“Two—a most awful-looking desperado without a hat driving,” Susan told him as the car in front lost ground a little and they drew closer. “I’m sure I’ve seen him before somewhere!”
Jed Armstrong merely grunted. “He’ll be damned sorry he’s ever seen me, or that car, when I make up on him! Is it another man with him, or a woman?”
She had no time to answer. The Squib rocketed round a double bend, and Jed’s car, taking the first turn, almost came to grief in the ditch. Tara, landing heavily in Susan’s lap with his forequarters, took the opportunity to lick her face fondly, with a horribly moist and meaty tongue.
“Wonder where he thinks he’s going? We’ll be at Easter Hartrigg in a minute,” muttered Jed. “If he’s mistaken the road, and goes in there, we’ll have him! Pity Oliver’s not here—he’d enjoy this!”
In front of them the Squib, like a homing pigeon swooped between the gate-posts of Easter Hartrigg and disappeared among the trees fringing the drive. Jed, sounding his horn like one possessed, plunged his car, all in a second, into the shade of the same trees. Gravel flew aside like water as, with rams giving tongue, Tara barking, the horn tooting, Jed roaring, and Susan, regrettably, screaming like a sea-gull, they tore up to the house. In front of the doorway stood the Squib, as usual enveloped in blue vapour and, bending solicitously over her was the “awful-looking desperado without a hat”—Lieutenant-Commander Parsons himself. . . .
“What the devil—?” he and Jed Armstrong exclaimed loudly and simultaneously as the big car with its patriarchal freight drew up close to the Squib. Oliver had lost his hat, his suit was stained with mud and oil, he had a very spectacular black eye, and the knuckles of his left hand were bleeding profusely. The other occupant of his car, who was sitting on the step trying, with a most inadequate handkerchief, to remove the dust from her face, was Peggy Cunningham.
“You?” said Susan wildly. “Why—why didn’t you stop when you saw us behind you?”
“Not on your life,” said Oliver. “We’d given up the chase, and Jim dropped us at the crossroads to wait while he went to Kaleford to tell the police there. We walked on, and then—it was Peggy who saw them first—we found the Squib parked under a hedge with another car close by, and the beauties who’d pinched her picnicking off whisky in a field. So we hopped into the Squib, started her up, and roared off. Of course, we thought you were the blokes coming after us in the other car. Peggy kept looking back and telling me you were a pretty tough-looking lot. And so you are!” he ended, with a disparaging glance at his sister.
“Not half so villainous as you, my dear,” Susan said. “How on earth did you come by that black eye?”
“Oh,” he said carelessly, wiping his knuckles with a gory handkerchief, “we had a bit of a dust-up before we could get away. I’ve knocked one fellow’s teeth down his throat. Hope they choke him!”
“You look,” said Susan, eyeing him dispassionately, “as though you’d been brawling in a low pub.”
“Well, what does it matter? We’ve got the Squib back again, and there’s no one to see us,” said Oliver placidly. “Let’s go and have tea.”
Susan became aware of Donaldina hovering on the doorstep, her open mouth and wide eyes indicative of unwelcome tidings. “If ye please, mem,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “the Miss Pringles are in the wee sitting-room at the back. I tellt them ye were oot, but they said they’d juist wait on ye. I doot,” she added with dismal relish, “they’ll be wantin’ their tea.”
A stricken silence fell like a pall, only broken by an indignant bleat from one of the rams, which had become plaintive. As they stared at each other, Susan realized that Tara’s attentions had left large dusty streaks on her suit, that her hat had long since been trampled underfoot by the rams and was beyond redemption, that she was scarlet in the face, her hair like a bird’s nest. The others were not in much better case, and there was little to choose between any of them, though possibly Oliver was the most ruffianly of the quartette.
“We must creep in,” she said desperately, “and try to make ourselves look a little more respectable. Peggy, come with me—”
“I wish you’d gag those brutes of yours,” growled Oliver as the rams once more raised lamentable voices.
“Too late,” said Peggy with the calm of despair. “There they are.”
Donaldina, melting unobtrusively into the background, left them to face the Misses Pringle, who, arrayed in the chaste splendour of their calling coats and skirts, with hints of Jaeger underwear peering coyly above lace-trimmed blouses, now came forth in a body.
