It seemed no time until her father was home, too. He had heard most of the details from Huntley as they drove back from Letterness.
“He seems a decent enough young fellow,” he said. “Wouldn’t come in, though, in case he’d be thanked again.” He laughed and gave Christine’s cheek an affectionate pinch. “And here was I, blissfully unaware of the uproar, sorting out Hamish’s papers for his blind sister. She’ll have to be persuaded to leave Letterness now. It’s far too risky her being up there alone.” John had many burdens that were really other people’s troubles but which, by virtue of his profession, he frequently heard about and could not ignore. “We’ll see about all that at the funeral, though. And now, off to bed, all of you! I know you too well to credit that you slept at all last night!”
“Strangely enough, I did,” Christine confessed, “so I’m not in the least tired. But make Nigel take an hour’s rest, dad. He’s been out on the hill searching most of the night.”
“You think of everything, don’t you?” her father said, ruffling her short hair as he passed by. “I’ll go and see what I can do.”
CHAPTER TWO
A week later Rhona Helmsdale walked up the hill from the village pushing her bicycle, her morning’s shopping in the deep wickerwork basket strapped on the handlebars. She was not riding the machine because she wanted the extra time to think.
Twice in the past week she had gone into a shop in the village to be immediately conscious of that tension in the atmosphere that comes from a suddenly suspended conversation. But this morning the malicious sentence had not been curtailed quickly enough. She heard the poison. Then, quite suddenly, she had started to speak. She, Rhona Helmsdale, who had never spoken out of turn in her life, had been cold and biting and incisive in defense of her sister.
She could not remember now what she said, but the middle-aged gossips wilted before the fire in her eyes and stood back in silence at her scorn. She had made her purchases quickly, conscious that their conversation immediately broke out again as soon as she closed the door.
What could Dan McKelvie’s wife possibly know about Christine? They had hardly ever met, and then only when Christine drove her father on an errand of mercy to the gamekeeper’s door. Such ingratitude was utterly beyond Rhona’s comprehension. Unfortunately for the peace of mind of the whole Helmsdale household, her face was still an open book by the time she reached home and it did not take her mother long to discover the truth.
Her reactions were much the same as her daughter’s, but the hurt was more on Christine’s account than from any feeling of disillusionment with her neighbors.
“Folk will talk,” she said quietly. “Gossip is the very air some people breathe, and we’ll just have to learn not to heed what they say.”
“But if Chris hears it!” Rhona’s voice was troubled. “You know what it would mean to her.”
“There’s no need for her to hear, or your father, either,” Georgina said firmly. “It’ll blow over in a day or two.”
“Why do people have to talk like that?” Rhona cried vehemently. “It’s horribly unfair—”
“Who’s been talking about what?” Christine had come into the sitting room behind them, her usual bright smile bringing out the amusement in her eyes. “It ... isn’t serious, is it?” she added, having seen their faces in that unguarded moment when they wheeled around from the fire, and she knew instinctively that it was both serious and personal.
“Rhona’s upset.” It was difficult for Georgina to evade the truth. “She ... heard some gossip in the village this morning. It was nothing,” she added lamely. “Just idle tittle-tattle.”
Her older daughter continued to look at her for a moment, and then she knew, and the cold fury of her first reaction was plain to see on her pale, intense face.
“So Dan McKelvie and his gossiping wife have been busy?” Her young mouth was tight and hard with contempt. “Maybe I should have expected this, though I thought Kinaird knew me better—”
“There is always someone willing to throw mud in a small community,” her mother said slowly. “We must just never heed it.”
Christine’s eyes flashed their quick scorn at the suggestion.
“But I want to heed! I want to tell them just what I think—” Her voice steadied as her mother touched her arm in quiet reproof. “All right! I know it wouldn’t do any good,” she agreed, “and ... and perhaps it wouldn’t be fair to dad.”
She turned away, going slowly upstairs to her room, and it was two days before Georgina knew that her husband, also, had heard the gossip.
On the day Rhona had returned from the village so upset, John Helmsdale had gone to Fort William to bring his only sister, Flora, to Kinaird for her annual visit, and on the way he had given the postman a lift as far as the end of Druim Alaig road. David Henderson, known more familiarly as “the post,” was a guileless soul who spoke very much to the point, and straightaway he hoped that the doctor “just wasn’t paying any heed to the gossip that was going around about young Miss Christine and old Treverson’s nephew.” He knew how folk loved to talk, but he just didn’t believe a word of it!
John Helmsdale also “knew folk,” and he was deeply annoyed by the whole affair, so that some of the anger was visible in his eyes when he met his sister at the Glasgow train. Over lunch in Fort William’s most prominent hotel he unburdened himself to Flora so that she was well acquainted with the whole adventure before reaching Kinaird. She was a self-centered woman who had brought up her family strictly, and quite often she had thought that neither her brother nor Georgina had been firm enough with the girls. But that did not prevent her from offering to take Christine back to Glasgow with her until “this unfortunate business” had blown over.
Christine’s attitude to the proposal was a firm one, however.
“I’ve no intention of running away,” she said steadily. “Gossip is something I’ve never been able to abide, and if I left now it would probably give them something more to talk about.”
Flora Lamington thought her attitude surprising, but she left her offer open.
“You may change your mind, Christine,” she said a little acidly. “Gossip can be a very difficult thing to live with.”
And up in the gray house on the hill little more than a stone’s throw from the partially disused quarry where Benjamin Treverson had made most of his money, Huntley Treverson was hearing the gossip, too, for the first time. He had returned to Glasgow the day after the floods to attend a business meeting and had come back only now to Glenavon. Old Ben told him the story over coffee and was not quite prepared for his reaction. Huntley was annoyed—damned annoyed! The old man sat up in his chair, immediately alert.
“I suppose,” Huntley muttered savagely, “I am expected to laugh this off, and I would have done ordinarily, but—well, dash it all, Christine Helmsdale isn’t ordinary! I don’t think she’s the type who will take this lying down, either. Good Lord! Why can’t we knock people’s heads together when they start this infernal gossiping!”
“I’ve always thought a lot of head knocking might begin at home,” old Ben observed evenly.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you obviously like the girl.”
“I can’t see what that has to do with it! Of course, I liked her—she’s the sort one meets only too rarely, generally hitched up to someone else.”
“Is there someone else in this case?”
“I don’t know. There was that doctor fellow who took charge so officiously the next morning—”
“I’ve never heard she was engaged.”
Huntley took a quick turn around the room, obviously deep in his own conflicting thoughts, and it was evident that his anger was solely on the girl’s account. Or so old Ben reflected.
“But what can I do about it?” Huntley demanded angrily, finishing his restless pacing on the hearthrug and glaring down at his uncle as if Ben had had some hand in the business. “I could, of course, offer to marry her—”
He tried to laugh naturally, but there was no humor in the sound.
“You might do worse,” Ben pointed out unexpectedly. “It’s high time you settled down, for one thing and, for another, you won’t come across a girl like Christine Helmsdale every day of the week—even in Glasgow!”
Huntley laughed.
“You’re shamelessly Victorian, aren’t you? These things aren’t done nowadays.”
“It was your own suggestion,” Ben tossed back at him. “And a good many things aren’t done that ought to be done, and a lot are done that shouldn’t be, but you asked me what I thought and I’ve told you, and that’s an end to it.” The old man reached for his pipe and began to fill it. “You’ll please yourself, anyway, so I’m wasting my breath.”
Huntley did not answer him. Long ago his uncle and he had agreed to differ on a good many subjects and still remain friends. In fact, ever since he had been summarily dismissed from Glenavon in his last year at college they had measured each other with more respect than anger. Huntley had no desire, at that time, to settle in the Western Highlands or anywhere else. Even now he was not sure that he particularly wanted to settle down at Kinaird. The quarry, as a business, was finished, although Ben clung tenaciously to the old workings, stubbornly certain that the market would return to its former glory. He maintained a thin trickle of business, still employing many of the men who had started with him as youths, and, although Ben would not have admitted to such sentiment, Huntley believed that it was mainly because of these old employees—and himself—that the quarry was kept alive. When the quarry closed Ben Treverson would be finished. Huntley’s own idea was that there was something beyond the quarry, a new beginning, although even he had not quite found the courage to approach his uncle on the subject. It would mean a row, a cataclysm of wrath the equal of which had yet to be imagined, so Huntley remained in Glasgow chafing under the confines of an office job, while conscious that his thoughts drifted often and more surely back to Lochaber and the prospect of a new beginning among the dark hills beyond Glenavon.
His life in Glasgow was a paradox; he was not the type ever to be content with an office desk as his means of livelihood, yet life in the city had proved both stimulating and amusing otherwise. A nucleus of old acquaintances had claimed all his leisure hours and there was a good deal of excitement to be had yachting on the Firth in the season. The pity was that the season wasn’t long enough and that the winter months were filled mostly with dinner parties and dances given mainly in the local hotels by people who regarded him as eligible.
Among these were the Bramshaws, who had bought the old Mains at Kinaird, carefully renovating it out of all character and renaming it Bramshaw Mains. Laura Bramshaw was amusing enough, he was forced to admit, but during the past few weeks he had been seeing her as a typical product of the city, utterly out of place on the few occasions when she condescended to come to Kinaird. Huntley thought their relationship rather pitiful, because he liked old Bramshaw, and at this stage of his reflections his thoughts invariably swung back to the Helmsdales. That was a father and daughter companionship which rung completely true. There was love and affection, honest down-to-the-earth sincerity with no false complexes attempting to cover up something that was entirely natural. They were pals, those two, simply and unaffectedly proclaiming in all they said and did what they gained from each other.
