3
“Old Elliot up at Wanside,” Oliver’s gout-stricken employer, had imported two experts from Leicestershire to trim his hawthorn hedges, this being an art whose cunning was apparently not properly understood by the native Borderers; and on her brother’s invitation Susan walked out one frosty afternoon not long before Christmas to see them at work.
With Tara at her heels she went briskly along the ringing roads towards the march, and met Peggy, for once unaccompanied by her shadow, the young doctor, whose devotion to her must have laid the bulk of his professional duties on his uncle’s shoulders.
“I thought I’d come and see you,” she said, turning back with Susan. “It’s ages since I was at Easter Hartrigg.”
“When you have nothing better to do, in fact, you fall back on us,” Susan said teasingly for the pleasure of seeing her vivid carnation blush. “You’re getting quite terribly like the Miss Pringles, Peggy. The last time they appeared for tea they took great care to tell me that they had only come because they had been disappointed by someone more exciting, and rather than stay at home they decided to drop in on me.”
“A good long drop from Kaleside to Easter Hartrigg,” was Peggy’s comment. “But it’s unfair to compare me with them. You were away for a long time, and I couldn’t come then and—and, somehow, lately I seem to have had so little time and so much to do—Oh, there are the hedgers. And isn’t that Uncle Jed talking to Oliver?”
She brought out the “Oliver” with a sort of desperate composure, and indeed, Peggy did feel desperate this afternoon. She had made up her mind to try to speak to him, to find out if he really believed that she was in the habit of meeting people like Ronald Graham secretly. If it could not be managed all at once, at least she was determined to pave the way for some future occasion.
Before the two the side of the long ridge beyond Reiverslaw, patterned by variegated fields of brown ploughland, tawny stubble, and the dull green of winter pasture, rose steeply from the march in the hollow, which they were approaching. Wanside, girdled by leafless trees, stood high above its surrounding lands, the Wan burn, pursued its devious course down the hillside and added itself, a natural boundary, to the fence dividing “old Elliot’s” property from Reiverslaw. Pigmy figures about a high, overgrown hedge which ran like an enormous black hairy caterpillar up and over the crest of the ridge, spoke to Peggy’s quickness of eye. Two stood apart looking on, two moved slowly and steadily along the side of the spreading thorns, their long-handled hedging knives cutting bright arcs through the air, the downward flash followed inevitably by the fall of another branch. Jed Armstrong came to meet them, walking with the short step which always struck Susan as curious in so big a man, and rolling very slightly in his gait, for he had that faint, stiff-legged, attractive swagger common to all men who ride a great deal. Oliver remained beside the hedge. Beyond lifting his disreputable old soft hat, he paid no heed to the new arrivals.
“Hullo, Uncle Jed!” sang out Peggy in her clear, carrying voice. Her eyes shone dangerously, her cheeks were very pink. “Why won’t Oliver deign to come and speak to us? Have you been quarrelling with him?”
It was plain that Oliver had heard, as he was meant to, but his very back, as he stood with shoulders obstinately hunched, and all his attention apparently riveted on the hedgers, spoke eloquently of his determination not to be drawn into conversation by this or any challenge.
“You leave Oliver alone,” growled Jed. “He’s looking after his own business.”
As Peggy, unabashed, made a face at him, he turned to Susan.
“What d’you think of it?” he asked. “These fellows are wonderful at their job. It’s a treat to watch them. I only wish our own men could learn it, but it seems to be handed down from generation to generation, and we haven’t got the trick of it somehow.”
“I know absolutely nothing about it,” Susan said truthfully, “but I like to watch them.”
There was a fascination about the movements of the two hedgers, so deliberate, so rhythmic in their slow, steady sweep, as the lopped branches fell to the shining blades, and were dragged aside without haste or waste of strength or time. Each man’s right hand was protected by a long gauntleted glove of heavy leather against the vicious black spines; drab clothing blended with their surroundings, and a note of bright colour was added by a blue scarf which one wore about his neck. Slowly they moved up the line of shaggy bushes, bending the long, supple boughs as though they were weaving baskets, until the top of the trimmed hedge lay flat and smooth, a strong barrier against marauding cattle or fierce winds.