“Ah, the wanderers returned!” cried Miss Pringle with truly dreadful playfulness. “You naughty people! Quite like the Elusive Pimpernel, we began to think you had forgotten all about us!”
In spite of her apparent bonhomie, there was an angry glitter in her eye, and Susan, though she could not imagine what this greeting meant, murmured feebly: “Oh no, not—not at all! Not in the least, I assure you—”
“Didn’t you get our postcard?” asked Miss Jelly in more trenchant tones.
“It’s such an age, dear Miss Parsons, since we saw you,” chimed in Miss Cissie girlishly, “that I said yesterday that we really must look you up, or you would be thinking we’d forgotten you altogether. I’m ’fraid we’re very, very bad about our calls in the tennis season, and we felt so guilty about you! So I said—”
“I think, dear Cissie, that the suggestion was mine,” said Miss Pringle with a dangerous suavity which caused Miss Cissie to wilt. “I sent a postcard, Miss Parsons, suggesting that we might come to-day, but when we arrived—”
“The birds were flown!” chirped Miss Cissie in a valiant attempt to hold her own.
“Well, the birds are back again,” said Oliver abruptly and with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “Let’s go and have tea.”
Susan had been nourishing a secret hope that their appearance was not so tramp-like as she herself had supposed, but this was doomed to disappointment.
“Have you had an accident?” cried Miss Jelly eagerly, stretching a lean and scraggy neck towards the cars in a manner horribly reminiscent of a vulture’s. “You all look so untidy, so upset!”
“Not a bit of it. We’ve been at the Ram Sales,” said Jed Armstrong stolidly. “And you know it’s a rough sort of show. Oliver’s been fighting—”
“Fighting?” cried the two younger Misses Pringle in tones of delighted horror. “Oh, Commander Parsons!”
“I do not consider the Ram Fair at all a suitable place for ladies,” said Miss Pringle, her look apprising Susan and Peggy that she did not include them in this category. “So rough, so much inebriety. Disgusting. I never go myself, nor do I permit the girls to attend—”
“Quite right; quite right,” quoth Jed perfidiously, but with a devilish glint in his blue eyes. “See what’s come of it. Peggy and Miss Parsons looking like tinkers’ wives, and Oliver here with a black eye. I wouldn’t go near the place myself if I hadn’t to buy rams.”
“I do think, my dear Peggy, that you are really too old now to mix with that sort of crowd,” pronounced Miss Pringle. “Look at Cissie—she never goes. I shall drop a hint to your mother. No doubt she doesn’t quite realize that you are no longer a child, and cannot go tearing about the country in this fashion!”
Peggy, who bitterly resented being placed on an equal footing with the simpering Cissie, opened her mouth to make an angry retort, her cheeks burning; but Donaldina announcing that tea was ready, Susan led the way into the house in haste.
It was a crestfallen party, with the exception of Jed Armstrong, who continued to agree so slavishly with the Misses Pringle that Susan became vaguely uneasy. Tea dragged on miserably. Tara at one point tried a little light relief when, in response to Miss Jelly’s invitation to “Come here, then, good, sweet doggie,” he approached and laid in her lap the gruesome fragment of his luncheon bone.
“Will you put Tara out, please?” said Susan with commendable self-control, glancing
at her brother He, however, was sitting in morose silence between Miss Pringle and Peggy, his scowl accentuated by his rapidly blackening eye. It was Jed who rose with suspicious alacrity and led Tara from the room.
As Susan turned her attention to her unwelcome guests in an effort to be brightly hospitable, she heard him say in the hall, “There you are, then, lad. Be off outside with it.”
“Kind of him to give Tara back his bone,” she thought.
5
“Your boa, Miss Pringle? Are you sure you brought it? I don’t remember seeing you wearing it,” Susan said with weary politeness.
Time seemed to have stood still during the visitation of the three ladies, but at last she was speeding the parting guests in the hall, and trying not to look overcome with joy. The guests, however, refused to be sped without Miss Pringle’s feather boa, which she was certain she had laid down on entering the house.
