Susan Settles Down

by Molly Clavering

  Even as she reminded herself that Tara, a stout protector, was with her, even as her unwilling feet carried her towards the shrouded windows, she was assailed by wild superstitious fears. Old stories of dead lovers or friends who returned to announce their passing by this means flashed through her mind, and it was with an effort that she put out a hand and drew the curtains aside.

  At first she could see nothing save the black darkness and a flurry of snow-flakes on the glass; then a figure loomed gigantic, and biting back a cry of pure terror, she found herself staring at the dimly seen face of Jed Armstrong. Snow lay thick on his broad shoulders, wreathed his cap, clung to his eyebrows and short-clipped moustache. He motioned with his head towards the door. Without a word, moving as in a dream which clogs the feet, Susan went out to the cold hall, lighted by a lamp turned low, and unlocked the heavy front door. A rush of chill air blew past her, the lamp flared, a smother of snow lay white on the rug, to melt and make little wet patches where it had fallen.

  Almost as soon as she had opened he was standing before her in the deep snow, holding by the rein a trembling, exhausted horse which puffed great breaths of vapour on the icy air.

  “Come in,” said Susan.

  “I’ll need to put this poor brute under cover somewhere first and give him a rub down, if you can let me have a light.”

  It was not until he spoke that she entirely believed that the real man, and no ghost, stood there. She turned, took a powerful electric torch from the oak chest in the hall, and put it into his hand, which was warm and living enough for conviction.

  “The potting-shed is nearest,” she said, “and there’s room in it. Do you want a rug?”

  He nodded, took the rug she handed to him, and trudged off round the house, the weary horse at his heels, the torch-light throwing a pale narrow beam on snow-laden bushes and walls. Susan waited, shivering a little, until presently he came back and followed her silently into the house.

  “Would you like whisky-and-soda? Or tea? Or—what would you like?” Susan asked when, leaving coat and cap in the hall, he came into the sitting-room to be made much of by Tara.

  “I’d sooner have tea than anything.”

  Still in the species of daze which Donaldina described as a “dwam,” Susan fetched a kettle, still warm, from the kitchen where the range gaped black and empty; and while he set it on the fire, collected cups and saucers in the same numb, mechanical fashion.

  “Weren’t you surprised—frightened—when you saw me?” he asked. “I thought, of course, it would be Oliver up so late.”

  “Oliver’s away for the night,” said Susan. “I was frightened—until I saw you—”

  “Not surprised?”

  Susan shook her head. “I—don’t—believe—I was,” she said slowly, as though her own words astonished her.

  She felt no surprise. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that this man, so like his foraying ancestors, should come to her at dead of night, in the dark of the moon, with his tired horse stumbling behind him. . . .

  “It’s a queer time to pay a call,” he said, as Susan made tea. “But a woman up at Reiverslaw was taken ill, the telephone wires have been brought down by the wind and weight of snow, and the car’s out of order. The doctor was needed badly, so I rode down to get him—”

  “And haven’t you succeeded? Wouldn’t he go?” she asked. A fresh storm of wind brought snowflakes whirling down the wide chimney to die with a faint hissing in the red heart of the fire.

  “Go? He’d have gone all right if he’d been in. But he had been called out already, Kelpieha’ way, and I suppose he couldn’t get back, though the snow isn’t so bad down there. They’ll send him up as soon as he goes home, poor devil—if he can make his way through the drifts. My beast’s about done. I couldn’t get him to go another step just now, and I saw your light—”

  “And the woman?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, and began to drink the tea she had poured out for him. “The other women’ll have to look to her,” he said. “It won’t be the first time this has happened.”

  Susan fell silent, staring into the fire, thinking how light an impression civilization had made on these outlying places, where the elements in freakish mood could swing the cycle of years back to ruder times, and a woman must suffer the pangs of childbirth unaided save by her neighbours, as women had since the world began. A rough life, in spite of modern comforts, but a life which made for patience and endurance and deep-rooted kindliness.

  “How’s Oliver?” asked Jed suddenly. “I haven’t seen much of him since New Year.”

  “I haven’t seen very much of him myself,” said Susan, smiling. “You must remember that he’s an engaged man. Peggy occupies a good deal of his time, naturally.”

  “And what about you?” He shot her one of his direct, lance-thrust looks.

  “Me?” Susan was hedging, and she knew it. A curious shyness had seized hold upon her.

  “Yes. You’re engaged too. Are you going to make a double wedding of it?”

  “Well, no.” She had risen and taken a cigarette, and now seemed to be engrossed in searching for matches to light it. “There’s only going to be one wedding in our family, actually . . . where can I have put that box of matches?”

