“Gardening is drouthy work,” said the minister, and passed her his bowl-like cup with the stock remark, quoted from one of his old parishioners. “‘A cup o’ tea’s rale refreshin’.’ Thank you, my dear.”
Cilly, who had been allowed to leave the table after a hastily muttered grace, and was now perched on a chair in the window, said: “Here’s Davie with the letters.”
“How do you know?” asked Bun, looking up from her mug of milk. “You can’t see the door from there, Cilly. You know you can’t—”
“Yes. Can,” retorted Cilly instantly.
“But it’s round the corner.”
“My eyes can see round corners,” said Cilly blandly.
“Oh! That’s not a truth, unless you’ve got a squint, and you haven’t.”
“Yes. Have. A wee teenty one, dus’ enough to see round the corner.”
“Cilly, dearie, you mustn’t talk rubbish, and you’re not to tell untruths,” murmured Mrs. Cunningham.
Bun slid from her chair. “I’ll go and see if Davie’s brought the letters, and then we’ll know,” she said darkly, and left the room. On her return about two minutes later she eyed her cousin with a mixture of awe and frank disbelief, while handing a letter to the minister.
“On the contrary, he had come,” she said.
Cilly bounced up and down on her chair until her silver-gilt curls danced. “I sawed him! I sawed him!” she squeaked triumphantly. “I’ve got two dear little squinting eyes what can see round corners. I sawed him!”
“Peggy,” said Bun softly, tugging at her aunt’s dress. “Did she really? Was it a truth after all?”
Her father and mother were also looking to Peggy to settle this question. Susan, half amused, half admiring, heard her say as sternly as she could: “I think the less said about it the better. Cilly, do those dear little eyes of yours see as far as the toys and things you left on the study floor? Because it’s high time you picked them all up.”
Cilly opened her mouth to disclaim her squint, no longer useful, and always fictitious, caught sight of Bun’s sceptical face, and decided that she did see the study floor. Followed by her cousin, she trotted away more seriously than usual.
“Most refreshing,” said Susan. “And I do admire you as the kind young aunt, Peggy. It’s very effective.”
“Something has to be done to counteract the spoiling of the Infantry by two sets of doting grandparents,” Peggy said, as they wandered out into the sunny garden. “They would be ‘neither tae haud nor tae bind’ if left to father and mother. And the Richardsons, I imagine, are every bit as bad.”
“Well, can you leave your auntly duties for a day next week? Oliver and I are having a picnic to the sea, and we want you and your brother to come.”
“A picnic! Bathing!” cried Peggy, no longer a Kind Young Aunt but a child little older than Bun or Cilly. “Oh, I’d adore it, and so would Jim. Thank you most awfully—”
“Don’t thank me until you see what the weather is going to be like. If it pours, think how horrible everthing will be—”
“It won’t,” said Peggy with the calm confidence of youth. “It will be a lovely day.”
CHAPTER FOUR
1
Peggy was right in her weather forecast, and it was on a glorious morning of late July, when a haze promising heat veiled the hills, that Susan took her way to the kitchen to view the picnic preparations being made by Donaldina.
Her voice could be heard raised in lamentation all along the passage. “The gingerbreid’s fine, an’ the scones, an’ the rock cakes, an’ a’ the lonch, but ma Mydeary cake’s sat doon on me.”
“Tchk, tchk,” came the sympathetic clicking of someone’s tongue in reply, and Susan recognized it as belonging to Mrs. Robertson, come down to help for the day.
“What the mistress’ll say, dear kens. She was that set on me trying’ the Mydeary cake.” Then, a tone of thunderous command: “Jems! Awa’ you oot tae the gairden an’ get me the cress for the sangwidges, an’ dinna staun’ grinnin’ there, ye muckle gowk!”
Susan trod with ostentatious heaviness down the passage, and smiled to hear hasty sounds of departure. When she entered the kitchen it was empty of occupants save Donaldina’s demure small person, enveloped in an apron several sizes too large for her, and looking like a rueful dove.
