“It needn’t be. You want to go home and—”
“And?”
He shook his head. “With some people the desire alone would be father to the deed.”
“I’m quite as selfish as that, really,” she said. “I’ll go as soon as I feel that there is the slightest chance of my being completely happy there.”
He came back to the hearthrug, looking down at her. “You’ll promise me that?” he asked.
“I have already promised myself.”
He picked up his cap. “I’ll make myself scarce, then, in case I intrude on your aunt’s party!” He seemed to be speaking at random, his thoughts already elsewhere. “Christine,” he said before they reached the door, “you have a week in which to change your mind.”
She looked steadily back into his eyes.
“I won’t change it,” she told him with the utmost conviction, “but thank you for making the offer.”
“I think you’re being extremely foolish,” he told her with exasperation, “but it’s entirely up to you.”
They had reached the door when there was the sound of voices outside and feet crossing the tiled floor of the hall. Suddenly her aunt’s voice drifted through to them.
“It’s really too cold to sit out any longer,” Flora was saying. “One gets so chilled on these early summer evenings, though the young people never seem to feel it. Can I get you a woolly coat, Madge? That dress of yours looks rather thin.”
Mrs. Henderson was remarking that her frock was really remarkably warm when Christine opened the door. Forever afterward Christine was to remember the look of consternation that spread over her aunt’s face. Flora’s party manners were impeccable, however. She remembered that she had guests in the house so that none of her inward fury was visible as she forced a smile. “Entertaining, Christine?” she queried briefly.
“This is Huntley Treverson, Aunt Flora,” Christine introduced them. “He came to let me know that he is going back to Kinaird.” It appeared to be an unfortunate disclosure, for Mrs. Lamington was quite incapable of suppressing a frown.
“How very nice,” she managed. “Are you going there for a holiday, Mr. Treverson?” she enquired politely.
“I’m hoping to settle there,” he answered, restraining a smile. “And now, if you will kindly excuse me, I must go. I have quite a bit of work to get through before I travel north next week.”
And quite a bit of entertaining, Christine thought, wondering about that side of his Glasgow leave-taking for no reason at all, while the name of Laura Bramshaw brushed across her mind with an unpleasant roughness.
“You won’t want to keep your appointment at the surgery next Wednesday if you are going away,” she suggested as they went down the garden path together. “I booked it this afternoon, though you hadn’t the vaguest idea!” she added.
“It didn’t sound like you—clipped and precise, but I’ll still be there on Wednesday. I don’t propose to go north until Friday morning.”
His words stirred a strange relief in her heart. Relief because she would see him again, because she knew this was not really goodbye.
“I must go,” she said hurriedly, almost breathlessly. “Aunt Flora’s guests consume literally piles of sandwiches and I’m supposed to cope with that sort of thing!”
He closed the gate between them.
“Good luck, Christine—whatever you do,” he said.
She stood watching him go down the road.
Home! Her eyes clouded with tears and because she was alone for a moment she did not drive them away. He had been thoughtful, offering her that chance, and she saw him now in a new light and could not reconcile his thoughtfulness with the reputation he had built up for himself in Kinaird.
“A penny for them, Chris, though, by the look of you, they must be worth that and more!”
She swung around, startled by the voice.
“Oh, Doug!” She laughed away the remains of her emotion. “Am I wanted in the house?”
“I expect you are, but another five minutes won’t make much difference.” He put a friendly arm around her shoulders as they walked slowly back across the lawn. “Look here, Chris, are you really determined to leave us? I heard mother telling Mrs. H. that you had made up your mind to go.”
“Yes, I told her I wanted to look for a job, and I’m still quite convinced that I should find something to do.” She paused, thinking again of Iona and the promise she had made, realizing that she was anything but sure about wanting to leave Merrivale now that her cousin might have need of her.
“I’m wondering if I can fix you up with a job,” he said. “I heard yesterday that old MacDornoch was without a receptionist, but he’s a difficult old sinner to work for.”
“I’d take a chance on that.” Her eyes were eager. “It’s the kind of work I’d love, and you know that I rather fancy myself in a white coat!”
He laughed with her, but he knew that was far from being her only reason for wanting to work in a surgery. He knew that it brought her nearer home, nearer to the work she had always loved.
“I’ll phone him in the morning,” he promised, withdrawing his arm to let her pass into the house before him.
Christine did not find an opportunity to speak to Iona before they went to bed because she was still busy in the kitchen when her cousin went upstairs. When she finally did pass along the corridor to her own room there was no line of light beneath Iona’s door.
I’ll walk to the Toll with her in the morning, she decided, but in the morning her aunt intervened again.
“Doug will take you down in the car, Iona,” she decreed. “It’s very wet. I don’t know why you must carry all these books back and forth from work. Surely that could be done in the library?” Christine thought that Iona flushed slightly as she lifted her heavy attaché case.
“I don’t mind doing the work.” She looked around the familiar room as if not quite sure what answer she had made, hesitating, it seemed, on the verge of a decision. “When your heart’s in a thing you don’t mind how much ... trouble it costs you.” Her voice quivered and steadied again. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Goodbye.” Swiftly she bent and kissed her mother on the cheek, smiled across the table at Christine with sudden tears in her eyes, took one brief, almost despairing look at the portrait of her father hanging over the high mantelpiece and followed her brother from the room.
“Iona is far too emotional,” her mother observed, finishing her toast. “She will always need a very firm hand.”
CHAPTER SIX
It was half-past six before Douglas returned home that evening, and Iona had not come back. Flora had begun glancing at the clock every few minutes with an impatient frown creasing her brow. Presently she put down her knitting and translated her annoyance into actual words.
“Iona’s very late! She may have waited for a bus up from the Toll and found them all full. You had better go down as far as the Toll and see if she’s sheltering there, Doug.”
“I looked as I came past,” Douglas assured her, “but I can quite easily go down again.” He went out to put on his raincoat, assuring them from the hall in a loud voice that he would probably meet his sister on the way.
“She should have been here an hour ago,” Flora said severely. “Meals seem to be of no consequence in this house these days!”
“The buses are very full on a wet night,” Douglas reminded her as he went out.
He drove away, passing the drenched figure of a man in a long raincoat as he turned out of the driveway, but going on his way because he had no idea that the stranger was about to turn in at the gates of his home and walk slowly toward the front door, pausing only to change his stick from one hand to the other before he rang the bell.
Christine answered the summons, and a small, quick pulse began to hammer in her throat as she recognized their visitor.
“I would like to speak to Mrs. Lamington,” Bob Niven said. “Perhaps she will agree to see me when she knows I have come from Iona.�
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Christine stepped back into the hall.
“Will you come in?” she asked. “I’ll tell my aunt you’re here.” She ushered him into the lounge, quite sure that she was taking the only possible course in the circumstances and hoping that, whatever had happened to bring Bob Niven to Merrivale, it would all turn out well for Iona.
Mrs. Lamington looked up expectantly when she opened the dining-room door.
“Well,” she demanded, “who is it?”
“Someone called Bob Niven,” Christine said briefly. “He’s a friend of Iona’s.”
“That man!” Mrs. Lamington half rose to her feet and then subsided in her chair. “I won’t see him! What colossal impertinence, coming here like this!”
“I think you had better see him, Aunt Flora,” Christine advised quietly. “You see, he has come from Iona.”
Flora’s face grew pale and curiously tense.
“But where is Iona?” she demanded, sudden fear stirring in her eyes. “If she’s with this man—”
“At the moment he is alone,” Christine said, “and I have asked him into the lounge. You had better see him, Aunt Flora—for Iona’s sake, at least.”
Her appeal had been quite spontaneous, but for a moment Flora hesitated. Then she squared her shoulders and moved resolutely toward the door.
“Very well,” she agreed, “but if he thinks he has anything to gain by coming here like this, I shall very quickly assure him how mistaken he is!”
She marched quickly across the hall.
Bob Niven was standing before the fire where Christine had left him, his shabby, rain-soaked felt hat still in his hand. Neither spoke as they measured each other with deeply penetrating glances.
“Well,” asked Flora at last, “what can I do for you, Mr. Niven? It is rather surprising to see you here after our conversation of less than a week ago.”
“A good many things have changed in that week, Mrs. Lamington,” he returned quietly. “That’s why I have come to see you.”
“Where is my daughter?” Flora demanded.
“She is with my mother.”
The admission infuriated her. “With your mother?” she repeated. “But this is complete audacity on your part! What right had you to take her there, may I ask?”
His fingers tightened on his stick. “Mrs. Lamington,” he said, keeping his temper with difficulty, “when Iona left here this morning she had no intention of returning. She had made up her mind to cut herself adrift, but she’s not the kind who can do that sort of thing without caring very much, and the emotional stress it caused has been too much for her. She had decided to go to a hostel and write to you from there, but I met her in the lunch hour to say goodbye to her and I realized then how near to collapse she really was. I couldn’t persuade her to come home—in spite of what you must be thinking, I did try—and she was in no state to return to the library, so the only reasonable thing seemed to take her to my mother.”
Flora drew a deep, quivering breath.
“You seem to have taken a great deal upon yourself, Mr. Niven,” she remarked icily, “but now you will oblige me by telling me exactly where my daughter is, so that her brother can go and bring her home at once.”
Some of the patience and kindliness went out of Robert Niven’s eyes.
“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy,” he returned firmly. “Iona and I are in love with one another and we want to be married as soon as possible. I wasn’t going to speak to her at all,” he went on, “but after today I recognized my mistake. I’m twelve years older than she is, admittedly, but I believe now that it makes very little difference so long as I can give her all she needs.”