  “Here. I’ll give you a light,” said Jed. Holding the match to the end of her cigarette, looking steadfastly into her eyes, he demanded: “Aren’t you going to marry Crawley?”

  “No,” said Susan, rather relieved to have broken the news. “I’m not. I wrote to Charles this evening, breaking off our engagement. I am going to London as soon as Oliver is married, to a job on a paper which has been offered to me—”

  He did not seem to have heard the last sentence.

  “Do you change so quickly? I didn’t think you would be that sort—”

  “I haven’t changed at all. That’s the root of the trouble. I feel about Charles exactly as I have always felt. He is my very dear friend, no more. I ought never to have said I’d marry him. You needn’t look at me like that, Jed. Charles doesn’t love me that way, either. It was a mistake we both made, perhaps a natural one, because we’re fond of each other.”

  Jed drew a deep breath. “Look at me,” he said, almost roughly, and Susan looked long at his burning blue eyes. Then she remembered Mrs. Holden, and shook her head.

  “Don’t say it,” she whispered.

  “You can’t care enough about me, either? Oh, well, why should you? I’m too old, too rough, for you. I—sort of expected that!”

  This was more than Susan could stand. “Jed! It’s not that. It’s—aren’t you going to marry Mrs. Holden?”

  “Primrose?” he said incredulously. “Primrose? But what has she got to do with it? She’s an old friend, she was a sort of pet of my mother’s, and we’ve known each other since we were children, that’s all there has ever been to it. Have those damned Pringles been putting ideas into your head? Good God, Susan, I thought you had more sense than to suppose Primrose was anything to me. She’s not my kind—”

  He was standing close to her, towering above her, tall though she was. “Didn’t you guess how I’ve felt about you? Ah, you know it, lass, don’t you? We belong to each other—”

  “I think I did know, Jed. But—it’s rather lovely to hear it—from you.”

  He drew her closer to him, and as his arm tightened about her, as his lips met hers, Susan knew that this moment was worth waiting a lifetime for. . . .

  “Think what the Misses Pringle would say! You must go,” said Susan, when they awoke to realization that he must go home.

  “They’ll say plenty, anyhow!” and Jed laughed. Then his eye lighted on the two envelopes propped against the clock on the mantelpiece. “One to Crawley—poor devil! He doesn’t know what he’s losing. One to—burn this, Susan. You’ll need to write another letter to this editor of yours, telling him you’ve got a different job!”

  “A masterful man,” murmured Susan. Her lips curved in a wilful smi
le, but she took the letter, tore it into shreds, and dropped them on the fire.

  “You’ve too much spirit yourself to want any other kind of man,” he retorted. “And you know it.”

  “You’ve reived my heart from me. Don’t leave me too long,” she whispered, going with him to the door.

  “What I’d like to do,” he said wistfully, “would be to put you up in front of me and ride off with you now to Reiverslaw. But as I can’t . . .” he took both her hands in his and kissed them very gently, as if they might melt under his touch. “Until to-morrow, my dear love.”

  The wind had died, and a great peace had fallen on the snow-smothered earth. High above in the dark bowl of the sky, stars swam like brilliant fish, the white ground sparkled back at them. Susan stood on the step, warmed by a fire which defied outer cold, and watched Jed ride away, the horse’s hoofs crunching through the crust of snow which frost was beginning to harden. He was going back to Reiverslaw, but very soon there would come the day when he did not have to go alone. . . . “In such a night. . . .” What mattered it that winter bound the country in an iron grip, that the sunset wind which sang to Jessica and young Lorenzo was hushed, that the patines of bright gold were chill points of twinkling steel? In such a night love had come to two people, when Susan, her fear of it all forgotten, had put her hand joyfully into Jed’s stronghold.

  T H E E N D

  About The Author

  Mary ‘Molly’ Clavering was born in Glasgow in 1900. Her father was a Glasgow businessman, and her mother’s grandfather had been a doctor in Moffat, where the author would live for nearly 50 years after World War Two.

  She had little interest in conventional schooling as a child, but enjoyed studying nature, and read and wrote compulsively, considering herself a ‘poetess’ by the age of seven.

  She returned to Scotland after her school days, and published three novels in the late 1920s, as well as being active in her local girl guides and writing two scenarios for ambitious historical pageants.

  In 1936, the first of four novels under the pseudonym ‘B. Mollett’ appeared. Molly Clavering’s war service in the WRNS interrupted her writing career, and in 1947 she moved to Moffat, in the Scottish border country, where she lived alone, but was active in local community activities. She resumed writing fiction, producing seven post-war novels and numerous serialized novels and novellas in the People’s Friend magazine.