“Well, Donaldina, it’s a pity about the Madeira cake, and I’m sorry you were disappointed over it, but after all, there are lots of other things to eat. Your gingerbread looks even better than usual—”
Donaldina cast a baleful glance at the Madeira cake on the table, and sniffed contemptuously. “It’s aye the way,” she said gloomily. “I took as muckle trouble wi’ yon Mydeary cake as wi’ a’ the lave o’ them thegither. And ye see, mem, whit like it is. For a’ the warld like the big drum efter a donkey’s pit his fit through it.”
Struck by this picturesque comparison, Susan also looked reproachfully at the erring cake, which certainly had a considerable concavity of outline where it should have been convex.
“Can we use it? Or will you give it to James to take home?” she asked.
“Is it gi’e it tae Jems?” on a rising note of incredulous indignation. “Na, na, mem. It’ll mak’ a fine trifle for the denner an’ the Commander, ye ken, aye fancies a trifle . . . Was ye wantin’ thae eggs champit for sangwidges?”
Susan could never keep her countenance for long with Donaldina, though she felt that such inability to restrain untimely mirth rendered her unfit to command a household. Perhaps it was Donaldina’s Scotticisms, still amusing to southern ears, or perhaps it was the contrast between her demure face and mild blue eyes, and her extremely truculent manner on occasions; whatever the cause, there came a moment when Susan knew that she must retreat at once or be disgraced. Murmuring that she could leave everything to her cook, she now fled, and on reaching the sitting-room, collapsed on the sofa in a fit of laughter which her brother’s disapproving eye, raised from the map he was studying, failed to quell.
“By the way,” he said presently, and with a fine air of carelessness which did not deceive Susan in the least, “I thought I’d better take Shena Graham in the Squib. All right by you?”
“All right by me,” said Susan; and as far as travelling in Oliver’s car was concerned, she meant it. The Squib was an antiquated Morris two-seater with a dickey, which he had bought for fifteen pounds, and it had the alarming habit of backfiring when least expected, with sounds reminiscent of dark street corners on the night of November the fifth.
The name of his passenger, however, interested her. Shena Graham, sister of Muirfoot’s gloomy organist, daughter of the famous Cough Mixture, studied art in London, but had come to spend her summer holiday with her people in Abbeyshiels. She was a pretty, feather-headed little creature with an infectious giggle, and Susan was privately convinced that the art to which she applied most study was that of make-up.
“Of course Oliver’s heart is like a sponge, it’s so absorbent,” thought his sister with brutal candour. “But this is the first symptom of girl-friend-itis I’ve seen since his smash. He must be getting better. Pity he always selects such impossibly stupid young women!”
Aloud she said mildly: “D’you mind telling me what arrangements have been made for the rest of the party?”
“Well, the Scotts have their own car, and Peggy Cunningham will go in her brother’s sidecar, I suppose—unless you’d like him to take you?”
“Perish the thought! I like Jim Cunningham. Off that motor-bike he’s a nice boy, but on it he’s merely a speed-maniac, and I have no desire to be suddenly and unpleasantly done to death. Let Peggy risk it. She’s his sister, and young enough to enjoy it.”
“I thought you’d feel like that. Then will you go with Jed?”
“Is he coming?” Susan asked in open amazement.
“Why not?”
“No reason at all. Only I can’t picture him at a picnic, somehow. I think I’ll go with the Scotts. Don’t glare like th
at, Oliver. I haven’t said anything even remotely unkind.”
“Jed happens to be rather keen on picnics,” said Oliver stiffly. “And I tell you what it is, Susan. You aren’t fair to Jed. You haven’t been from the start.”
Susan was troubled by this accusation, for though she had nothing in common with Jed Armstrong, the fact that he was Oliver’s friend counted for a good deal with her.
“I’m always nice to him when we meet,” she protested.
“Oh, nice!” said Oliver in tones of disgust. “You treat him to your best society manners always, if you call that being nice. And with people like—well, Charles, for example, you might be a different person.”
“Charles is an old friend of yours as well as mine,” said Susan, a slight flush creeping into her cheeks. “I’m at home with him, so of course I seem different—”
The sitting-room door opened, and Donaldina, bearing a salver at arm’s-length as though the orange envelope lying on it were a venomous serpent, entered.