“That’s the way it should be done,” said Jed approvingly. Almost unconsciously he and Susan were following the hedgers, while Peggy, careless of his forbidding attitude, remained standing beside Oliver, her hands deep in the pockets of her big coat, chattering to him with apparent ease and friendliness. “They’ve left the young branches, d’you see, and they’ll shoot,” went on Jed. “The twigs will grow up straight, and in a few years’ time this hedge will look just as it does now where they haven’t cut it yet. If you look, you can see the line of the last trimming, down close to the ground.”
Susan nodded, absorbed in watching these skilled craftsmen plying their old trade, as though the age of machinery were still a dream of the far future. The cold which nipped savagely at her finger-tips through her lined gloves, could not move her, nor could Tara, sitting patiently and delicately on his tail with the air of a martyr chilled to the bode, and yawning from time to time. The sun, a fiery orange ball, had begun to slip behind the black woods to westward, the sky in the east was turning a cold, clear, unearthly green, and still they looked and the hedgers worked.
“I don’t know how I ever imagined the country could be dull,” Susan said suddenly. “Town can’t show you anything to match this hedging business. I’ve had the most interesting time of my life since we came here to live.”
“Well, of course, there’s always something happening. There’s no close season in the country,” said Jed in the slow, rumbling voice which sounded loud and gruff in a drawing-room, but was tuned to these outdoor scenes. “Ploughing and sowing and harrowing, and then reaping. . . . Beasts to look after, and all the wild life as well. If you care for that sort of thing. Of course, there’s nothing like theatres, and so on. I dare say it’s that that people miss when they’re used to going out at nights.”
“Theatres!” said Susan with lofty scorn. “The concerts at Muirfoot and Kaleford are far better fun than any first night I’ve been to. And as for going out at night, I can go out here, and see the moon and stars moving across the sky, and hear the owls—”
He laughed, though not at all derisively. “You haven’t been a year away from town yet, lass. You haven’t got over the novelty of all this. It’s early days to say you like the country better.”
“But you prefer it?”
“I was bred to this kind of life. You weren’t.”
Susan began eagerly to explain how she felt. “It isn’t just novelty. Haven’t you ever come to a place where you’ve never been before, and found that you belonged to it? That’s what I feel about this part of the country. You know I’ve been staying with friends in England, ending up in London. I thought it would be heavenly to see Bond Street again, and the Park, the shops, the streets, the lights—everything. Theatres—because I’m not so silly as to suppose that I’d never miss them. Everyone wants bright lights and soft music now and then. I was half-afraid I’d hate to come away. . . . It was lovely, and I did enjoy it, for a few days. But something had changed. Not my friends, not town. Me. I couldn’t sleep after the quiet nights at Easter Hartrigg; I felt dazed and bewildered. And I got so tired of having people sympathize with me over living buried in the country. I told them until I was hoarse that I loved it, and wasn’t buried at all, and wouldn’t live in town now for a fortune, but it was so obvious that they didn’t believe me. . . . I knew they’d go away saying to each other how Susan Parsons was making the be
st of a bad job, poor dear, but did you see her clothes? And her face, quite weather-beaten. . . . It made me want to scream and throw china about. And then Oliver wrote and told me that the Muirfoot Boy Scouts were having a ‘Grand Variety Entertainment.’ I suddenly realized that I couldn’t bear to miss it, and I packed in a hurry and came home the next day. They all thought I was mad, and I didn’t care!”
As she paused, breathless, laughing a little at her own vehemence, Jed said slowly, “Of course, if you feel like that . . . I’m the same myself. In London, even in Edinburgh, I’m all wrong, out of place, boxed up among too many houses and people. But I didn’t think it would affect you that way, after being used to it—”
“I suppose,” said Susan rather resentfully, “you think I’m ‘out of place’ here, do you?”
