Susan Settles Down

by Molly Clavering

  “Very well,” said Peggy, realizing that this was inevitable, that it was his nature to make it as difficult and unpleasant as possible for her.

  “I’ll be at the wood to-morrow at half-past four,” he said.

  Half-past four, he knew, was tea-time at the Manse, an hour when Peggy’s absence would be noticed and would have to be accounted for. The wood as a meeting-place bore an evil reputation not only from his use of it. For an instant Peggy hesitated, realizing that it might be wiser to leave matters as they were. But his shrug, his sneer as he said, “Take it or leave it. I don’t mind!” spurred her on against her better judgment.

  “Very well. I’ll be there,” she said recklessly.

  A dozen times between then and the appointed hour she repented her decision, the more so as it turned out a dreary afternoon of thin, mist-like rain, when it would be dark earlier than usual, and no person, meeting her, would suppose that she had gone out merely for a walk. Only her Calvinistic conscience drove her on. And the meeting fulfilled her expectations.

  Alone with Ronald Graham among the dark trees of the haunted wood, where already it was almost night, she was so nervously anxious to get it over and be away from him and the place, that she could hardly manage, to put her questions.

  “Well, what did you want me for?” he asked, coming much too close for her liking. “You’ve changed, surely! It’s not so long since you thought I wasn’t good enough to throw a civil word to.”

  “If you hadn’t bothered me and forced yourself on me, and taken advantage of being useful to Father to annoy me, I should always have been polite to you,” said Peggy angrily, her fear of him forgotten.

  “You’d better be polite to me now, or I’ll be off.”

  “I want to know what you’ve been doing to make Jo-an Robertson so restless and miserable,” Peggy said, taking the bull by the horns without further ado.

  “You’ve got a nerve, haven’t you? What business is it of yours?” he asked.

  “She was a maid in our house, and she’s one of Father’s parishioners. If you don’t leave her alone I’ll go to your father about it.”

  “You needn’t bother. I’ve done with her,” he said carelessly. “And anyway, I’m going away in a few days. I won’t be seeing her again. Nothing suits me better than to leave her alone, so you might have spared yourself the trouble of interfering, my dear Peggy.”

  She could tell from his tone that he was speaking the truth, but something in his voice, a hint of relief mingled with satisfaction, roused her suspicions.

  “If that’s all you wanted, I’ll push off,” he added, and turned to go.

  Peggy sprang forward and caught him by the sleeve. “No! Wait,” she cried. In the faint remaining daylight which filtered in through the interlacing branches of the spruce-firs overhead, she peered at him, trying to read his face. “You’ve made her unhappy,” she accused him. “Does she think you—you’re in love with her?”

  “Perhaps she did. People do make mistakes at times, don’t they? And she’s rather a sweet little thing—”

  “You absolute cad and bounder!” Peggy was trembling with rage from head to foot. “So that’s what it is! You led her to believe that you love her, the poor silly thing, and now you’re through you’re just throwing her over.”

  “Well, Good Lord! You don’t expect me to marry the girl, do you?”

  “I don’t, but perhaps she did!”

  “Nonsense. I’ve had my fun, and presumably she’s had hers. Why, she’s a servant, a grieve’s daughter!”

  “You make me feel sick,” Peggy said. “I see that it was silly of me to speak to you at all. Please go away quickly, I really can’t bear to be near you.”

  “Oh, can’t you? That’s a pity, because now I’m going to say a few things. I’ve listened to you. You can damn’ well listen to me for a change.”

  He thrust his face, distorted with spite and passion, close to hers, and Peggy shrank back against the rough trunk of a fir. Seen in the shadowy dusk he looked barely human. The sombre stillness of the listening wood, where a withered leaf in falling made a noise startlingly loud, was a fit setting for him. It needed little imagination to picture a murder taking place in this secret spot, with Ronald Graham as the murderer.

  He laughed harshly as he saw her slight movement of fright and aversion. “Yes, you’re afraid of me now!” he said. “Well, you’ve made me what I am. If that girl is unhappy, it’s your fault. Yours, do you hear?”

  “I think you’re mad,” said Peggy, and slipping past him, made her way towards the edge of the wood.