“If ye please, mem,” she gasped excitedly, “a tallygram. The boy’s waitin’ ootbye, but he says tae tell ye frae the postmistress that she didna think there’d be ony answer.”
Months of country life had accustomed Susan and Oliver to the lively personal interest taken by Mrs. Davidson in all correspondence, particularly such as could be read: Susan, indeed, was certain that those eagle eyes could almost pierce through a mere envelope to the letter inside. Therefore this message, strange as it might have sounded to them a year ago, was now taken as a matter of course.
Stretching out a hand for the telegram, she said: “Will you give Donaldina threepence for the boy, Oliver?”
Donaldina reluctantly left the room with three pennies jingling in her hand, unwilling to miss the opportunity of hearing what the telegram contained, for she had all the delight in possible bad news common to her kind. Susan tore open the envelope, stared at the pencilled message in complete mystification, and handed it over to her brother.
He read it aloud slowly. “Arriving Abbeyshiels 6.30 p.m. please meet MacIlwaine.”
“And who,” he asked with interest, “may ‘MacIlwaine’ be?”
Susan shook her head. “Don’t ask me. I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“‘Arriving Abbeyshiels 6.30’,” quoted Oliver speculatively. “Do you suppose it’s coming to stay?”
“It must be some ridiculous mistake,” Susan said. “I don’t know anyone called MacIlwaine. Do you?”
“Not guilty, m’lud.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“What can we do but go for our picnic and let it alone? I hear some of the people coming now—”
“But what about this person arriving at Abbeyshiels and expecting to be met?”
“There’s a taxi. MacIlwaine can hire it,” said her brother callously, and went out to greet the vanguard of the picnic party.
2
The somnolence born of comfortable repletion, fresh air and a warm sun had descended upon the picnickers where they lay at ease on the sands of Sunburgh bay. Before luncheon the scene had been lively enough, when those who felt so disposed had bathed, and their laughter and shouting had rung loud in the stillness as they ran, a living frieze of dark figures against the sunlight, into the blue water that broke in a thousand golden ripples where they disturbed it. Now no one wished to stir, except Oliver and Shena Graham, who could be seen rapidly decreasing in size as they neared the farther end of the wide bay. Even the murmur of conversation, drowsy-sounding as the noise of pigeons in a dovecote, had died away, and the deep silence was broken only by the busy waves which lapped unceasingly at the edge of the beach.
Jim Cunningham and the two Scott boys, still in bathing things, lay prone on their faces, more than half asleep. The Scott parents had frankly succumbed to the insidious spell of slumber, and Susan watched them, idly wondering how it was that so many people fell asleep with their mouths open. Presently Peggy rose and wandered inland over the shimmering grey-green dunes. Ronald Graham sat and fidgeted for some minutes, and then followed her, leaving Susan thinking that it was a pity a young man so lanky should elect to wear a kilt, below the edge of which his knees, as thin and pink as sticks of early spring rhubarb, were mercilessly disclosed.
Alone of the party she remained seated and awake. She suddenly wished that there was someone like Charles to keep her company. Dear Charles, who liked the things she liked, and who was such a good friend. . . . She got up and walked down to the water. The sea stretched empty before her, without a ship or even a smudge of smoke to break the line of blue which blended mistily into the sky at a distance immeasurably far. On the left lay the long ribbon of tawny sand, and to the right, crowning a low green hill, the gaunt ruin of Sunburgh Castle rose defiantly into the air. There was not a soul in sight, except the picnic party, silent behind her. A little wind ran rustling through the dry, sharp dune grasses and sank again.
Suddenly a voice spoke close to her. “Would you like to walk up to the castle?” it said.
Susan knew without turning to look that it was Jed Armstrong. No one else had such a rumbling bass voice, so pronounced a Scots accent.
“Yes,” she said, remembering that her treatment of him worried Oliver, and determined to be more friendly. “I think I should.”
