A slender young man, wearing plus-fours and a brilliant canary-yellow waistcoat, went past, herding with a stick three large rams which had been dipped a glowing orange to show off the depth of their fleeces, he glanced at Susan, and she half-thought she recognized him. Then, leaving his contingent to the care of an elderly shepherd, he came over to her.
“Hullo!” he said. “How d’you do? I’m Wat Hepburn of Kelpieha’, in case you’ve forgotten—”
Mendaciously Susan assured him that she had not. He went on at once: “You’re looking for Jed, I suppose?”
“Why should you suppose so?” asked Susan with a smile and a faint lifting of fine black brows. This calm assumption that Jed Armstrong should be her sole natural protector amused her. “As a matter of fact, I came with my brother.”
“Oh, I say! Have I said the wrong thing? Have I put my foot in it?” he stammered, blushing like a girl of more ingenuous days. “You see, you came with him to Kelpieha’ that evening in summer, and my sister thought—we all supposed—”
What they had all supposed was so patent that he might have shouted it aloud, and Susan, for all her amusement, did not quite know what to say. She had got as far as, “A natural mistake, perhaps, but a mistake—” when she was interrupted by the eager voice of young Jim Cunningham.
“Here you are!” he cried. “Hullo, Wat! Peggy’s over at Number One ring, Miss Parsons. Won’t you come along there? You’ll see the pick of the rams and Jed said you oughtn’t to miss them.”
“More Jed!” thought Susan. “Why, the man’s ubiquitous! Even his name seems always to be cropping up.”
“Is Mr. Armstrong,” she said, slightly stressing the name, “with Peggy?”
“No; we just saw him for a minute, and he told us to keep a look-out for you,” said Jim Cunningham, and added in a tone almost of apology, “He’s busy, you see.”
“Well, let’s all go over,” said young Hepburn with some eagerness. “I’ve sold my rams. And I haven’t seen Peggy for ages.”
They made their way slowly through the crowd, which grew thicker as they neared the rings. In pens on every side the rams bawled their defiance to the world at large: huge, Scriptural-looking animals with blank agate eyes, long legs, and flopping ears. They had been dipped every conceivable shade of fawn and brown, yellow and cream and orange, and as they shouldered each other emulously, their fleeces glowed warm in the sun. One thing puzzled Susan, and that was their lack of horns. Her idea of what a ram should look like was based on a childish memory of a Bible picture in which Abraham, armed with a business-like knife, was about to sacrifice an animal whose horns curled like twin cornucopias, while Isaac looked on in smug relief at his own narrow escape. She said this to her escort, and Jim Cunningham laughed heartily.
Young Hepburn, looking half-shocked, half-amused by such abysmal ignorance, explained in a hasty undertone, “These are Border Leicesters, and half-breds, and crosses, and Oxford Downs, Miss Parsons. I don’t suppose there’s a single ram here with a horn to its head.”
Jim, thrusting his way between two burly men who had evidently been celebrating a sale in strong liquor, made a path for Susan, and presently her arm was clutched by Peggy, who pulled her close to the ringside. Over the shoulders of large men, intent on their business, she caught a momentary glimpse of a round purple face, a hat pushed back from a streaming forehead, a mouth, opened to its fullest extent, from which issued a brazen bellow: “Now, gentlemen! Lot fourteen, number two . . .”
A primrose-coloured ram bounded into the ring and glared about it, uncowed by the press or the din. Arms were stretched over the palings, hands felt the thick fleece wisely, there were mutters of cautious praise.
Susan gazed, fascinated, as lot after lot was loosed into the ring, put up and knocked down after brisk bidding at prices which made her gasp, for these were pedigreed animals of well-known strains. Becoming bolder, and urged on by Jim Cunningham, she ventured to sink her own hand deep into the living wool on one broad tawny back, wool softer and springier and warmer than she had ever felt before.
