Doctor's Daughter

by Jean S. MacLeod

  Christine went upstairs to write to Iona and to her mother and father, realizing with a small pang of pity for the lonely girl who was her cousin, that her own welcome home would be unconditional and determined that no breath of the truth should ever reach Iona to spoil her happiness and relief over the summons back to Merrivale.

  “There’s just one thing,” she said to Douglas when they were alone together the following afternoon. “You have to promise me that you will look after Iona and convince your mother that her attitude to Bob Niven is all wrong. You have your own happiness, Doug, but don’t forget about Iona.”

  “I won’t,” he promised easily. “I think mother will come around in the end. She’s getting such a kick out of Sheila and me that she’ll ease up on Iona now. Anyway, Iona and Bob can do it all quietly as soon as we get away, and a quiet wedding in the family won’t come amiss after all the fuss there’s apparently going to be over ours! If I had my way—”

  “You sound exactly like old MacDornoch when you say that!” Christine laughed. “And I’ve yet to tell him that I’m turning down his amazing offer to keep me in spite of my shortcomings!”

  She did not relish the thought of the interview with Gordon MacDornoch, but it was not nearly as stormy as she had anticipated, although he did get in one or two barbed remarks about unreliability.

  “But I suppose if your father needs you, I must just look around for someone else,” he concluded, accepting her offer to work a week’s notice with a grunt.

  The week seemed very long and her eagerness stretched out the days of waiting until each seemed to contain far more than its allotted twenty-four hours.

  The wedding as a topic of conversation outlasted everything else. Flora was already discussing the bridesmaid’s dress with Sheila, although it was not yet certain that Iona would return for the wedding.

  “You must use your influence with her,” Christine was told as she made ready to catch the early-morning train for Fort William on Monday. “Iona goes a great deal by what you say.”

  “I think she will come, provided there’s no suggestion that she put off her own wedding,” Christine assured her on parting, and Flora nodded absently, as if Iona’s wedding had suddenly become not very important to her.

  Douglas saw Christine to the station. “You look about fourteen!” he teased. “A little girl setting out on her first trip to the seaside!”

  “I feel like that,” Christine confessed. “It seems so long since I’ve seen them all!”

  She felt impatient as she waited for the train to pull out, and then she remembered the last time she had stood on this platform and how forlorn she had felt as she had watched Huntley and Iona settling down in their seats. It was but a step from there to the thought of Laura Bramshaw, to wondering if Laura was still at Kinaird and if Huntley saw her very often.

  “When you’ve settled down, Doug—after your honeymoon—you must bring Sheila to Kinaird,” she suggested. “She’ll love it and you know you’ll be made welcome.”

  “I may keep you to your promise!” he grinned. “We have to find a house in Glasgow first, though. Mother has offered us Merrivale, but I think we’ll still look out for something of our own.”

  “I think you’re wise,” she acknowledged, and then their goodbyes merged with the whistle of the engine and the train moved out.

  A subdued excitement kept Christine at the window most of the way, watching the changing panorama of the sunlit scene as river and loch gave place to deep glen and vast forest and the wide straths stretched away on either side. Glen Spean was journey’s end. She began to collect her baggage long before they had reached Kilmonivaig and was standing up in the corridor when the train finally pulled into Fort William. Her father would be there to meet her, and perhaps Rhona and Iona! Her mother would be waiting at home, preparing the tea. The longing in her had become reality; she was almost there.

  Eagerly she pressed close to the window, looking for her father’s familiar, broad-shouldered figure in the little group beyond the barrier, but before she had picked him out she became aware of someone else she knew at the far side of the platform. Her heart began to beat more quickly and the flush of expectation deepened in her cheeks as she recognized Huntley Treverson. He had his back to the incoming train, but there was no mistaking his height and the rather arrogant set of his proud head. He was there, but not to meet her. He was there, and her whole world was there!

  I’m being a fool, she told herself severely. He probably doesn’t even know I’m coming back, far less coming by this train! He’s collecting freight—it looks like machinery for the quarry—and would have been here, anyway.

  The train stopped and a porter opened the door for her, but Huntley’s nearness was all she could think about, his presence there at this moment when she first set foot on Lochaber’s beloved soil again. She could pass him by, she could go her way without his ever being aware that they had passed within a handclasp of one another, yet the fact that he had been there on the platform completed her homecoming.

  Then, as if her thoughts had bridged the distance between them like a summoning voice, he turned and saw her. There was an instant of recognition and after that hesitation. He stood where he was, although he removed the battered felt hat from his head, and there was no smile nor any sign of pleased greeting on his face. She noticed that he was thinner, that his tanned skin was more finely drawn across the high cheek bones, and that he looked superbly fit. He would not show any elation at this meeting and he kept on the far side of the platform, as any casual acquaintance would have done, veiling his eyes with polite but remote enquiry. Yet her feet took her towards him, regardless of his aloofness.

  “You see,” she said, “I had to come back!”

  She offered him her hand, and he took it in a firm grasp.