He looked at her, liking the sparkle which the little spirt of temper lent to her gravity. It had always pleased him to be able to bring it into being. But he answered her question quite seriously. “No; you fit it like your hand into that glove of yours. You look like a country-bred woman, and it suits you. But—all your old friends live in town, don’t they?”
“I thought so,” said Susan. “But when I saw all the people I used to know again, I knew at once that none of them was more than an acquaintance, a nice, usually congenial acquaintance. The ones who came nearest being friends were those who lived in country places themselves and quite understood my longing to get home. And I find there are people here who are more real friends than any of those others. Friendship’s a plant of slow growth, and needs country air to make it hardy, I fancy. Forced on too quickly, as it often is in town, it is a sickly hothouse thing, and a breath of cold wind kills it.”
Jed, pondered over this excursion into metaphor with knitted brows. “I like that,” he said at last. “It’s very true. All the same, I would have thought that Crawley was a real friend of yours. You wouldn’t call him just an acquaintance, would you?”
“Charles?” she said, and paused. “Charles is different. He’s in a class by himself.”
“I suppose you saw him in London?”
Susan nodded. “Yes; he’s stationed at Chatham, so I saw quite a lot of him.”
“He seems a very good fellow,” said Jed rather heavily.
“He is. He’s a perfect darling, and we’ve been friends for more years than I’d like to count. I can always talk to Charles—” Susan broke off, the rare flush rising to her face. Suddenly she realized that this afternoon she had been talking to Jed as freely, as easily, as she had ever talked to Charles.
“He’s coming to us for Christmas leave,” she ended with unusual confusion.
The hedgers had stopped pruning and were drawing the cut branches into a great pile, which they set alight. With a tremendous crackling the flames shot high, devouring the dry wood. Clouds of sparks rose golden against the sky, to die before they fell, and the sunset’s conflagration, was put to shame by the glow of the bonfire.
“We’d better be getting back,” said Jed slowly, as if he did not want to leave. “Oliver and Peggy have gone long ago.”
With a start Susan looked round. The field was empty save for themselves and the two gnome-like figures busy about their blaze. It had turned very cold. An icy little wind was blowing straight from the snow-capped hills, making her shiver. Tara was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s made tracks for home, sensible beast,” Jed observed. “He knows there’s going to be snow.”
Even as he spoke, the first few flakes, came drifting eerily, soundlessly, out of a sky grown leaden. Against her will, Susan turned to go, since all her whistling did not bring the black dog bustling into sight. Silently she and Jed made their way across the fields to the road, silently they trudged along it. In a sheltered corner several stacks stood like high, pale, windowless houses, steep-roofed, and as they neared them, the sound of voices came to their ears.
“Who the devil—?” began Jed, taking a hasty stride towards them. Susan laid a hand on his arm, for she thought she recognized one of the voices.
“If it’s some damned tramps smoking in among the stacks—” growled Jed, but she shook her head.
“I don’t believe they are tramps.”
As if to prove the truth of her words, one voice said quite clearly, “But why won’t you come to the dance, Oliver? It’s sure to be a good one, and you told me you loved dancing.”
The deeper reply was lost, then suddenly Peggy said, “Oliver, please do. Don’t be so—so unreasonable! Oh, well, if you’re determined to be horrid—”
“Let’s go, quickly,” whispered Susan guiltily, and they stole past. From behind one of the stacks Tara appeared, looking utterly bored and disillusioned. On seeing Susan, he bounded joyfully to her side, showing a glint of ivory teeth in a doggish smile.
“H’m,” muttered Jed. “I bet he could tell us a thing or two if we could speak the language!”
But as Tara not unnaturally kept his own counsel, they were none the wiser, and Oliver came home so grim and silent that even had she wished, Susan would hardly have dared to question him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
“Now tell me all the news,” commanded Charles, stretching out his long legs towards the fire. “How are my friends, the scandal-mongers, the Misses Pringle?”
