‘I’m rather frightened, Mrs. Christie,’ she says suddenly. ‘It’s such a plunge – do you think they’ll ever forgive us?’
‘Of course they will – and even if they don’t he’s a perfect dear,’ I tell her comfortingly.
So I leave her and walk down the platform to meet the others. Tony is bubbling with mirth. ‘We’ve just seen old Brown,’ he says. ‘The biggest gossip of the district – if only he knew what was afoot – ’
Hector is grave, and I like him for it. ‘I shall never forget what you have done for us,’ he says as he shakes hands. ‘Once the train starts I shall go and find her. She’ll be feeling rather scared, I expect.’
We wish him every happiness, and leave him to his fate.
‘Well,’ says Tony. ‘I don’t know what you feel about it, but I’m simply starving it’s frightfully late.’
We repair to a small hotel and order lunch. Tony is in splendid form, and full of amusing comments on our adventure. He is a most entertaining companion when he is in this mood.
By the time we have finished it is nearly teatime. Tony says it is too much trouble to move, and he thinks we should stay where we are and order tea. The waiter, who has just brought the bill, looks somewhat surprised at Tony’s remarks, as we have both eaten enormously of veal-and-ham pie and various other substantial dishes. After a certain amount of byplay for the waiter’s benefit, Tony is persuaded not to order tea at present, and I manage to drag him away.
The drive home is accomplished in record time.
‘Not a word about today’s doings to anyone, if you value your life,’ says Tony as we turn in at the gate, and I realise with a thrill of excitement that he is only half joking. This elopement is bound to cause a tremendous stir in the neighbourhood, and the consequences are wrapped in the mysterious veils of the future.
Mrs. Loudon has heard the approach of the car, and comes out to meet us, and, at the sight of my hostess, I suddenly remember that I have done none of the important commissions which were entrusted to me before starting. I have brought back from Inverness neither wine nor groceries, neither wool nor flies. What an awful thing! I would give five pounds – ill though I could spare it – if, with a wave of magic wand, the car could be filled with the required number of parcels – but, alas, the days of miracles are past.
I look at Tony and Tony looks at me. I can see that he has just remembered too.
‘Good Lord!’ he exclaims. ‘We’ve done it this time.’
Mrs. Loudon is surprised when she sees no parcels in the car, and even more astonished when I confess that I forgot all about the shopping.
‘Oh well,’ she says. ‘I suppose we’ll have to manage somehow never mind about it. You enjoyed yourself, I suppose, and that’s the main thing.’
Mrs. Falconer is less forgiving; she treats me to a homily on the subject of memory, in which Papa comes out very strong. ‘Papa was very anxious that us girls should all have good memories,’ she says. ‘So he engaged a man to come and teach us the right way to remember – things. This man had a system quite infallible it was. Say you wanted to remember seventy-four, you had to think of seven apples and four bananas on a dessert dish. But one day when he was going away he forgot his umbrella, and Mama – who had never liked the man, he was very good-looking, of course – said that a man who forgot his umbrella was not fit to teach anyone how to remember things. So that was the end of it, and we never learnt any more.’
Guthrie says: ‘It’s easy to remember things unless your mind is full of something else.’
I have no idea what he means, as he can’t possibly know anything about Hector and Deirdre MacArbin.
Fifteenth June
Awake with a feeling that something exciting has happened, and decide that it must be the result of yesterday’s adventure. The breakfast table is buzzing with the news of the elopement – brought to the house with the milk. I listen to it all in silence, and find great difficulty in concealing the fact that I know more about it than anyone else.
Guthrie says he didn’t think either of them had so much spirit, to which Mrs. Loudon replies that those quiet people are always the worst – and anyway she hopes this will be the end of that ridiculous feud.
‘It wasn’t last time,’ says Guthrie. ‘I mean when old Hector went off with Seónaid, it made the feud worse than ever.’
‘My dear Guthrie, this is the twentieth century,’ replies his mother tartly.