  “I’m glad,” he said, “because I still believe that you would never be happy away from Lochaber.”

  “And you?” she asked eagerly. “Have you found it ... all you hoped?”

  “I’ve not been disappointed.” His tone sounded evasive, almost stilted, she thought. “But then, I never expect too much—as I told you once before.”

  She wanted to ask him so many things ... if he had found the work at the quarries to his liking, if his uncle and he were getting along, if he had made up his mind to stay. Above all, if he had made up his mind to stay! But she could not ask him these things because, suddenly, it seemed that he had raised a barrier of reserve between them far more unscalable than her own pride. In these short weeks since their last meeting in Glasgow his attitude toward her had changed. She remembered in a flash that he had traveled north with Laura Bramshaw and that he and Laura had probably been seeing one another daily ever since, and her pride came struggling back, pride to hold up in defense of her wounded heart.

  “It must be wonderful not to build one’s expectations too high,” she heard herself say in a voice she barely recognized as her own. “Wonderfully convenient but so ... spiritually dull.”

  He looked at her oddly and a crooked smile played for a moment about the corner of his mouth.

  “Spirit’s the word, Christine,” he said smoothly. “One needs a great deal of it in a place like Kinaird.”

  “You needn’t have come to Kinaird if you hadn’t wanted to,” she reminded him icily, “and I understand that you can leave whenever you wish.”

  “You underestimate the stubborn streak in me, I’m afraid,” he returned. “As you say, I needn’t have come, but once here, Kinaird must bear with me until I choose to go.”

  The thin determination of his mouth and the impatience in his eyes suggested a situation with which she was not as yet familiar, but his bearing did not encourage further questioning. Her eager spirit felt damped and crushed, while the retort she had offered at his criticism of Kinaird hung between them like fire.

  The porter had stacked her few belongings and was wheeling them slowly away.

  “I must go,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll
meet again.”

  “Kinaird is a very small place,” he offered dryly.

  Was that all he had to say to her? Crushed and bruised, her heart sought to protest, but she lifted her head proudly and turned away. Rhona and her father were standing at the barrier and she rushed into their eager arms.

  “You look pale,” Rhona said. “It must be the Glasgow air! But wait until you’ve been out in Ian MacLaughlin’s boat or cycled up the glen with Iona on one of her flower hunts!”

  Christine might have responded with the remark that Rhona herself had lost a good deal of her bright color, but she knew the cause and pretended not to see. She told her father that he was looking twenty years younger, in spite of what he would probably be telling her quite soon about locums in general and their latest locum in particular, and they filed out to the car waiting for them in the station yard. A station wagon was pulled up beside it and John Helmsdale offered the information:

  “Young Treverson is up here this afternoon, collecting stores. He passed us on the way in.”

  “Yes, I met him on the platform.”

  Her father gave her an uneasy look.

  “I thought he would have settled down better than he has done,” he remarked. “Of course, the whole thing is purely hearsay as far as I am concerned, but they say he has nothing to learn from the old man.”

  “Meaning that he is taking all he can out of the quarries without putting very much back in?”

  “Without putting anything in. He gives orders, of course. As a matter of fact, old Ben hasn’t been much at the quarries these past few weeks. His gout’s troubling him again, and he has been devilishly awkward about taking precautions. He always has been a stubborn old rascal, but he seems doubly determined to have his own way these days.”

  “It may be the gout,” Christine suggested, her mind probing deeply into the problem of Huntley and the reputation he was acquiring in the village.

  “Huntley came up here prepared to make the quarries pay again,” she said as they circled the square and turned southward.

  “Apparently there’s very little change.” Her father looked as if he gave her the information reluctantly. “It’s just what one hears, going from place to place. Several of the older workers have been paid off, which they don’t appreciate, even though they have been given a pension. Old Sandy Macphail, for instance. He’s been chipping slate for fifty years now, and he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t go on chipping it for at least another twenty!”

  “By hand, of course!” Christine put in. “You don’t think that—machinery might be half the trouble? It looked as if Huntley was taking delivery of something like that just now.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” her father confessed uneasily. “I never was one for listening to gossip, but as you are well aware stories go about and I don’t think everybody would be objecting to new machinery.”

  “Well, what is it they do object to?” she persisted. “It can’t be the pensioning scheme.”

  “Maybe it’s young Treverson’s manner. He seems deuced unwilling to take anyone into his confidence. Since he came here he has remained very much aloof, and you know what Kinaird can be like when it imagines folk have no interest in the place apart from making money out of it!”

  “That was old Mr. Treverson’s reputation at one time, wasn’t it?” Christine asked thoughtfully. “But the tragedy of his son’s death changed him. It softened him, I suppose.”

  “For a time, but a man like Benjamin Treverson isn’t really softened for long.” John Helmsdale let in his clutch and set the car in second gear up the hill. “I always thought I understood that old rascal,” he murmured, “but recently I’ve been wondering if I ever did.”

  “If you can’t understand him,” Christine said, “nobody ever will.”