Suddenly an elbow was dug into her ribs and, turning, she found a red-faced farmer, breathing fumes of stale whisky, leering at her. As she shrank back, “There’s somebody wants ye, lassie!” he said with a sickening ogle. Susan peered past him and saw Jed Armstrong making unmistakable signs that she was to join him on the outskirts of the crowd. He was quite capable of roaring at her if she ignored this summons, she knew, for neither time, place, nor the presence of multitudes abashed him. Susan would have preferred to turn her back and remain where she was, but fearful of being made conspicuous, she nodded grudgingly. So dense was the throng that even the slight movement entailed by turning had placed a barrier of human bodies between her and her companions by the ring. Peggy, flushed and laughing, was talking to Wat Hepburn of Kelpieha’, and her brother was nowhere to be seen.
With difficulty Susan struggled through towards the place where she had seen Jed, only to find, when she reached a clearer piece of the ground, that he was no longer visible. Hot with futile indignation, she was about to battle her way ringwards again when a large black object, which at first she took to be an enraged escaped ram, bounded at her, and in an ecstasy of untimely affection, put a paw on each shoulder and wetly licked her face.
“Tara!” cried Susan incredulously.
Tara it was, dusty, collarless, leadless, but beaming with delight at having found her. Before she had time to recover from the shock of this discovery, a hand seized her arm, and Oliver’s voice, hoarse with fury, announced savagely, “Someone’s pinched the Squib!”
3
“Someone’s—pinched the Squib?” Susan echoed stupidly. “What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean,” he repeated with grim patience, “that some swine has stolen MY CAR!”
Susan shook her head, unable to credit anyone with such sheer crass folly as the abduction of such a vehicle as the Squib.
“Have you seen Jed anywhere?” was Oliver’s next remark.
“Yes, he was somewhere near here a few minutes ago, but he seems to have gone. And, anyhow, why Mr. Armstrong? Why not the police?”
Oliver laughed bitterly. “Every policeman in Abbeyshiels is on duty here to-day, except for one in the police station. . . . Ah!” He broke off suddenly, and dashed away with Tara, who evidently considered this a joke on the grand scale, leaping joyfully about him. In a few seconds he was back, hauling Jed Armstrong with him. From the latter’s eye Susan guessed that he was of much the same opinion as Tara, and prepared to treat the whole affair as a huge jest.
“It’ll be one of these lads that’s taken a dram too many, likely,” he was saying placidly as they rejoined Susan.
“I don’t care if it’s the devil himself,” retorted Oliver, quite pale with passion. “He’s not going to get away with MY CAR!”
“Better go up to the road,” suggested Jed, “and see if anybody’s noticed the car. I’ll come with you. I’ve finished here.”
He thrust the bulky paper-covered volume which catalogued the bewildering details of the rams’ pedigrees into a capacious pocket, and led the way from the fair at a brisk pace.
Not one of the many loungers who still supported the fence by the roadside could give any assistance. When the obvious absence of the car was pointed out to them they expressed amazement, but apart from further enraging Oliver by the suggestion that he had perhaps forgotten exactly where he had left the Squib, they had nothing to offer except useless advice, of which they were lavish.
“Well, I don’t know what’s to be done just yet,” began Mr. Armstrong as he meditatively stuffed tobacco into his pipe. “Of course, you’ll get it back, all right. The police will trace it by the number-plate. Likely enough we’ll find it in the ditch on the way home.”
The mere thought of his beloved Squib, the apple of his eye, lying forsaken in a ditch, was sufficient to reduce Oliver to merciful speechlessness. Susan trembled with laughter which she dared not let
loose lest she should be stricken by one look from her brother.
Fortunately, at this pregnant moment a very dirty small boy whose nose urgently required the application of a handkerchief was shoved forward by one of the onlookers.
“This wee laddie’s sayin’ he seen yer cawr,” volunteered a bold spirit. And to the urchin, who showed no desire to approach the fuming Oliver: “Speak up, Tammie, and dinna’ be feared. The gentleman’ll no’ hurt ye.”
Thus encouraged, the small boy announced in a tremulous adenoidal pipe: “Ah seen a wee rid cawr gaun up the rod wi’ twa men in’t.”
“Which way?” barked Oliver in a quarter-deck manner calculated to alarm the most intrepid, said which instantly reduced his informant to loud sobs.
“Come on, lad,” said Mr. Armstrong, his voice more gentle than Susan would have believed possible, “and tell us which way the car went?”