Jed Armstrong had wandered out to look at his rams, but Susan and Peggy, sullenly assisted by Oliver, searched in every likely and unlikely corner of the hall, vainly moving chairs and the table, and even the oak chest in which the travelling rugs were kept. Donaldina was summoned and her face, on her being questioned, instantly assumed the well-known expression of one unjustly accused of theft. Her replies were noteworthy for their obstructive stupidity, and would have reduced opposing counsel to a state of dumb frenzy had she been in court.
“A tie made o’ feathers? Na, mem. Na, Miss Pringle. A’ the feathers I seen ben the hoose was the feather duster.”
Only the reminder, timidly made by Miss Cissie, that they were dining out and would have to go home at once unless they wished to be late, eventually prevailed on Miss Pringle to take her leave without the boa. Her farewells to her host and hostess were fraught with suspicion and disapproval; but she said good-bye to Mr. Armstrong outside with a cordiality rendered doubly impressive by contrast.
“They were surely an awful time getting away?” asked Jed placidly. “The rams have settled down in the car now as cosy as if it was a pen—”
Sounds of violent sneezing could be heard from the dining-room, and they trooped there in a body to discover the cause. At the door they met Tara, unmistakable feathers sticking to his muzzle and chest. As he saw his mistress he sneezed again with vigour. Overcome by a dreadful foreboding, Susan stooped and looked under the dining-table.
The carpet was covered with feathers, damp and bedraggled, and with shreds of what had once been the grey silk lining of a boa.
Peggy, after one long look, collapsed on a chair in helpless laughter, and Oliver promptly followed suit.
Susan fixed Jed Armstrong with a steady stare. “Do you know how Tara got Miss Pringle’s feather boa?” she asked.
“I saw him with something,” he said, meeting her look guilelessly. “I thought it was a dead hen. So that’s what they call a boa, is it?”
Tara, re-entering, dived below the table and, coming out with a mouthful of feathers, laid it faithfully at Susan’s feet.
6
Peggy was still in high spirits when, having refused the offers of Jed and Oliver to drive her home, she walked down the long hill towards Muirfoot. It was a most lovely evening, and it had been a good day, both amusing and exciting. Though she had not wanted to be left alone with Oliver Parsons, for the memory of that afternoon at Reiverslaw still made her burn with shame and indignation, she was glad now that she had not gone back to the Manse with Jim. She was far from forgiving Oliver, yet she had admired him tremendously when he had knocked down the fighting-drunk man by the roadside, so coolly, so carelessly, almost with an air of enjoyment. Besides, as he had told his sister and Jed, she had made the discovery of the Squib, half-hidden under a hedge along a deserted cart-track. But for her he would still be mourning the loss of his precious car. This was a bond between them, which had been further strengthened by their wild outburst of laughter over the fate of Miss Pringle’s boa. “Somehow,” she thought, “once you’ve shared a joke with anyone, once you’ve laughed together, it makes you feel friendly to him.”
She knew now, instinctively, without being able to explain it, that Oliver would never insult her again as he had. She had neither forgotten nor forgiven that kiss, but still she could not help liking him in spite of it. Perhaps if she had not previously had an unfortunate experience with Ronald Graham she would not have felt so strongly about it, but Ronald had shocked and frightened her as only a very young girl can be shocked. . . . At least, however, she had been spared a repetition of that unpleasant scene; no longer did the organist seek her out. He avoided her as much as possible, never spoke to her unless it was absolutely necessary, and scowled like a thundercloud if his eyes chanced to meet hers. Peggy felt that she could endure to be scowled at by him. She asked nothing more than to be left alone, and rejoiced in her escape from his unwanted affection.
Life was very much as it should be, and the bright September evening was in tune with her mood. The grassy road was soft beneath her feet, the sun, striking between the leaves of the tall hawthorn hedge, swam in patches on the ground like small golden fish in a bowl. White blossoms still flowered on the brambles, but the fruit was faintly tinged with pink, and some of the leaves on the prickle-set red stems already wore their brilliant autumn colours. On either side of the road lay the pale stubble fields, bathed in clear light, where cock-pheasants strutted gorgeously, careless of their approaching doom. Down in the hollow, hiding the village from their sight, rose a small wood of tall old trees, beech and larch and spruce, a wood which, according to local tradition, was haunted. None of the village girls would venture into it even in broad daylight, nor would they so much as pass it after dark. Peggy always found herself unconsciously hurrying along the stretch of road which flanked it. Now, looking at it, she was astonished to see a girl’s figure approaching the belt of trees, stealthily, as if afraid of being seen.
