Yoked with a Lamb

by Molly Clavering

  “We’re for the South, of course,” Kate told Robin, when the point had been thrashed out at last. “It’s a family falling to support lost causes, though we only do it second-hand, so to speak.”

  “Oh, I don’t know so much about that,” he said, going back with her to the kitchen, where they all sat down to smoke and drink more coffee. “After all, you’re standing by here, aren’t you?”

  Kate stared at him, and Grey broke in: “You mean the Lockharts?”

  “But—but—are they a lost cause?” stammered Kate in dismay. “I mean, they’re coming back to live here all together—”

  “It’s a pretty badly patched affair,” said Robin, “and patches are apt to show. I’m only saying this because I think you two could make things a bit easier if you realized that this business is going to mean heavy weather for everyone. You can’t desert your wife and family for years and then come back and expect to take up your life again just as it was before the smash, can you?”

  “I always thought,” said Grey, gravely scraping the sugar from the bottom of his coffee-cup and eating it from the spoon with slow relish. “That Lucy must be a bit difficult to live with, especially for an easy-going chap like Drew.”

  “Oh!” cried Kate. “It isn’t fair to blame Lucy! Think what she must have been through. It must be a dreadful position for her, and she’ll never be quite sure that it wasn’t partly her fault!”

  “I doubt if Lucy will blame herself,” said Robin dryly. “She’s not that sort.”

  “How can you be so horrid, Robin? How do you know what she feels about it?”

  “I’ve seen a good deal of her, Kate, you must remember,” Robin answered, his cool voice in marked contrast to her angry cry. “And then Drew is my friend. I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m on his side.”

  “So am I,” agreed Grey. “Every time. She must have driven him to it. He’d never have done it otherwise.”

  “And I suppose you’re both on Mrs. Fardell’s ‘side,’ as you call it too?” asked Kate bitterly, and without waiting for an answer she rushed on: “Well, I’m on Lucy’s. It’s disgusting the way men stick together however badly they’ve behaved! I think Lucy has been abominably treated, and it’s most forgiving of her to come back here and live with Andrew again after what’s happened.”

  “That seems to be that,” said Grey. He had seen his sister in a fine partisan rage so many times that her latest display did not distress him.

  But Robin Anstruther, to whom it was quite new, felt guilty and uncomfortable. He had not meant to upset her like this. When it was time for him to leave, and Grey had gone out of the kitchen ahead of him to see him off, he came over to Kate and took her hand.

  “I’m sorry, Kate. I had no idea you were so fond of Lucy, or I’d never have said what I did.”

  “Fond of Lucy!” cried Kate in exasperation. “I’m not specially fond of Lucy, though I like her well enough. Can’t you understand it’s the unfairness of it that makes me so angry? It’s got nothing to do with my feelings. I’m far fonder of Andrew than Lucy, if it comes to that, but I’m not going to back him up when I think he was in the wrong!”

  “Be careful that in your anxiety to be fair to Lucy you aren’t being unfair to Andrew,” he said, still holding her limp and unresponsive hand. “You see, I could plead great provocation for him—”

  “It’s no use. We’re on different sides,” said Kate stiffly. “That needn’t stop us from being friends, need it?”

  “I hope not,” Kate said slowly. “But it won’t depend on us so much as on the other two, will it?”

  “I think if we can make up our minds to be friends, no one else is likely to stop us,” he said. “Good night, Kate. I’ll be down to see you again before very long.”

  “Granny’s coming next Friday, and Lucy the Monday after,” said Kate.

  “Your Granny and I are old friends. And I’ll come and see you before Lucy arrives.”

  “There you are again, you see. You can’t be fair to Lucy—and now you’re laughing at me and thinking me obstinate.”

  “No, not exactly obstinate,” he said gravely. “Loyal is the word I would use. Good night.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1

  Inside and out, Soonhope was ready to receive its mistress, who was due to arrive that afternoon. The windows sparkled in the September sunshine, the gravel, freshly raked, was as neat as a well-combed head.