  He followed her, pouring out a flood of self-excuse, of wild accusations levelled at her.

  “Mad? Very likely I am. And who made me mad? You. If you’d treated me better than you did, I wouldn’t have looked at Jo-an. But now—whatever happens to her or to me, you can blame yourself for it, because it’s all your fault!”

  Beyond the last line of trees Peggy stopped, again to face him. She felt bewildered, battered, dirty, as if he had thrown mud at her instead of this torrent of words; but she spoke quite steadily.

  “Good-bye, Ronald. When you come to your senses I hope you’ll have the decency to be sorry for what you have said.”

  Then she forgot everything but her horror of him and of the wood, and ran as fast as she could across the open ground between her and the road. A faint afterglow still tinged the western sky, and compared with the wood it was light. As she came through a gap in the hedge, wrenching her clothes free of the thorns and twigs as if they had been Ronald Graham’s hands on her, she found herself face to face with Oliver. There was no time to regain her composure, to think of something to say. Oliver, standing there glancing from her troubled face to Ronald Graham’s retreating figure and back again to her, loomed large and menacing against the last of the sunset.

  Peggy spoke first, making an unsuccessful effort to appear quite at ease. “I didn’t expect to meet you,” she said.

  “No. I should imagine not,” he answered with a coldness that dismayed her. “Isn’t it—getting a bit late to meet anyone out of doors?”

  Extreme weariness sounded in her voice as she said, “It’s not so very late. Only just after tea-time.”

  “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it, don’t try to hedge,” he said sharply. “Do your people know where you are, or—who you’ve been meeting?”

  “No.”

  “That dirty hound!” he muttered just above his breath. “Why, I thought you hated the sight of him!”

  Peggy was too tired to think before she spoke, too overcome by the misfortune of having been seen by Oliver of all people. “It isn’t anything to do with you,” she said.

  “I suppose it isn’t. But what about your people?”

  “They won’t know so long as you don’t tell them,” said Peggy wearily. “I hope you won’t. It would only worry them.” She was thinking of Jo-an and Ronald Graham and how the story would upset her parents, but as he had no clue to this it was natural that he should become even colder.

  “I certainly shan’t. But you’ll have to give me your word that there’ll be no more of this meeting in woods.”

  “You needn’t bother. He’s going away.”

  “Thank God for that,” muttered Oliver.

  “It’s all very well for you to say ‘thank God’ when you don’t know anything about it!” cried Peggy, at the end of her tether and now completely losing her temper. “If you did, you’d—”

  “But, Peggy—Peggy!” began Oliver.

  But Peggy had fled and was running home with hot tears scalding her cheeks and a hatred of all men burning in her sore heart.

  Oliver did not attempt to follow her. “That’s the end of that, I suppose,” he said, and walked slowly up the road to Easter Hartrigg, his shoulders hunched against the thin rain, his limp more in evidence than it had been for months.

  2

  Cilly celebrated her sixth birthday in December, and having been rashly offere
d her own choice of entertainment, promptly demanded “a grown-up tea-party.”

  Susan, newly returned from her visits, was invited, and so was Oliver; but he would not have gone near the Manse if Cilly had not asked him “most par-tick-you-early” to be present.

  As the Squib bore them jerkily over the frost-hardened ruts of the little road to Muirfoot, Oliver said crossly, “This is bound to be about the world’s silliest show, Susan, and I don’t know why on earth you ever let me in for it.”

  Though the remark seemed to her both unjust and absurd, Susan said nothing. Oliver in the frame of mind in which she had found him ever since she had come home, was not reasonable, and she only hoped that he would not cast a heavy blight over Cilly’s “grown-up party.”

  “There’s eggs for tea!” cried Bun, as the Squib, as unreasonable as her owner, deposited the Parsons early in front of the Manse door.

  Peggy, who had come out to greet them, devoted herself to Susan after a cold and hurried “How-d’you-do” to Oliver. “You’ll have to eat an egg, too,” she said. “Mother told Cilly she could have anything she wanted in reason, and she insisted on the eggs, boiled and with faces drawn on them. She said she’d rather have them than a birthday cake.”