It seemed to Peggy that she plunged in among them with relief, and the westering sun, as she crossed a patch of light between two great trunks, fell on a head of dark-red hair and turned it to flaming gold. Peggy stopped dead, for she knew that hair. No one in the whole neighbourhood but Jo-an Robertson could own it, but what was Jo-an doing, Jo-an who should have been sitting in the Manse kitchen at this hour? And Jo-an, of all people, entering the haunted wood in a manner which showed that it was not for the first time. . . . Strange, almost uncanny girl, so different from the rest of her kind. . . . “Perhaps she’s in love,” thought Peggy, “and that’s what made her so queer this morning. But she can’t be going to meet anyone there, surely. No one would ever choose the wood; even the men are afraid of it, though they pretend it’s all nonsense!”
She passed the wood even more quickly than usual, for this evening it really did harbour a mystery. Ought she to mention this to her mother? It would distress Mrs. Cunningham to know that Jo-an had gone out secretly like that. The girl might be dismissed on the head of it, and Peggy felt certain that she would be better at the Manse than at home, where she had more time for getting into mischief if she wanted to.
Deep in troubled thought, she turned the corner into the village, and almost ran into a young man. As she avoided him with a murmured “I’m sorry,” she saw that it was Ronald Graham, walking fast, his soft hat pulled down over his eyes. He made no reply, but, hurrying on, disappeared up the road down which she had just come.
A strange and most unwelcome thought occurred to Peggy. Could he be going to the haunted wood also? Then she shook it from her. “What nonsense!” she said aloud. “I must have a nasty, suspicious mind. It’s all imagination, really, I expect.”
She walked on toward the Manse briskly, trying to think of other things. But still the remembrance of Jo-an’s furtive look back as she entered the wood returned again and again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
Susan stretched her long arms above her head and sighed wearily. Before her the big writing-desk was littered with household bills, the total of which appalle
d her.
“What a hideous and exhausting way of spending an evening!” she thought disgustedly.
She rose and went over to the fire, burning with soft comfortable sounds behind its bars. The gentle light of two oil lamps filled the pleasant room and made her rose-coloured dress glow vividly. Opening a silver box, she took a cigarette, lighted it, and smoked meditatively for a few moments, the toe of one shining shoe poised on the old brass fender; Finally she glanced over her shoulder with exasperated distaste at the papers on the desk.
What a profitless business it was, when demand outran supply, as she could tell from her accounts. She and Oliver lived simply enough, Donaldina was that treasure almost beyond price, a really thrifty cook, and yet their income did not quite stretch far enough to cover outlay. Susan could not see where she could cut down expenses. Ends very nearly met, but she wanted them to overlap sufficiently to give her an easier mind about money.
“A laird and twenty pence, pronounc’d with noise,” she had called her brother in fun but, unfortunately, it was true. Perhaps if they could do without Donaldina? But she was sure that she herself would be more extravagant as a cook, and in any case Oliver had to be properly fed or he would go sick. Then James. He might be dismissed, of course, and the place could run wild, and return to the neglected state in which they had found it. No; one owed a duty to the land; and no tenant, if they had to let Easter Hartrigg, would take it in a ruinous condition. Letting the house was a last resort, and even as Susan thought of it she knew that it must not come to that. Somehow or other they must contrive to stay here, where Oliver had in a great measure recovered his health, where he had found interests and friends. For herself it did not matter so much, though she had come to love this country as she had never loved anywhere else. She had no interests outside Oliver; she was settling down very comfortably into the beginnings of placid spinsterhood. To Susan Parsons at thirty-three life had become a game at which she looked on. She was content that it should be so; indeed, she had deliberately set for herself the part of onlooker. Amused, sorry, or interested, she watched other people’s more active share in love, in pleasure, in money-making, in any of the businesses which they pursued with such feverish intensity. Of pleasant acquaintances she had many, of friends few, since friendship, like love, exacted a heavy price for its favours. Charles said she was the most restful woman he knew, and the best fellow, and that satisfied her.
Susan Settles Down Page 13