Together they took a narrow path made by the busy feet of many sheep, and went towards the ruin. One thing pleased Susan about her silent companion: she need not try to make conversation, which was perhaps as well, for she had nothing to say. Small talk always seemed to die in his presence, she thought a little irritably, and glanced at him. His rugged brows were knit above his curiously intent dark-blue eyes. Maliciously she wondered whether he could be as bovine as he looked, and if he were thinking of sheep or cattle, or both.
Neither, it seemed, for as they gained the crest of the hill and stood under the high wall, broken by an archway long since doorless, he said: “A place like this makes me think, somehow, of an old dog that has lost all his teeth, but who’ll still growl at a stranger.”
Susan gasped aloud. “You feel like that? You?” she asked incredulously, her manners entirely forgotten.
He nodded unsmilingly. “Yes, I do. It seems to surprise you a bit?”
“Of course it surprises me. I thought you only thought about bullocks and things.”
“Bullocks,” he said seriously, “aren’t as uninteresting as you might think.”
“I’m willing to take your word for it,” said Susan lightly, but her lips curved in a faint unbelieving smile as she walked past him under the archway and into the oblong of sheep-bitten turf which had once been the courtyard of the castle. At once she paused.
“Oh, there’s someone else here,” she exclaimed with a small gesture of annoyance.
Two figures, deep in conversation which did not sound too amiable, stood in the shadow of the wall at the far side of the court. They had not noticed the presence of Susan and Jed.
“It’s Peggy,” said he. “Who’s with her?”
“Mr. Graham,” Susan answered.
“H’m. Well, do we leave them, or will we interrupt them?”
“I think Peggy would welcome an interruption,” said Susan gravely. Then, meeting Jed Armstrong’s blue gaze more frankly than ever before, she added: “I don’t care for that young man. Do you?”
“I do not,” said Jed with emphasis. He raised his voice in a hail that set echoes ringing all round the walls.
3
Peggy, wandering happily in the castle courtyard, and pretending that she was one of the ladies who had lived there in troublous times long ago, was both startled and indignant to find Ronald Graham, rather out of breath, by her side.
“You followed me!” she said accusingly.
“Yes, I did. I wanted to speak to you, and you never give me a chance,” he complained.
“Why should I? What have you got to say to me that you couldn’t say down on the beach?”
“You kn
ow very well what I want to say to you, Peggy—”
“Well, if I do,” countered Peggy with spirit, “I don’t want to hear it.”
“But you’ve got to,” he insisted. “You’ve treated me dashed badly, and I won’t stand any more of it.”
“Treated you badly?” Peggy was almost incoherent with anger and a little fear; he looked so wild, and they were quite alone, out of sight or hail of the others. “How can you say such a thing? I’ve always been as nice to you as I could—”
He broke in, muttering something that sounded like “leading me on—”
Peggy stamped her foot on the short grass. “That’s a lie! I never did anything of the kind!”
“Oh, I know how it is with you. You’re so taken up with that damned Englishman at Easter Hartrigg, who’s busy fooling with Shena, that you can’t look at your old friends. You let me kiss you—and, anyway, he’s only half a man with that limp of his!”
“Stop!” said Peggy, white with rage. Her incoherence had fled now. “You’re a cad to remind me of that time you kissed me, and even though it was under the mistletoe, I felt dirty for days afterwards! As for Commander Parsons, it would take more than a limp to make him anything but a man. If he were a helpless cripple he’d still be a man—which you aren’t, and never will be!”
For answer, ‘Ronald Graham seized her in his arms. The look of passion in his eyes, so ugly to her, since she did not return it, the feel of his hot hands on her bare arms, of his breath on her neck, filled Peggy with sick horror.
“Let me go!” she said, struggling.
His hold tightened; then, at the sound of a loud, deep-voiced “Hallo!” he loosed her so suddenly that she had to lean back against the wall for support.
“Uncle Jed!” called Peggy, a world of relief in her shaking voice.
Ronald Graham gave her a glance that made her tremble in spite of her contempt. “You’ll be sorry,” he said. “Whatever I do, you’ll be responsible for. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
He turned and stumbled away out of sight behind a mound of broken masonry.
Susan Settles Down Page 7