The small boy sniffed, wiped his snub nose on his cuff, and pointed a wavering grimy finger in the direction of Muirfoot. On being asked how long ago this had happened, however, he once more burst into tears, and blandishments, even when further sweetened by a sixpence, could elicit nothing more than that it was “a wee whiley syne.”
“You’d better go after it,” said Jed. “Wait! Here’s young Jim Cunningham. He’ll take you on the back of his motor bike.”
Jim, delighted at the prospect of adventure, instantly agreed, and with Peggy, who was to be set down as near the Manse of Muirfoot as possible, in the sidecar, they roared off. Susan was left standing, deserted, holding Tara by a most inadequate lead composed of her scarf tied about his neck, which his proud spirit bitterly resented; and with no apparent means of getting home except walking seven miles. She had entirely forgotten Jed Armstrong, and started when he addressed her.
“It’s two o’clock,” he said. “We’d better go to the police station about the car, and then have some lunch.”
For a moment, remembering young Hepburn’s half-spoken suggestion, Susan hesitated on the brink of refusal. Then Jed’s composed, matter-of-fact manner, his clear and steady blue gaze, made her ashamed of attaching any importance to an idea so absurd. “Lunch,” she said with the hungry wistfulness of one who had breakfasted early and was conscious of an aching void within, “sounds very nice indeed, thank you.”
“Come on, then. The police station first,” he said, and they walked down the hill into Abbeyshiels, crossing the river, running low between its pleasant green banks and trailing willows, passing the crumbling remains of the proud abbey which had given the town its name, and following the narrow streets towards the police station.
In the stuffy little office that smelt of hot navy-blue serge, a fat policeman, comfortably unbuttoned against the heat of the day, roused himself from torpor to assure them in a windy voice that they would have the cur restored quite soon. Like a large blue-bottle buzzing indoors on an unusually mild winter’s day, he entered the Squib’s description in a book, the tip of his tongue protruding as he laboriously traced the words with a scratching pen and a good deal of loud panting.
“Ou, ay,” was his parting remark. “You’ll can leave it tae me, Maister Armstrong. Ah’ll see that ye get the cawr returned withoot a scratch on the pent.”
“He’ll be clever if he can do that,” observed Jed as they emerged into the street again. “For that machine of Oliver’s looks as if it had been clawed by angry wild-cats!”
Abbeyshiels was teeming with hungry men all hurrying to seek a meal, and the two hotels, beside every available public house, were doing a roaring trade.
“We’ll go in here,” said Jed, diving in at an open doorway whence blasts of hot air laden with the smell of cooking rushed to meet them. Following meekly, with Tara in tow, Susan found herself in a small baker’s shop filled to the doors with others as hungry as they. A stair at the back led to unseen regions where, overhead, fortunate earlier arrivals were already feeding, for there was a ceaseless clatter of cutlery and china, a padding of swift yet heavy footsteps above, and ever and anon shrill cries of: “Twa steak-an’-kidney, wi’ biled pitawties!” “Roast gigot for Mr. Black, an’ look shairp, Beenie!” “Aipple tart, double portion!” . . . “Can ye no’ haste wi’ yon lentil soup, Beenie?”
To this last exhortation came a reply, screeched in the high-pitched tones of overwrought anger. “Is it haste, ye said? An’ me near deid wi’ the heat an’ hurry! The lentil soup’s feenished. If there’s ony mair for soup, they’ll need tae tak’ Bovrile!”
Despite her hunger, Susan laughed, and Jed, it seemed, heard her. Glancing down, he grinned amiably at her. “Come on,” he said suddenly. “I’ll find you a corner up there, if it’s only on the window-sill!” Seizing her by the arm, he whirled her towards the stairs, the crowd falling back on either side of him as earth from the plough-share. Half-way up a door was flung open and a crimson-faced Amazon appeared.
“Here, Beenie!” cried Jed. “This young lady’s dying of hunger. Is there not a place she can have up there?”
“’Deed, Maister Armstrang, they’re that throng there’s nae room for a moose!” screeched the cook heatedly. To a scurrying waitress, who bawled an order at her as if miles of stormy seas divided them, she answered in a voice of equal volume and far greater fury.
