“It’s the thought of Granny that has been worrying me most,” Kate admitted with a sigh. “Very well, Mrs. Anstruther. I suppose I was a coward to want to get out of it, but it’s very unpleasant and difficult altogether.”
“Life often is,” retorted Mrs. Anstruther. “But it’s always interesting even at its most disagreeable. Remember that, Kate, as a pearl of wisdom. And you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, so you don’t need to worry about what people say.”
That was all very well in the shelter of The Anchorage drawing-room, thought Kate as she went down the road up which she had almost run in her impulsive haste an hour earlier. But it didn’t seem to work when, for example, she met Miss Milligan, as she did at Soonhope gate, and had to endure the piercing curiosity of her look while exchanging polite remarks about the fine weather and old Mrs. Milligan’s health. Escaping at last with a hot face and hotter anger, Kate walked up the drive and into the house. ‘Everything,’ she thought passionately, ‘is perfectly disgusting. And why can’t I be left in peace with my own worries?’
So far she had not had time to realize that this sea of extraneous troubles was a blessing, however well disguised. When she had time to sit and brood over her unhappiness about Robin, she might wish that she had something else, no matter how disagreeable, to divert her mind. ‘If Lucy appears and gives me one of those looks of hers, I’m liable to forget all Mrs. Anstruther’s good advice,’ was her next thought.
Fortunately, it was not Lucy, but Anne, who came flying downstairs at top speed, her face eager. “Kate! Isn’t it lovely?” she cried. “Grey has just rung up to say he’s coming for the week-end!”
This was good news to Kate, who felt that with a member of her own family, particularly Grey, on the spot, she would not be so alone and unprotected; but Anne’s delight seemed excessive, and she could not help saying: “Are you so fond of Grey, Anne?”
’Of course I am, he’s a darling,” said Anne quickly, and to Kate’s ears, evasively. And she went on in a great hurry:
“Oh, and Robin Anstruther rang up too, something about going to see some geese, of all things! Father knows. He’ll tell you.”
She went on across the hall and out over the lawn like a bird in flight, and Kate saw that she could only express her pleasure at the thought of Grey’s coming by swift movement; and she smiled and then sighed. Nothing like that could help her, not if she ran like Atalanta. “But this is a revolting state of mind, this mess of sickly self-pity that you’re wallowing in!” she told herself severely. “For goodness’ sake stop it.”
“Talking to yourself is a sign that you’re going mad, Cousin Kate,” said Henry, popping out of the storeroom with suspicious speed and stealth.
“Very likely, Cousin Henry. And eating between meals is a sign that you’ll be disgustingly fat when you reach your father’s age,” retorted Kate. “‘With an enormous stomach and no neck.”
“‘Fair round belly with good capon lined,’” said Henry cheerfully. “I won’t mind a bit. I wish it was lined with good capon now. I’ve only put a few biscuits and things into it.”
“Is that all? And in ten minutes it will be teatime!” said Kate pityingly. “And only three hours ago you ate a luncheon that would have fed three normal boys. Poor little fellow.”
“I say, Kate, do you know Grey’s coming to-morrow?” asked Henry, quickly changing the subject. “I’m glad, aren’t you? I like Grey.”
“So do I,” said Kate, laughing.
“So does Anne. She’s been doing her nails and things ever since he rang up,” said Henry. “What tosh, isn’t it? As if Grey’s going to notice Anne’s nails!”
“He won’t be able to avoid noticing yours,” Kate answered unfairly. “If you don’t have at them with a trowel or some suitable implement.”
“Back chat isn’t wit. Old Stinky says so,” said Henry, and rushed away with a wild whoop of triumph before Kate could punish this final piece of impertinence.
“What a boy!” she said aloud, and Andrew, coming in, heard her.
“Who? Henry? What has he been up to now?”
“Nothing,” said Kate. “Merely the usual impudence, which is a good sign, when you consider that his parting from Virginia is only a week away, poor dear.”
“You’re far too decent to the brat. . . . Will you come with Robin and me to-morrow evening to see the geese flighting to Crookedshaws Loch?”