  “Well, I think I can manage to eat an egg,” Susan promised. “What a good thing your hens are so well-behaved and obliging, Peggy.”

  They went into the drawing-room to find Cilly and Bun doing the honours to a group of amused grown-ups. Colin, gurgling with laughter but refusing, to utter a coherent word, flitted from one to another, intent on showing the pocket in his small shirt, a manly feature of which he was overweeningly proud.

  Having already heard of the young doctor, Susan was interested to meet Hugh Collier, whom she at once set down as good-looking but somewhat too opinionated. At the moment he was trying to induce Bun to sit on his knee and see what he had in his pocket for her, but Bun would not have it.

  “What’s in your pocket should be for Cilly,” she reminded him reprovingly; and as he loosed his hold of her on seeing Peggy, she wriggled away and escaped across the polished floor to Susan.

  “Don’t you like sitting on knees, Bun?” she asked, laughing a little at young Collier’s disgruntled air.

  Bun answered superbly: “I don’t much care for that sort.”

  Susan would have liked to ask whether she objected to all knees on principle, but in a few minutes it became quite clear that Bun only disliked these particular knees, or their owner. For Oliver came into the room with Jim, and he had hardly presented Cilly with her gift, a large picture-book, before Bun flew to him and cast her arms about him.

  “My dear wee Commander!” she cried loudly. “Sit down and I’ll sit on your nice knees!”

  Oliver rather sheepishly obeyed, and Bun, enthroned, gazed about the room with bland satisfaction.

  “I say, Bun, that’s a bit steep,” said Hugh Collier. “You wouldn’t sit on my knee.”

  “I prefairr the Commander’s,” she answered, adding lovingly as she stroked Oliver’s tie, “I do like sailors, they’re so neat.”

  “Don’t mind Bun, she’s only showing off,” said Peggy to Hugh Collier. “She isn’t old enough to know her own mind.” This last with an unkind glance at Oliver, who appeared not to notice it.

  It seemed to Susan that there was a certain tension in the atmosphere, and she was relieved when the young hostess said wistfully, “Isn’t it nearly time for tea yet?”

  The tea-table, hospitably laden with good things, with a comely brown egg, complete with features in Indian ink, at every place, reminded Susan of the picture of King Valoroso at breakfast in her old copy of “The Rose and the Ring.” Even the noble birthday cake, its six pink and white candles all alight, which should have been the centre of attraction, sank into insignificance, even the festive crackers lost their charm, beside the array of boiled eggs which gave the individual touch to Cilly’s party.

  Peggy poured out tea at a side-table, assisted by Hugh Collier, whom she appeared to be encouraging as much as she frowned on Oliver. He, his offer to help having been refused, sat down between Bun and Cilly, his look expressing impolite relief, and beheaded their eggs for them.

  “Cilly has a distinct flair for entertaining,” Susan said to Mrs. Cunningham. “The eggs are a tremendous success.”

  “Bless their hearts,” the fond grandmother replied, beaming on the flushed and somewhat eggy Infantry. “They were so set on having them. It’s a mercy the hens are laying well.”

  Long after the guests had eaten to repletion the birthday cake still remained to be cut and tasted. It was hacked into alarmingly large jagged slices by Cilly, and carried round the table by the minister. No one was allowed to refuse it.

  “It’s most terribelly unlucky not to eat a bit,” said Bun anxiously, watching.

  “An’ there’s things in it!” squeaked Cilly. “I do hope I’ll get the frippenny bit, I do!”

  Susan found a tiny silver ring in her portion; Colin, to his grandmother’s horror, almost choked on the “frippenny bit” and Hugh Collier, amid shouts of laughter, unfolded a small scrap of paper to disclose a minute donkey.

  “That means you’re silly, you know,” explained Cilly kindly but unnecessarily.

  “Well, you’re Cilly too,” he said, a little nettled by the renewed outburst of mirth which had greeted her remark.

  “I amn’t! I amn’t! Am not!” shrieked Cilly furiously. “I’m a different kind of a silly. I’m a Cilly with a C!”

  “Now, now.” The minister’s booming voice—what a blessing that he was accustomed to filling a church with its resonant tones, thought Susan—rose above the clamour of protest and explanation, rapidly approaching the inevitable climax of tears and disgrace. “What about all these crackers I see, eh? Or are they just for ornament and not for pulling at all?”