He felt the raw edge of envy grating across his nerves as he thought of their oneness. There had been nothing like that in his life. His mother had been affectionate but completely absorbed in her own delicate state of health, and his father had been killed in the Second World War. Old Ben had been indulgent, which is not always the same as being kind. He had proved himself hard and stubborn when he imagined his amazingly strong will was likely to be defied, and no real love and affection had been implanted in the small boy’s breast. He learned later in life what his uncle had done for him in a material way and was dutifully grateful, but he had been possessed of a stubborn pride of his own and finally they had been in conflict.
It was typical of them both, however, that they made no reference to their differences now; but Huntley Treverson saw something in the companionship of John Helmsdale and his daughter that he had never known.
He thought of Christine with admiration and respect ever since that morning a week ago when he had watched her drive away with Nigel Kilbridge while he had stood at the edge of the flood water alone. He frowned swiftly at the thought of the young doctor, supposing that Nigel must have a good background and a great deal of security to offer her and remembering that Doctor Helmsdale had spoken about his assistant on the way back from Letterness with warmth and affection in his voice. For the first time Huntley Treverson found himself thinking seriously of stability. A devil-may-care attitude toward life was all very well but if a man wanted roots...
Three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon was rarely a busy time in the Helmsdale household. Normally the doctor retired to his consulting room to “deal with his correspondence.”
This Sunday afternoon, however, he had gone out with Nigel on a doubtful case, and Christine had spent the hour after dinner in the garden, weeding the rockery. It was surprising, she mused, how quickly weeds appeared to choke the earthy crevices between the stones so that the flowers could not grow properly.
She dug the hoe savagely into a clump of weeds. If one could only do that with gossip, she thought angrily, as she heard the garden gate slam and looked up to find Huntley Treverson striding purposefully toward the house.
Her first impulse was to stand where she was and hope that he would not see her and then, with her head held a fraction of an inch higher, she went across the grass to meet him. There was nothing she could do except appear natural and friendly in a casual way.
She made the decision swiftly, before they had drawn level on the path, but the moment she met his eyes she knew that he had already heard the gossip. The amusement that had lurked in their gray depths had gone and in its place was a look of intense impatience.
The anger confused her for a moment so that she said stiltedly, “Did you want to see my father?”
“No,” he said, “I came to see you.”
Abruptly he turned and looked at her.
“Christine,” he said, using her name as naturally as they had both accepted their imprisonment in the lodge. “I’m terribly sorry about all this. I had no idea that such an ... unavoidable adventure would cause such a stir, but I suppose I should have known better than to have arranged things as I did. I went back to Glasgow the following day, and it was only when I arrived here last week that I realized what a fool I had been.”
“You needn’t apologize,” Christine said quickly.
He looked at her keenly.
“I didn’t come to apologize,” he said. “I came to ask you to marry me.”
Christine’s first reaction was shock, tempered with surprise, and then a spark of anger kindled in her calm eyes as she saw the motive behind his proposal. People had been talking, and he was sorry for her and so, as he saw it, he was doing the right thing by asking her to marry him. She was conscious of mortification and rage against the gossips and a curious, inexplicable sense of hurt deep down that had nothing to do with either emotion.
Then, swiftly and quite calmly, she said, “I can assure you there is no need for you to do that. You have only placed us both in a rather embarrassing position ... far more embarrassing, as I see it, than the night at the lodge. Please don’t think for one minute that I ... expected anything like this.” She could not control the flush that spread over her cheeks. “I couldn’t marry you,” she declared with more vehemence than she might normally have used.
Her level tone and complete dignity had the effect on Huntley Treverson of increasing his admiration for her, but something he had never before had to contend with stung sharply at her refusal.
“Do you think we might forget about this?” Christine went on. “A few minutes ago you called it
an unavoidable adventure and that is how I should prefer to think of it. We have nothing to reproach ourselves for. Please believe that I think of it in this way—”
“And what I suggest is impossible?” He could not keep the wry note out of his voice. “Well, I’m sorry about everything, but there seems nothing more I can do unless you would like me to go down to the village and punch all the gossips’ heads? That, I can assure you, would give me the world of satisfaction!”
“I don’t think it would do a lot of good.” She was forced to smile. “It might only complicate matters further.”
“I’ve been several kinds of fool,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. I should never have come here.”
She did not contradict him, and he turned in the direction of the gate.
“If there’s any more trouble...”
“I don’t think there will be. They have had their say, but if there is I think I have ample support here.”
That, he thought, was the snub he deserved, and he could not blame her for administering it. He closed the gate and bade her a curt goodbye.
He had walked down from Glenavon “to give himself time to think.” He smiled sardonically at the thought as he breasted the rise onto the main road. With all the time to think in the world, he would probably not have made any better of this afternoon.
He moved to the side of the road to make way for a car, but it slowed down and came to a standstill beside him.
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