He evidently expected her to accept with pleasure but Kate had several reasons for hesitating. First of all, she was not sure that she wanted to see Robin—yet. Later, perhaps, but not yet. Then there was Lucy, who if she did not openly object, would manage to let her silent disapproval fill the house like a clinging sea-mist. And the boys and Grey might to go too, and if Grey went, Anne would go, and that would make so many of them that they would probably frighten the geese. This was what Kate said, after a pause, since her first two reasons, though the really important ones, could not be spoken.
As she had feared, Andrew brushed it aside. “They’ll all be going to play tennis,” he said. “The tournament has been fixed for to-morrow, and even Henry has been asked to play, with some girl who is staying at Charteris and hasn’t a partner. Poor girl. If she only knew it, she’d be better playing with Virginia than Henry, but no matter. And Lucy will be going to look on, of course. No, you can go with a clear conscience. I’ll let Robin know it’s all right.”
A clear conscience Kate could certainly achieve, but she could not rid herself of a foreboding of trouble, which remained with her throughout the evening and haunted her dreams all night.
Grey’s cheerful arrival at midday seemed to blow through the house like a wind from the hills. Kate felt heartened as he thrust his hard cheek against hers in a careless brotherly kiss, the boys were noisily exuberant, Anne very quiet, though her eyes shone as if a candle had been lighted in each. Even Lucy, who was fond of Grey, lost the forbidding look, the tightly closed lips and suspicious carriage of the head which Kate had come to dread, and welcomed him in what was for her a positively gushing manner.
In spite of this change, there was still a faint uneasiness in Kate’s mind as she went up to her room to put on the thick shoes and stockings and tweed suit which Andrew had told her she ought to wear for her own comfort and because it would not be seen by the geese against the heather as a lighter garment would. But she reassured herself by supposing that she was not looking forward to seeing Robin with unmixed pleasure. The thought that Lucy, as well as the others, would have started for Charteris, made her run downstairs much more cheerfully than she had gone up. For however clear her conscience was, she had no wish to rouse any further evidences of that absurd jealousy and suspicion which Lucy had already shown her.
It was a considerable shock, and a most unpleasant one, to find Lucy standing in the hall watching her descent of the last flight of steps. For one moment Kate wanted to turn, run madly up again, and lock herself into her bedroom. She felt as though minutes had ticked away while she clutched the banister rail on which her hand had rested lightly until the smooth cool wood hurt her palm, while the atmosphere thickened with the sense of approaching crisis. Actually she made no perceptible pause, but continued on her downward way steadily, if rather more slowly.
“I see you are going out,” said Lucy at once, as if she had been waiting patiently for Kate’s foot to reach the stone floor of the hall before she spoke. “With Andrew, of course.”
“With Andrew—and Robin Anstruther,” answered Kate so lightly that she surprised herself. It did not seem possible that with legs turned to melting jelly, a heart that thumped and banged in one’s ears, a general feeling of some nausea, one could still manage to behave in quite an ordinary way.
“Robin Anstruther!” There was complete unbelief in Lucy’s short high-pitched laugh, and Kate remained silent. She was not going to try to justify herself by explanations which would be received like this. “I can’t stand this any longer,” Lucy went on rapidly. “I suppose you
imagine that I’ve noticed nothing? But I have, I assure you. There’s very little that I miss when it concerns Andrew.”
“In this case,” said Kate, finding her voice, and thankful that it obeyed her, “you have been noticing what doesn’t exist, Lucy, except in your own mind. Can’t you ever forget what Andrew has done, and be fair to him?”
“Fair to him? Fair? What is he to me?” cried Lucy in the hysterical tones of repression suddenly let loose. “The other affair was bad enough, but this, in his own house, with you, is too much. I never thought that even Andrew could—”
“What have I been doing now?” Unnoticed by either of them, Andrew had come in from the front door, and stood looking at them steadily, his face quite white, his blue eyes blazing. “Now, Lucy, tell me at once what you are making a scene about.”
“A scene? Am I to stand by and watch you being unfaithful to me again, with one of our own guests, and your cousin at that?”