  Molly Clavering died in Moffat on February 12, 1995.

  Titles by Molly Clavering

  Fiction

  Georgina and the Stairs (1927)

  The Leech of Life (1928)

  Wantonwalls (1929)

  Susan Settles Down (1936, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Love Comes Home (1938, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Yoked with a Lamb (1938, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Touch Not the Nettle (1939, as ‘B. Mollett’)

  Mrs. Lorimer’s Quiet Summer (1953)

  Because of Sam (1954)

  Dear Hugo (1955)

  Near Neighbours (1956)

  Result of the Finals (1957)

  Dr. Glasgow’s Family (1960)

  Spring Adventure (1962)

  Non-Fiction

  From the Border Hills (1953)

  Between 1952 and 1976, Molly Clavering also serialized at least two dozen novels or novellas in the People’s Friend under the names Marion Moffatt and Emma Munro. Some of these were reprinted as ‘pocket novels’ as late as 1994.

  FURROWED MIDDLEBROW

  FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON

  FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL

  FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK

  FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE

  FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE

  FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE

  FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL

  FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR

  FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT

  FM21. Smouldering Fire (1935) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM22. Spring Magic (1942) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM23. Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM24. Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM25. Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM26. Alice (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT

  FM27. Henry (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT

  FM28. Mrs. Martell (1953) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT

  FM29. Cecil (1962) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT

  FM30. Nothing to Report (1940) ... CAROLA OMAN

  FM31. Somewhere in England (1943) ... CAROLA OMAN

  FM32. Spam Tomorrow (1956) ... VERILY ANDERSON

  FM33. Peace, Perfect Peace (1947) ... JOSEPHINE KAMM

  FM34. Beneath the Visiting Moon (1940) ... ROMILLY CAVAN

  FM35. Table Two (1942) ... MARJORIE WILENSKI

  FM36. The House Opposite (1943) ... BARBARA NOBLE

  FM37. Miss Carter and the Ifrit (1945) ... SUSAN ALICE KERBY

  FM38. Wine of Honour (1945) ... BARBARA BEAUCHAMP

  FM39. A Game of Snakes and Ladders (1938, 1955) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE

  FM40. Not at Home (1948) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE

  FM41. All Done by Kindness (1951) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE

  FM42. My Caravaggio Style (1959) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE

  FM43. Vittoria Cottage (1949) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM44. Music in the Hills (1950) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM45. Winter or Rough Weather (1951) ... D.E. STEVENSON

  FM46. Fresh from the Country (1960) ... MISS READ

  FM47. Miss Mole (1930) ... E.H. YOUNG

  FM48. A House in the Country (1957) ... RUTH ADAM

  FM49. Much Dithering (1937) ... DOROTHY LAMBERT

  FM50. Miss Plum and Miss Penny (1959) ... DOROTHY EVELYN SMITH

  FM51. Village Story (1951) ... CELIA BUCKMASTER

  FM52. Family Ties (1952) ... CELIA BUCKMASTER

  FM53. Rhododendron Pie (1930) ... MARGERY SHARP

  FM54. Fanfare for Tin Trumpets (1932) ... MARGERY SHARP

  FM55. Four Gardens (1935) ... MARGERY SHARP

  FM56. Harlequin House (1939) ... MARGERY SHARP

  FM57. The Stone of Chastity (1940) ... MARGERY SHARP

  FM58. The Foolish Gentlewoman (1948) ... MARGERY SHARP

  FM59. The Swiss Summer (1951) ... STELLA GIBBONS

  FM60. A Pink Front Door (1959) ... STELLA GIBBONS

  FM61. The Weather at Tregulla (1962) ... STELLA GIBBONS

  FM62. The Snow-Woman (1969) ... STELLA GIBBONS

  FM63. The Woods in Winter (1970) ... STELLA GIBBONS

  FM64. Apricot Sky (1952) ... RUBY FERGUSON

  FM65. Susan Settles Down (1936) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM66. Yoked with a Lamb (1938) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM67. Love Comes Home (1938) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM68. Touch not the Nettle (1939) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM69. Mrs. Lorimer’s Quiet Summer (1953) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM70. Because of Sam (1953) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM71. Dear Hugo (1955) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  FM72. Near Neighbours (1956) ... MOLLY CLAVERING

  A Furrowed Middlebrow Book

  FM65

  Published by Dean Stre
et Press 2021

  Copyright © 1936 Molly Clavering

  Introduction copyright © 2021 Elizabeth Crawford

  All Rights Reserved

  First published in 1936 by Stanley Paul & Co

  Cover by DSP

  ISBN 978 1 914150 44 9

  www.deanstreetpress.co.uk