  “Oh, Grandaddy, you are a funny one!” cried Bun. The minister and the crackers had saved the situation just in time.

  When everyone had been adorned with bead necklaces and ruby glass hearts with brass pins, and grown-ups were peering shame-facedly at each other from below ridiculous hats, and the air was shrill with dreadful whistles, the party proceeded by slow degrees to return to the drawing-room, there to play ah the time-honoured exhausting games which belong to children’s parties.

  Mrs. Cunningham in her “Sunday dress” with its real lace collar, sat at the piano pounding out reels and jigs, while the guests circled warily round a long line of chairs. Susan was one of the first to fall out, and secretly thanking her lucky star that she had never been good at Musical Chairs, retired to a corner to look on. Presently she was joined by Peggy, who took off her pink paper sun-bonnet and fanned her flushed cheeks with it.

  “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t parties tiring, Susan? Just look at those men. They are as much in earnest and as anxious to win as the Infantry—”

  “More so,” murmured Susan, watching her brother and Hugh Collier creeping round the one remaining chair like two hungry tigers, each with one eye on his rival and the other on the pianist. The music stopped unexpectedly, and Oliver, to the sound of rapturous applause from Bun, threw himself into the long-suffering chair just before the other could reach it.

  “I hope it’s a strong chair,” said Susan.

  “Yes. Oh, yes,” said Peggy absently, smiling at the discomfited young doctor so sweetly as to make up for his defeat, as was plain from his recovered sprightliness and Oliver’s corresponding gloom.

  “I don’t want to play Blind Man’s Buff, I think,” Susan said hastily, as an enormous silk handkerchief of rainbow hues was produced by Jim.

  “Nor I,” whispered Peggy, and they both stole meanly away to the untidy dining-room.

  “Could you eat a sandwich, Susan?” she asked hopefully, eyeing the still heaped plates on the table among the wreckage of cracker-papers and crumbs and icing.

  “Sorry, Peggy. No can do. But don’t let me stop you,” said Susan, as she sighed
.

  “Well, bar the egg and a bit of birthday cake, I didn’t have anything, so if you don’t mind watching me, I will.” And she took three sandwiches of different kinds, put them together, and munched peacefully. Susan lighted a cigarette.

  Silence fell, while Susan wondered what had happened to Peggy to lend her this new, rather unhappy assurance of manner, and Peggy tried not to remember the last party at the Manse, when everything had been so different, and she had been friends with Oliver.

  “I went up to Reiverslaw to see Mrs. Robertson the day before yesterday,” said Susan suddenly. “I was going to ask Jo-an if she would like to come and help Donaldina, as I promised you I would, you remember. Peggy, what has happened to that girl? She looked like a wraith.”

  All Peggy’s artificial brightness fell from her. Her lip quivered childishly. “Oh, Susan, I’m afraid she’s very miserable,” she began piteously. “Oh, why must everything go wrong? I tried to make it better, and instead I’ve only muddled it all!”

  Susan looked at her gravely. “Can’t you untangle it?” she asked very kindly.

  “I don’t seem able to do anything but go on, and things get worse every day—”

  “They’ll come right if you give them time,” said Susan. By now she was sure that Peggy and Oliver were in love, but she would not interfere. They would not thank her for it later. It would mean that some of the gilt had been taken off the gingerbread, and though the gingerbread was what really mattered, the gilt counted for a good deal, especially with anyone so young as Peggy.

  “Don’t lose heart, Peggy,” she went on. “Have patience and try to be yourself again.”

  “I sometimes think that if you hadn’t been away it would have been all right,” said Peggy. “I could have told you. But now—”

  “I can’t work miracles,” said Susan. “Even if I’d been here, do you think it would have made any real difference?”

  Loud cries from the drawing-room proclaimed that their absence had been noticed, and they had to return. Susan hoped that Peggy might be a little less disagreeable to Oliver, but when she saw that Hugh Collier remained firmly at her side, while Oliver obstinately devoted himself to Bun and Cilly, she sighed inwardly. Truly, it was impossible to help any pair as difficult as these two.