“How dare you?” said Andrew, and though he did not raise his voice the anger and scorn it held made Lucy shrink. Kate, once more frozen into silence, shiver a little. It was so frightful as to be unbelievable that she, Kate Heron, should be standing here having to listen to this.
“I’ve tried my best since I came back, Lucy,” he said. “God knows you haven’t made it easy for me, but I have tried to go on with this. But no one could be expected to stand your pettiness, your bullying, and now this foul slanderous talk—about Kate, of all people!”
“That’s enough, Andrew,” Kate said sharply. “Please don’t say any more. I don’t deserve to have to listen to either of you. I shall go home at once, as soon as I have packed a suitcase. Perhaps you’ll see that the rest of my things are sent after me?”
She turned and walked upstairs, so numb with rage and disgust that she felt nothing but the immediate necessity to leave Soonhope.
5
“So you see, Grey, there was nothing else for it. I took Kate to the station and saw her into the train, and sent a wire to your people telling them when to expect her. I can only apologize for myself as well as Lucy. It is unforgivable that anyone staying in my house should have been treated to such a scene, and I feel it is very largely my fault. I should have seen it coming.”
Andrew and Grey faced one another in the billiard-room, both rather pale, and Grey puzzled as well as angry. “Of course I’ll leave too,” he said at last. “Nothing to do with you, Andrew, but I can hardly stay when Kate—when Kate—” he broke off. “Lucy must be completely loopy,” he ended lamely.
“It’s my fault,” Andrew still stood rigidly by the fireplace. “If I hadn’t given her cause to feel jealous and suspicious, this would never have happened.”
“Rot, my dear fellow. Lucy’d have been just the same if you had never so much as looked at another woman. She could be suspicious of a clothes-horse if you hung a petticoat on it,” said Grey robustly. “Look here, let’s have a stiff whisky and soda. You obviously need it, and I wouldn’t mind one myself.”
Andrew suddenly sank into a chair, his face in his hands. “Yes. You might get it, will you, Grey?” he muttered.
Grey went out, and in the dark passage almost fell over the three young Lockharts, who were huddled there, a cluster of white tennis clothes and pale faces. “Adam, you and Henry get the whisky and siphon and glasses,” said Grey.
The two boys detached themselves from Anne.
“Just tell us first, Grey, is it another row?” said Adam huskily. “Is it as bad as the one when Father left us?” Henry made a sound like a sob and tried to turn it into a cough.
“Good God, I hope not! But it’s bad enough,” Grey said, realizing that, young though they were, the state of affairs between their parents entitled them to be told. “Your mother’s made a fool of herself, a damn’ fool of herself—about Kate, and Andrew is livid, and Kate’s gone home, and myself presently.”
Anne gave a small cry and seized his arm. “Oh, Grey! Oh, Grey! I knew something like this would happen!” she wailed. “But why should it spoil everything for us?”
Grey said to the boys: “Go and fetch that whisky, will you?” and as they crept miserably away, took Anne in his arms. “It’s not going to spoil anything for you, beautiful,” he said.
“But you’ll go, and how can you come back now that Mother’s been awful to Kate?”
“It’ll blow over in time, I hope. I mean to speak to Lucy myself. She may listen to me,” said Grey more hopefully than he felt, for a woman as madly unreasonable and self-righteous as Lucy would be almost impossible to argue with. “Perhaps I can frighten her into common sense. She must see, when she comes round, that she’s been a bloody fool—sorry, Anne, you know I don’t say things like that to you as a rule, but there’s no other word for it—about Kate. And in the meantime—well,” he went on, stroking the tumbled head that lay on his shoulder. “You weren’t so keen about me an hour or two ago, my sweet, and you’re so awfully young. We’d have to wait till you grow up a bit anyhow, wouldn’t we?”
“That was quite different, when I knew you were here, and I could see you any time I wanted to. I was just giving you a little wholesome negligence for your own good. But you know I love you truly, Grey. I couldn’t love you any more if I was a centurion!”
Grey kissed her, moved by her earnestness, and never even noticed the malapropism which would have delighted her father. “Well, we’ll tell Andrew, shall we? Would that help?”
“Oh, yes, it would! He always understands,” said Anne, and then the boys came back, and they all went into the billiard-room.
“Andrew,” said Grey, pushing a glass of practically neat whisky into his hand. “Take a pull at this and listen. Anne and I want to marry each other.”
As he had hoped, this was as effectual in rousing Andrew as a sudden cold shower. “Are you trying to be funny?” he said. “Or is this with the kindly idea of counteracting one shock with another?” Then, looking from his sons’ stricken faces to his daughter, holding tightly to Grey’s hand: “No, I see that it isn’t meant for a joke. But why choose this moment to spring it on me?”
“Well, you see—I ought to call you ‘sir’ if you’re going to be my father-in-law—this—this crisis has sort of brought things to a head,” explained Grey.
“I see. And who said I was going to be your father-in-law? Have I given my consent yet?”
Grey grinned broadly at him. “It’s no good, Drew. You can’t do it,” he said.
“But look here, Grey. Is this a time to tell me that you’re going to snatch my only daughter from me?”
“But he isn’t, Father! Not for ages!” cried Anne, running to him and putting her arms round his neck so that whisky splashed all over both of them. “We only want to be engaged! We don’t want to be married!” she ended in shocked tones.
“Oh, if that’s all, you can he engaged with my blessing,” said Andrew wearily. “Give me some more whisky, Grey, I need it. And as you are all concerned in this, you’d better give me your opinions. Kate, as you probably know already, has been driven out of this house, by what was as much my fault as anyone’s. Don’t contradict me,”—as a murmur rose from Grey and Anne. “You must take my word for it. Whether she will ever forgive us and come here again, I don’t know, and it’s too soon yet to hope for that. In any case, what I really want to put to you is this: Is it any good my staying here? Adam, you’ll soon be old enough to manage this place with a grieve as capable as Purdie. Anne, you’re settled in life, as engagements usually lead to marriages, and Henry will have several years of school yet to occupy his attention. I seem to have done more harm than good by coming back. Has it made any sort of difference to you having me here? The truth, mind you, and nothing but the truth. This is no time for sentimental lies.”
“All the difference, Father,” said Anne in a low voice. “You know it has. We couldn’t go back to where we were without you, could we, boys?”
Andrew looked at his sons, who stared at him from over-bright eyes. �
��I’ve only this to say,” said Adam huskily. “If you go, I won’t take Soonhope. Not while you’re alive. If you go, Father, we’re going with you.” He nudged Henry savagely.
“You needn’t dig my ribs to pieces,” said Henry. “Of course we are going with Father—and Virginia too. You wouldn’t leave her, Father? When are we starting?”
Andrew gave a long sigh, and with it, finally relinquished all his hopes of getting away. “Well, I don’t propose to cart you all over the place with me,” he said. “So it looks as if I’d have to stay here.”
Everyone showed vast relief except Henry, who looked woefully disappointed. “Then I’ll just have to go back to school next week as usual? he said. “I might have known it. Gosh, what a sell!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
The slow weeks carried the year on from autumn into winter. Kate, at home again, found that she could still laugh at Abracabroccoloni’s culinary advice, delivered through Grey, still enjoy a crisp frosty morning and a clear saffron and rose sunset, still eat with appetite and sleep, as a rule, peacefully through the nights. If life for the present had lost all flavour for her, no one suspected it. She had come home sick and shaken, her distress over Robin thrust into the background of her mind by the scene with Lucy. Her parents asked no questions, for which she was thankful, but her mother noticed how she shrank from any mention of Soonhope, and was intensely angry at the cause, which Grey had hinted to her. Greystiel Heron said nothing, except once, and then it was to mutter to his pipe: “I never liked Lucy Lockhart. Too cat-faced.”
Anne and Grey wrote to each other at great length, but he never went to Soonhope, nor would she go to what the family called ‘the Heronry.’
In the meantime, she wrote in her large untidy hand, we’re better to meet at the houses of neutral friends.
“So silly,” commented Kate, when Grey read this out to her. “As if we were at war or something.”
Yoked with a Lamb Page 26