Susan, appalled, gave back a step, expecting bloodshed, but the Amazonian cook, ignoring all else, turned to Jed, evidently a privileged person, and said with ferocious amiability, “Ye can come ben the kitchen, if the leddy disna’ mind.”
They entered with gratitude a cavern hot as a boiler-room, and Susan sank on a chair in as remote a corner as she could find, while Jed, fearlessly snatching a plate, proceeded to dish a generous helping of roast meat and vegetables.
“Here you are,” he said, thrusting the plate into her unready hands and, heedless of her nervous whisper that the cook might not like it. “Oh, she’ll not mind,” he said easily. “Here, Beenie, where d’you keep your knives and forks? We can’t eat with our fingers!”
It was a truly amazing but excellent meal, eaten in haste, in a miniature inferno of heat and din. Under the kitchen table Tara devoured an enormous bone, gifted to him by the Amazon, and growled joyously. Jed Armstrong, quite at home, carved joints for the overworked Beenie with infinite neatness and despatch, and raided the shop below, returning in triumph with cheese-cakes for Susan. Finally, after gulping down cups of scalding black coffee, which Beenie picturesquely described as “het as Hielan’ love,” they went out into the sunlit street like wanderers returning from another world.
“I feel,” said Susan with a sigh, breathing in the warm fresh air, “as if I’d been lunching in the crater of a volcano!”
4
“Well, I suppose I’ll need to take you home to Easter Hartrigg now,” said Mr. Armstrong with such a marked lack of enthusiasm that Susan felt constrained to apologize for the necessity.
“Oh, it’s not that I mind,” he said handsomely, “but there’s two rams and a barrel of beer for the harvesters to go as well.”
As the alternative to driving in this mixed company was a seven-mile walk along a dusty road, Susan bowed to the inevitable. The buff-coloured rams, handed over to their purchaser by a shepherd whose friends rightly described him as “roarin’ fou,” took their places beside the beer-barrel in the back of the car with calm dignity, and Tara, with the gnawed remnants of his bone, was bundled in on top of his mistress beside Jed Armstrong. They started with a lurch which caused the beer-barrel to bounce, and one of the rams fell forward heavily on to his Roman nose against Susan, knocking her hat over her eyes.
“We’re off!” shouted Jed, and sped on their way by gales of loud laughter and derisive cheers from a small mob of spectators, they drove away from Abbeyshiels.
Though the unmoved decorum of the rams was admirable, Susan could not help feeling that their presence and that of the beer-barrel did not add to the dignity of their appearance. Everyone they met, and the road was busy, stared at them as at a travellin
g-circus, and usually paid them the tribute of a cheer or some shouted comment which, perhaps fortunately, was swept from their ears on the wind as they fled by.
As they neared the crossing where they turned off for Easter Hartrigg, a small car darted out from a side-road on the right and stormed off along the road they were about to take, through a belt of trees. A sudden loud report followed by several others, a glimpse of a battered red bonnet in a cloud of dust, and Susan cried loudly: “That’s the Squib!”
“What? Oliver’s car? Are you sure?” demanded Jed Armstrong, and trod heavily on the accelerator.
“Certain!” shrieked Susan. “I’d know that noise anywhere.”
“Gone awa-ay!” bellowed Mr. Armstrong as they whirled to the left and banged along in pursuit of the cloud of dust, now fast diminishing before them. They roared past a farm, narrowly avoiding a number of hens, which, squawking their dismay, scattered in all directions. One, landing on the bonnet in a frenzied leap from death, went with them, an unwilling mascot, for several yards until, shedding feathers like autumn leaves, it fell off into safety in the ditch. The barrel bumped, the rams, at last losing their stately composure, began to utter hoarse protests, and Tara faced about to growl defiance at them.
“They’ll turn off down the Kaleford road! Watch out!” shouted Jed, but they reached the turning, and still the red car was ahead of them and going straight for Easter Hartrigg.
“I never thought the Squib could travel so fast!” gasped Susan between bumps as Jed, with a splendid disregard for his springs, hurled his car and its loudly lamenting load over ruts and round corners.
“We’re bound to overtake ’em in the long run!” was the grim reply. “Can you see how many there are in the car?”
Susan Settles Down Page 12