  Kate, feeling magnificently competent and business-like, and thoroughly enjoying the sensation because she knew it was really undeserved, sat at the big inlaid writing-table comparing the lists of china, glass and silver in Lucy’s neat hand, with her own pencil-scrawled inventory, made as she and her grandmother had unpacked their cases. She faced a window set in the western end of the house, and behind her the drawing-room ran back to a great mirror which filled the farther wall, dimly reflected the furniture, and gave a distant glimpse of her own bent head and shoulders. Two rooms had been knocked together to make this drawing-room a cool and spacious place, one half brightened by the row of windows opposite the fireplace, the other sombre, lighted only by the reflections shown in the mirror.

  Coming in by the door, which was set in the darkest corner, created an illusion of entering a gallery midway, for the mirror on the left doubled the length of the room while making it appear narrower than it was. Many times on winter evenings long ago, when she was a child and Andrew still unmarried, had Kate looked up from some uproarious game of cards with her cousins and Grey to see, always with the same start of surprise, almost of fear, that other table surrounded by laughing faces and wildly grabbing hands, far away down the room.

  Almost she could imagine that those other players were not mere reflections, but independent persons engrossed in some game of their own; she always waited for the evening when she would see them do something which bore no resemblance to the activities at her own table. It was a never-failing relief to see actions, dresses, characteristic mannerisms, and movements faithfully reproduced, to be recognised after that first moment. ‘Not a canny room,’ she and Grey had decided while they were still very young, nor had they seen any reason for changing their opinions since. There was nothing unpleasant, it simply was ‘not canny.’

  That was only at night. In daylight the Soonhope drawing-room was too light, too airy, too filled with flowers, soft-toned chintzes, and gay cushions to disturb the most sensitive. Kate sat with her back to it quite composedly, nor did she look round when she heard the door open.

  “How are you getting on, dearie?” Grannie’s kind voice.

  “Finished. Cast your beady little eye over the list and see if it’s all right,” said Kate, as Mrs. Barlas came up the room, her soft yet heavy step making the silver and china ornaments on the small tables tinkle.

  “Read it out, Kate.” Mrs. Barlas came to rest, a little out of breath, in an arm-chair close to the writing-table. “I haven’t got my spectacles.”

  “You have, darling. They’re nesting in your hair. But I’ll read over my beautiful list to you, and there will be hell to pay if it’s not correct,” said Kate.

  She took up her sheets of paper, shuffled them, and read slowly to the end. “How’s that?”

  “There seem to be some things broken,” said Mrs. Barlas in a pained tone. “Such a pity, and Lucy is so particular.”

  “Well, we didn’t do it. We unpacked them in bits, so it must have been the removal people or the storage. Lucy ought to be jolly glad it isn’t much worse.”

  “Apart from that, then, dearie, it seems as it should be. The silver is all there,” said Mrs. Barlas. “And the glass has escaped, which is a mercy. That beautiful crystal! Thank you for taking so much care and trouble.”

  “Don’t thank me, Granny. I love this important organizing feeling, and my nose will be quite out of joint when Lucy comes this afternoon. I do think you’ve been clever about maids, though Miss Milligan has been prophesying woe, like the ancestral voices. Or was
it war they prophesied? No matter, the principle’s the same. She was very much afraid you would find it next to impossible to get any satisfactory girls here. Times are so changed, dear Mrs. Barlas, and girls not what they were. I gather that only about one in twenty ‘keeps herself respectable.’ An immoral town, Haystoun!”

  “Flora always made a poor mouth over everything if she could,” said Mrs. Barlas placidly. “It was a stroke of luck getting Florence back—you couldn’t ask for a better cook. And though Nina Marshall is young, she waits very well and cleans silver beautifully. Then Mrs. Pow’s May is coming as kitchenmaid, and she won’t have to sleep in, which is a great relief with the house so full.”

  “Housemaids?” asked Kate in a practical voice.

  “I’ve engaged a girl from Fenton—Phemie Paterson. She is a little rough, but Jean Anstruther knows the family and says they are all good workers. She and Nina ought to be able to manage, with Mrs. Pow coming in to help when we need her, and Lucy can get another housemaid later on if she finds it necessary.”

  “Phemie Paterson? Is that the red-handed young heifer I saw plunging down the avenue yesterday? Well, if she doesn’t smash everything she touches, I expect she’ll be all right. She has a nice honest country face, and certainly looks strong,” said Kate. “Granny, I think you’re a marvel. Now all we have to do is to wait for the balloon to go up. I do like to be behind the scenes. It gives me such an advantage over the others, poor things. I wouldn’t be a mere guest arriving next week for a king’s ransom.”

  “You have been more than useful, Kate, and I know Lucy will agree with me. Now would you like to come out to the garden for a walk round?”

  “Of course. Do you want baskets and scissors and things?”

  “I want my garden hat, Kate. It’s hanging up in the cloakroom. Oh, and Kate!” Mrs. Barlas’s voice rose to a shrill scream, terrifying to strangers, but treated by her family with the composure of long use, as her grand-daughter disappeared. “Ka—ate!”

  “Yes?” Kate’s head came round the edge of the drawing-room door.

  “If you’re hungry, dear, you’ll find a new tin of ginger-snaps in the storeroom. There are apples, too.”

  “Thank you, Granny. I’d like an apple—”

  It would never do to spoil Granny’s touching belief that they were constantly in need of some small snack to stave off the pangs of hunger. The storeroom in Granny’s day had always contained supplies of biscuits and fruit to appease the insatiable appetites of growing children. The two Lockhart boys, Adam and Henry, were the only ones who would really appreciate it nowadays—that is, if Lucy allowed them to eat between meals, which did not seem probable. Kate, for the sake of old times, when the storeroom had been a treasure-house, rummaged about in its dark recesses, smelling of scented soap, coffee, spice, China tea and the wooden silver-paper-lined boxes which contained it, until she felt the hard yellow apples, each wrapped in a wisp of blue tissue paper, which from a high shelf added their winey scent to the rest.

  Next door to the storeroom was another dark deep cupboard, glorified by the name of cloakroom, with a smell all its own, of rubber, leather, and damp. A row of pegs, empty now, waited to receive waterproofs. Mrs. Barlas’s garden hat of black straw, wide-brimmed, with a ruche of white muslin underneath the edge, and long white muslin streamers to tie under her chin, hung there alone, her small goloshes stood neatly on the floor below. Kate took the hat, which gave her grandmother an oddly Tudor look as of a gentle lady beefeater, and went out to join Mrs. Barlas at the front door.

  “Geordie Pow has done wonders with the lawn,” said Mrs. Barlas, pausing to cast an approving look over the close-mown turf, the neatly trimmed edges. “If his boy can help him, he will soon have the garden tidy again.”

  “The garden looks remarkably well, I think, considering.”

  “Oh, my dear!” Mrs. Barlas shook her head sadly. “Geordie is no good; unless you keep an eye on him, he does such stupid things. All the good plants seem to have disappeared—no doubt they are flourishing in the gardens of Geordie’s friends by this time. And, of course, there are no annuals to speak of this year, and I do miss them, the larkspur especially.”

  They reached the garden and went in, Kate to walk about enjoying the tangled mass of colour under the blue sky, Mrs. Barlas to go purposefully from one border to another, giving directions to Geordie Pow, or pulling out some weed that particularly offended her eye with a small but capable hand.

  “Rack and ruin!” she murmured occasionally, uttering one of the heavy sighs which did not denote any deep distress, but were merely habit. “Rack and ruin!”

  Mrs. Barlas, in fact, was completely absorbed and happy, free for the moment of disturbing thoughts about Lucy and dear Andrew. The earthy presence of Geordie Pow, the dump of his spade as he dug just out of sight behind the gooseberry bushes, a fleeting glimpse of Kate in her pink linen frock, were soothing, until the garden began to be peopled with ghosts of the happy past. Their memory was not distressing, but Mrs. Barlas knew that a woman of over eighty was apt to live in other days, and too much of that sort of thing was not good for anyone. So when she found herself thinking that it was time to call the boys in to wash their hands for luncheon, she raised her voice instead in a scream to summon Kate.

  “Darling, you made poor Geordie leap miles into the air,” protested her granddaughter, joining her on the teak seat under the big pear tree. ‘I never heard anything like it. You really surpassed yourself that time. The welkin, whatever it may be, must still be ringing! Do you want anything?”

  “Just a little light conversation,” said Mrs. Barlas, unperturbed.

  “You shall have it. It’s probably your last opportunity for a little conversation with me. Once Lucy is here, your mind will be ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the state, won’t it?”

  “I suppose it will,” said Mrs. Barlas, and this time her sigh was a genuine one.

  “Don’t worry, my pet,” said Kate, patting the plump hand that fidgeted uneasily with the folds of her black skirt. “It’ll be all right on the night.”