‘But is it?’ Guthrie says, waving his hands in the effort to explain. ‘We’re living in the twentieth century, of course, but are they?’
Mrs. Loudon’s answer is a snort. She has no patience with ideas of this kind.
‘Don’t you see,’ says Guthrie, elaborating his theme with complete disregard of his mother’s scornful attitude, ‘don’t you see if you go on living in the same house like the MacQuills for hundreds of years, you are bound to develop at a slower rate than people who move about the world and see things with their eyes? Castle Quill was at its zenith in the sixteenth century, or thereabouts, and its atmosphere is thick with ghosts. Anybody living in Castle Quill is living in the sixteenth century.’
‘Perfect nonsense!’ says Mrs. Loudon, rising from the table and collecting her letters. ‘And anyway that doesn’t account for the MacArbins.’
‘Oh, the MacArbins!’ says Guthrie racking his brains for an answer to this. ‘The MacArbins take their sixteenth-century atmosphere with them wherever they go – ’
We finish our breakfast in peace after Mrs. Loudon’s departure, and Guthrie asks if I will walk over to the hotel with him this morning to call on Elsie Baker, who has not been seen nor heard of for two days. I gather that Guthrie has written to her, and sent the letter over by the garden boy, but that he has received no answer. All this does not surprise me in the least, as I realise that it is part of Elsie’s plan to ‘let him down gradually’.
‘You had better go by yourself,’ I tell him, for I have no wish to be present at the interview. ‘I should only be in the way.’
Guthrie is so downcast at my refusal, and so insistent that I shall accompany him, that, in the end, I am obliged to go.
‘You see, I think the poor little thing must be ill, Hester,’ he says, as he opens the gate for me. ‘You could go up and see her in bed, couldn’t you?’
I am pretty certain that Miss Baker is perfectly well, and, far from languishing in bed, has probably been touring the countryside in ‘Stuart’s’ car. Every step of the way I feel increasingly regretful that I have come, and send up silent prayers that Miss Baker may be out. I have no experience in delicate situations of this kind, and no wish to be involved in one.
‘Poor little thing!’ Guthrie continues, working himself up into a passion of pity for Elsie’s imaginary sufferings. ‘I wonder who looks after her when she is ill – she has no mother, poor child! I can’t bear to think of her lying there, day after day, with nobody to take care of her.’
‘Don’t think of it, then,’ I reply lightly. ‘Wait and see whether she requires any pity before you waste it on her.’
‘You’re awfully down on Elsie,’ he says reproachfully. ‘I never thought you could be so unsympathetic.’
‘I shall wait and see if any sympathy is needed.’
‘Poor little thing!’ Guthrie continues. ‘She has never had a chance. Once we are married she will be able to stay with Mother while I am at sea – ’
‘You are most certainly at sea if you visualise Elsie Baker settling down with your mother at Holmgarth,’ I reply brutally.
‘I thought you liked Elsie!’ he exclaims.
‘I do quite like her at times,’ I reply, with strict regard for the truth. ‘But your mother doesn’t – and Elsie doesn’t like your mother. They would be bored to death with each other in two days. It means choosing between them, and the sooner you realise that the better.’
‘I have chosen,’ Guthrie replies sulkily.
This conversation has raised my spirits. I feel so annoyed with Guthrie
for his obstinacy and stupidity that I don’t care whether he gets hurt or not. Yes, you have chosen, and so has she, I think to myself, reflecting with cruel satisfaction that the coming interview – if interview there be – will give my self-satisfied young friend the shock of his life.
My prayers for Miss Baker’s absence from home are not answered by an all-wise Providence. We find her stretched upon a deck chair on the terrace in front of the hotel reading a novel, and exposing quite a thrilling amount of very creditable leg, encased in Elephant Brand silk hose, at eight and eleven a pair.
‘Elsie, have you been ill?’ asks Guthrie anxiously. ‘No, don’t go away, Hester.’
‘No, don’t go away, Mrs. