‘Commander?’”

  “Thank you, sir. The ‘Commander’ isn’t really necessary. It’s just a sort of courtesy title. I am—I was—a Lieutenant-Commander,” said Oliver. “And by the way, I must apologize for troubling you already, but Armstrong told me you could help me—”

  “No trouble, no trouble at all, my dear sir!” cried Mr. Cunningham. “You’ll just tell me anything I can do and I’ll be only too pleased. Jed Armstrong is your nearest neighbour, of course, at Easter Hartrigg, and a very fine fellow, none finer in the parish, or indeed the county. A sterling character, Commander Parsons. A bit of a rough diamond, perhaps, but a sterling character. Ay, yes, indeed. ‘The man’s the gowd, for a’ that!’ Now draw in your chair to the fire, and light a cigarette, and let me know how I can help you.”

  When Oliver Parsons left the Manse about an hour later, he took with him the pleasant conviction that he had found some new friends. If the daughter was gauche, country-bred, supremely uninteresting, both her parents were well worth knowing, and he sincerely hoped to know them better when he had settled in at Easter Hartrigg.

  3

  “My dear,” wrote Susan Parsons to Charles Crawley, “we are embarked on the maddest venture you can imagine. You have heard us speak of Oliver’s godfather, Sir Hugh Blackburn? The dear old man is dead, but he has left Oliver a small farm on the borders of Scotland, which was not entailed, a place called Easter Hartrigg. Up to date it has always been let furnished, but the tenants’ lease expired last November, and Oliver’s insane scheme is to live there. With me, of course, to keep house for him. I hope I’m a sensible woman, and I think the whole arrangement sheer folly, but Oliver was so set on it that I simply hadn’t the heart to make even a feeble objection.

  “You know—no one better, Charles dear—how miserably depressed he has been for months, ever since that dreadful accident that broke his leg so badly, and how he ‘retired at his own request,’ having had a strong hint that he’d be axed if he didn’t. The poor dear has been like a fish out of water, and this is the first gleam of interest he has shown in anything. How could I damp his enthusiasm with wet blankets of common sense? If he weren’t so pleased with his unexpected legacy I should set it down as the most snowy of white elephants. As it is, he is already in the wilds of Scotland, where I am pledged to follow him as soon as the house is fit to be lived in.

  “Don’t, please, write and tell me that we’re mad. I know it already; and even if I didn’t, every friend we possess has pointed it out. My spirit is quailing at the prospect of life at Easter Hartrigg, because I know what pitiful figures we shall cut as landowners in a country quite strange to us. Oliver talks blithely of shooting and fishing, and has told me to buy a smelly Harris-tweed suit and clumping brogues and a walking-stick, but these outward semblances won’t make country-dwellers out of us. I feel just as the children of Israel must have felt when Moses dragged them into the uncharted perils of the wilderness out of the land of Egypt—a place in which, however unpleasant their lot, they were at least at home!

  “Fortunately I haven’t much time for dismal speculation, as I have all the packing-up to do at this end. Would you were here to help, instead of floating about the Mediterranean on the spring cruise! What fun we had buying the furniture for our little flat, and now I’ve got to try to sell it again—a much less easy task. Isn’t it queer how expensive things are to buy, and how terribly cheap to sell? There is a faint hope that some service people who have looked at the flat may take over our gear when I leave. I devoutly hope so, for Easter Hartrigg is probably so full of stuff that there won’t be a corner left for any of our own surplus.

  “Oliver sent me a telegram to announce his safe arrival at Muirfoot, the nearest village, where he spent two miserable weeks, in the Kirkhouse Inn (local pub). After a fortnight I had a picture-postcard from him. It showed a long uneven row of singularly depressing cottages and a small grim church. More local colour was supplied by a shoulder of hill in the distant background, and nearest the camera, a group of inhabitants dressed in the style predominant during the early days of Edward VII. Below was the legend: ‘A Greeting Frae Muirfoot’; and on the back Oliver had scrawled, ‘Not a bad place, and the village much less awful than it looks from this. Have met one or two decentish blokes.’

  “It isn’t very helpful, is it? I can’t get a word out of him about lighting arrangements, or what is needed in the house, or whether the drains are all right. However, it is quite useless to moan. Oliver is my only brother—in fact, my only relative nearer than a few fourth or fifth cousins in Australia, and we must stick together. I loved living with him while he was still in the Service, and having tremendous fun at Pompey and Weymouth and on the China station. Now I shall have to share this entirely unknown life, even if it’s only to see that he doesn’t do something incredibly foolish. You know he is still very far from fit.

  “If we survive, you must come and stay with us, and I will pour all my woes into your sympathetic ears. In the meantime, Charles darling, don’t scold us, but write a nice kind letter to cheer us up, for I go to Easter Hartrigg in four days, and if my things weren’t all packed and ready, and most of them gone in advance, I really think I’d back out of it. Oliver writes in his last letter, just arrived: ‘By the way, I’m afraid the first thing you’ll have to do will be to sack the cook, Mrs. Bald, for various reasons, one of them being that she drinks like a fish. With whisky at twelve-and-six a bottle I can’t afford it, but I haven’t the necessary guts to tell her so.’

  “What a prospect! After a long, tiresome journey, I’m to be embroiled with a whisky-drinking cook as soon as my foot is over the threshold. Wish me good luck. . . .

  “P.S. I’ve just read a line of verse written by a peevish Englishman which seems to describe Oliver exactly: ‘A laird and twenty pence, pronounc’d with noise . . . !’”

  CHAPTER TWO

  1

  A slow train from Berwick brought Susan Parsons, after an hour of cross-country meandering, to the little country town of
Abbeyshiels, where she was met by her brother, with a hired car which had obviously begun life as a private landaulette of the early days of motoring, for among its fittings were a handless clock and an imposing array of scent and smelling-salt bottles with tarnished gilt tops. The driver, a rather toothless but cheerful and talkative young man, told her at once how lucky she was to secure it, and she gathered that another unsuccessful client had wanted it in order to attend a funeral in suitable state.

  “Tell me one thing,” she said nervously as they lulled out of the station yard, “is the cook likely to be drunk when we arrive?”

  “If she is,” said Oliver, “it won’t be on my whisky, because I took jolly good care to lock it up before I left!”

  After this somewhat dubious reassurance they gradually sank into silence, while the driver, nursed his ancient car over villainous roads in the half-dark, at a stately pace singularly reminiscent of the funeral which had been his alternative hire. The lights flashed wanly on hawthorn hedges, leafless as yet, on an occasional wayside cottage, on passing carts. In the west a pale afterglow coloured the sky, and the evening star began to wink, doubtfully at first, but with ever-rising confidence. The air was cold, but wonderfully fresh and fragrant. Above the wheezing of the asthmatic engine came drifting the sound of birds—restless, fretful, complaining of invisible plover; thrilling, eerie cry of curlews; bleating and drumming of snipe, which had already begun their courting in the low-lying marshy ground; and, dominating all the rest, the bold halloo of an owl from some wood close to the road. Susan, though chilled, was excited by the strangeness of that drive in the dark, by the sounds which she could not name, by the thought of her unknown destination. She sat very still, her face turned to the half-open window, wondering what life was going to be like in this place which she could not even see yet.

  “Not much farther now,” said Oliver as they went round a corner so sharply that Susan was flung into his lap. And as she recovered her balance the car came to a standstill before a gaunt house which rose blackly in front of them, darker than the night’s darkness, and without a single gleam of lighted window to relieve the general gloom.