  Then she stopped to wonder if this had perhaps been a rather indelicate remark for a grandmother’s ears, and quickly said the first thing she thought of. “It’s queer, considering that Lucy has lived here for so many years—she and Andrew have been married for twenty, almost, haven’t they?—that she never really seemed to belong, somehow. I always think of you as being mistress of Soonhope, Granny. And I’m pretty sure the others think the same.”

  “Lucy always ran the place very well. She is an exceedingly good housekeeper,” said Mrs. Barlas.

  ‘And that’s about all,’ Kate said to herself, but instantly felt guilty. Was this how she backed Lucy up? Robin Anstruther would have very little reason to think her loyal if he knew. . . . And she hadn’t seen Robin since that evening when he had come to supper with her and Grey in the kitchen, and they had taken sides, she so hotly, he with cool amusement. ‘Oh, dear!’ thought Kate dolefully. “. . . I’m so sorry, Granny, I didn’t hear what you said?”

  “I said that after lunch I am going to lie down, to be fresh for Lucy when she arrives. And I think you should rest, too, Kate. I’m sure you must be tired.”

  But after luncheon, when she had seen her grandmother comfortably tucked up under the eiderdown on her bed, and had left her with the promise that she should be roused half an hour before Lucy was due, a very demon of restlessness seized on Kate, and she prowled the house like a caged lioness. Everything was as spotless and orderly as the combined efforts of Mrs. Pow, Nina, and the red-handed Phemie could make it. The bedrooms, big and airy, were exquisitely clean, smelling of flowers and fresh linen and lavender. Each drawer was lined with smooth white paper, carefully cut or folded to fit exactly, the old mahogany furniture was polished to a soft gloss. Surely Lucy would be pleased to find Soonhope restored to its former state of comfort and home. Kate, feeling a little soothed by the perfection of the rooms, leant out of the window above the front
door, sniffing in the scents of cut grass and late roses, and idly watching Nina, neat in her conventional afternoon black and white, tripping down the drive with a jug in her hand.

  ‘Florence must have forgotten the cream, and sent Nina for it—just like her,’ she thought indulgently, as Nina vanished from sight. ‘Thank goodness Lucy isn’t due for an hour yet!’

  A roll of wheels, the clop-clop of a slowly trotting horse roused her, and she looked up to see the ancient cab from the station trundling round the curve of the avenue. It appeared to be laden with luggage, and suddenly a black umbrella of the old-fashioned type, armed with a long sharp ferrule, was thrust out of one window and poked by no uncertain hand in the aged driver’s ribs. Kate saw a face, sharp-featured and witch-like, framed in a rusty black hat, before she drew back from the window to subside weakly into the nearest chair.

  “Who on earth can it be?” she muttered. She heard the cab stop, the bell ring, sounds as of someone being shown into the parlour—Granny still clung to the old name for the downstairs sitting-room—then the hurried footsteps of Florence thundering on the stairs.

  ‘Of course, Nina would have been sent out on a message so that Florence has to answer the door,’ thought Kate, going out into the wide corridor which ran all along the front of the first floor. She knew and had often been amused by the cook’s ill-concealed passion for admitting visitors, but this time it seemed a little unfortunate.

  “Who is it, Florence?” she asked in a low voice, with a warning glance at the door of Mrs. Barlas’s room.

  “Oh, Mary, Joseph, an’ Jasus, Miss Kate!’ hissed the crimson-faced Florence excitedly, relishing to its fullest extent the drama of her announcement. “’Tis an old lady says she’s come to stay, bein’ a mimber o’ the fam’ly, no less, and the name of her’s Miss Charlotte Napier, an’ her never expected, the creature!”

  2

  “Cousin Charlotte!” Kate had heard her visits to Soonhope spoken of with horror by her mother as one of the nightmares of her childhood, but to the younger generation ‘Granny’s Cousin Charlotte’ was a legendary figure known only by name. Grey, who had once seen her, used her as a model for all the witches in the interminable fairy-tales with which he had wiled away long wet afternoons. In Kate’s mind, Cousin Charlotte was inextricably tangled in a maze of spells, deep forests, and wood-cutters’ fair daughters, through which, dark yet clearly defined, moved an old woman with a hooked nose, a grizzled moustache, and a large black handbag containing among other mysteries a quantity of peculiarly strong peppermint drops.