  He smiled, changing the subject almost with relief.

  Georgina Helmsdale came to the door as they drew up. Christine was out almost before they had stopped and in her mother’s arms. Then there was Iona, standing shyly in the background, looking so much better and happier that Christine had no longer any doubt about her being able to hold her own if she decided to return to Glasgow for Douglas’s wedding.

  They were a happy family party sitting down to the meal that was set out in the big, airy dining room facing the hills, and afterward there was much talk of Glasgow and Douglas and the forthcoming festivities.

  “It will be a great day indeed for your mother,” Georgina said to Iona, “and you’ll be going back before us to be the bridesmaid.”

  Iona looked across the hearth into Christine’s encouraging eyes. “Yes, I’ll go back,” she said with conviction. “I know everything will be all right now that I’m stronger, and Bob and I can be married quietly soon afterward. I’ve written and explained everything to him, and I know he will understand.”

  She went to bed early, by her uncle’s inexorable command, and Christine slipped her hand companionably into Rhona’s and drew her toward the open door.

  “It’s not ten yet,” she suggested. “We’ve got time for a twilight walk.”

  It was the hour they had both loved best ever since these shared evening strolls toward the loch had become an institution with them, but tonight Rhona seemed to come unwillingly. Perturbed, Christine watched her, thinking that they had drawn far apart in the days of their separation, yet willing that the truth should somehow be spoken between them.

  “It isn’t cold, Rhona,” she said. “Couldn’t we sit down for a while? I love the loch when it’s like this, like a clear mirror reflecting all the hills.”

  “You’re glad you’ve come back,” Rhona said harshly. “You have all you want.”

  “Not all.” Christine’s eyes were suddenly dark as they rested on the far shore. “It’s difficult not to feel—cheated when love doesn’t turn out as we want it,” she added deliberately.

  Rhona glanced at her in amazement.

  “You saw Nigel in Glasgow,” she said accusingly. “He must have told you that he loved you then.”

  “No.” Firmly Christine took her sister’s hand. “Oh, Rhona! I’m sorry you’re unhappy like this, and I know so well what it can mean—”

  “How can you?” Rhona broke in. “How can you possibly know unless ... unless you are in love with Huntley Treverson and you know that he is never seen without Laura Bramshaw these days!”

  If Rhona’s jealousy had betrayed her into vindictiveness, the look on her sister’s face made her instantly contemptuous of her own frailty.

  “Chris ... Chris, I’m sorry! How could I ever have said that!” she cried. “How could I hurt you like this!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Christine said stiltedly. “Perhaps it’s best that I should know when ... when that’s the way of it.”

  “I wish I could say that it wasn’t,” Rhona murmured contritely, “but she’s with him wherever he goes—except when he’s working at the quarries.”

  “Have you heard about the quarry, Rhona?” Christine asked, because she could not bear to hear any more about Huntley and Laura. “Do you know what’s really the matter up there?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows,” Rhona answered slowly, “because nobody seems sure of what’s going on at Glenavon itself. There are wild rumors about Huntley and his uncle—talk about violent quarrels and, of course, it’s said that one wants the quarries run one way and one the other.”

  “Huntley may be difficult to understand, Rhona,” she said quietly, “but I don’t think he’s doing anything underhanded. The quarries have run at a loss for ages, I understand, and it’s only natural that he should want to turn them into a paying proposition again and keep them from being a drag on the Glasgow end of the business.”

  “He managed the Glasgow business, didn’t he?” Rhona reflected thoughtfully. “I wonder why he suddenly threw it all up and came here?”

  “He told me once that the life in Glasgow had ceased to appeal to him,” Christine answered, “and that’s why I’d like
to see him fight this thing.”

  The news troubled her for the remainder of the evening. There was only one way in which to learn the truth, and that was to find it out from Huntley himself.

  To make such a decision was quite natural to her, but the ways and means of carrying it out seemed to be obstructed by the thousand and one small considerations which kept her very much within the circle of her family for the first week after her return.

  Her father’s new assistant was a shy, ineffective young man who had qualified a year ago in Glasgow and was eager to please and learn all he could. John thought thankfully that Christine would always be there to help in an emergency. It was no reflection on the young man’s ability.

  The doctor wondered about Christine quite often as she drove him along the quiet glen roads. He firmly believed that Nigel had taken the only possible way out of a situation that had proved untenable by leaving Kinaird.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Iona left for home at the beginning of the following week, exacting a promise from each of them in turn that they would go south for her brother’s wedding, and perhaps her own, later in the month.

  Christine accompanied her cousin to Fort William and was driving slowly home through the village when she remembered the letters she had taken that morning to post. They were still in the glove compartment of the car.

  Making her way into the small post office, which also did service as the village hardware store, she purchased her stamps and was on her way out when a tall, broad-shouldered figure blocked the doorway. She knew by her racing heart and the swift draining of color from her cheeks that Huntley Treverson would always have the power to move her like this no matter what she thought of him.