Flora uttered a short, forced laugh.
“And you really believe that you can give her everything she needs on a few paltry pounds per week, with your mother to keep in the bargain!” she taunted. “Do you think you can give her the kind of home she has been used to, the comfort and security she has always had, the right social background? If you do, you are a fool—several times a fool!” she assured him. “You must be mad even to imagine that my daughter could find happiness away from her own people.”
“I don’t want to take Iona away from her people,” he said quietly, “but I mean to marry her. I have just accepted a job in Aberdeen, and when we are married we will live there. It isn’t so very far away—”
“If Iona marries you, it may as well be at the end of the earth!” was Flora’s ultimatum, given in a voice that was choked with wrath and frustration. “I shall not give my consent to such a marriage ... never so long as I live!”
“Isn’t that rather a foolish attitude?” he asked. “Iona and I mean to marry, with or without your consent, but she will never be really happy while you remain estranged.”
“That’s for her to decide!” Flora was unshaken in her determination. “I have brought her up to respect her parents, but now it seems that she is ready to disregard a lifetime’s training for one stupid whim. Well, if that is what she wishes to do I shall not stand in her way, but I warn you that there will be no help forthcoming from me when things begin to go wrong!”
He drew himself up with a dignity which tamed her wrath.
“We are not setting out on that assumption,” he assured her. “I would have liked it much better if you had come around to my way of thinking, Mrs. Lamington, and Iona would have been a great deal happier with her mother’s blessing on her wedding day, but we will have to do without it—unless you change your mind in the meantime.”
“I have told you that I shall never change my mind,” Flora cried passionately, like a thwarted child. “I have no daughter now: she has chosen to defy me!”
“I think,” he said slowly, “that it would be nearer the truth to say that Iona has appealed to you in vain. I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Lamington,” he added, “but it is your daughter’s wish as well as mine.”
She watched him limp toward the door, pausing there a moment as if to give her time to speak, to retrieve her harshly worded condemnation of her daughter and grant Iona the full measure of her happiness at the beginning of her married life. But she did not move, and he went out with a murmured leave-taking to which she would not even respond.
When the front door had closed behind him the stillness of death seemed to descend upon the house, and it was fully ten minutes before she moved toward the dining room where her niece waited. “You know why that man came here, I suppose,” she said.
“I know it was about Iona,” Christine answered. “Can you tell me what has happened, Aunt Flora?”
“I can tell you that I have washed my hands of my daughter,” Flora said grimly. “I have never tolerated disobedience, but suddenly I am faced with it in another form. Iona is determined to marry this ... this library clerk and will do so now, he assures me, without my consent.”
“Aunt Flora, where is Iona?” Christine asked when this tirade had come to an end.
“With this man’s mother. I believe they live in Springburn, of all places.”
Christine took a swift turn about the big, showy room.
“Would you like me to go there—to see Iona?” she asked.
There was the barest pause before Flora said decisively, “Not as an emissary of mine! I have no intention of pleading with my daughter to come back to me.”
“Iona won’t be happy,” Christine said with deep conviction. “She was far too fond of her home and her family to have done this without thought.”
“I think she has shown very little consideration for her family,” her aunt retorted. “What am I to say to people? What am I to tell the Hendersons? Even in these days, a girl running away to be married is a complete disgrace, socially.”
In spite of her instant impatience Christine felt sorry for this strange, proud woman who was her father’s sister yet so far removed from him in character and outlook that they might have been brought up in different worlds. She could not think of any way in which she might help unless it
was to find Iona and try to reason with her. Yet how could she even attempt to persuade her cousin that what she was about to do was wrong when she was so firmly convinced that Iona was doing the only thing possible in the circumstances?
“If you would let me go to see her,” she repeated, “I could at least tell you if she is well.”
“You may please yourself,” Flora told her coldly, adding unexpectedly, “You will not, of course, be leaving Merrivale now, not until ... things are more settled. Douglas will be very upset.” How could anyone be expected to understand Aunt Flora, Christine wondered, as she went to supervise the neglected tea. How could one reconcile her harshness toward Iona and that appeal not to desert Merrivale? Was it merely pride raising its head again, or was it the one glimpse of a lonely, elderly woman who had failed in the upbringing of her family and suddenly realized it?
The whole future outlook was like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle that had been wilfully scattered by a petulant child, and none of the pieces seemed to fit. They appeared more widely scattered when, two days later, she telephoned Bob Niven at the library and arranged to accompany him to Springburn to see her cousin.
Bob hadn’t very much to say when they met. He looked strangely drawn and tired, and when they were seated in the bus she was first to break a long silence.
“Don’t worry too much about Iona and the future, Bob,” she advised. “Things have a way of straightening themselves out in the end. All we need is plenty of patience.”
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