Susan was sitting on the window-seat, busily tying up Christmas presents with gay lengths of holly-patterned ribbon. At his question she looked up and laughed a little. “The Misses Pringle are not very pleased with me just now,” she said. “In fact, we are hardly on speaking terms.”
“That’s interesting. Why?” asked Charles, and Oliver also raised his head from the book he was pretending to read.
“I refused to listen to some scandal,” said Susan calmly. “And though I didn’t tell them what I thought of them, I did just mention that it wasn’t a habit of mine to discuss my friends in that fashion.”
“Good for you. And is one permitted to ask who the friends in question are?”
“Peggy,” answered Susan briefly, and addressed a parcel.
Oliver started, but neither of the others appeared to notice it, and presently Susan said with a sigh of relief, “There, that’s all, thank goodness. Now I can settle down and talk with a dear conscience.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” murmured Charles. “I was beginning to wonder when I was going to get a little attention. Of all the lousy hosts and hostesses—”
“Ungrateful wretch! Aren’t we going to take you to a ball-dance?”
“Ah, ha! That’s better. Tell me about it.”
“Well,” said Susan, taking her seat on a long fender-stool and stirring the fire to a blaze, “everyone is thrilled about it, even the Pringles, and they have only one fault to find. They think it ought to be fancy dress—”
“My God!” breathed Oliver, roused at last. “The Pringles in fancy dress! Wouldn’t you be willing to lay any money that they’d appear as Helen of Troy and Cleopatterer—”
“Complete with asp,” added Charles.
“Madame Recamier would do nicely for Bell,” said Susan cattily. “She has told me more than once that she’d have been in her element conducting a salon.”
“I expect, you know, really, the old trout would have gone as the Three Graces.” This was Charles.
Oliver groaned hollowly. “Well, you’ll be spared that grisly spectacle, at least,” he said.
“‘You?’” the others both repeated. “Don’t you mean ‘we?’”
“Oh, no. I’m not going,” he said airily. “Jed and I are going to have a quiet evening at Reiverslaw.”
“Well,” said Charles when he had recovered his breath, “little did I think that the day would dawn when you’d deliberately stay away from a dance, Noll.”
“It’s for a good cause, Oliver,” urged his sister. “The Abbeyshiels Cottage Hospital extension. I do think you ought to patronize it, and you one of the local lairds too. Besides, I’ve bought your ticket, and everyone k
nows you’re a dancing man.”
“My dancing days are over,” said Oliver, not without a certain gloomy pleasure.
“What a great pity we have no Marines here,” sighed Charles.
“Marines?” echoed Susan.
“Yes; for Oliver to tell his pretty little fairy-tale to, my love,” answered Charles.
He rose to his feet, strolled across the room, and sat down before the piano, where he proceeded to strike several chords with more vigour than precision. When he had finally disentangled those he required from the general tumult, he raised his voice, a pleasant though untrained baritone, and assuming a manly, square-shouldered attitude, sang.
“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
Because another’s ro-osy are?”
“You are the world’s biggest fool, Charles,” said Oliver, but he winced and coloured slightly in spite of his carefully dispassionate tone.
Charles, unheeding, finished the verse con brio.
Susan had half-expected something of this sort to happen, and Oliver’s refusal to attend the charity dance in the Abbeyshiels Corn Exchange did not really surprise her. Peggy was going, Hugh Collier, of course, would be there; it seemed to his sister preferable that Oliver should invite comment by staying at home, rather than holding up the wall and looking daggers at Peggy while she danced, for all the local world to see.
But Charles did not share this opinion. “I never heard such tripe in my life, Susan darling,” he said elegantly. “Of course Oliver must go, and dance with everyone.”
Susan never knew, though she could guess, the arguments he used to persuade her brother, and on the evening of the dance Oliver duly appeared in tails and a white tie, looking handsome and gloomy, and overflowing at intervals with a haggard gaiety which she found rather distressing.
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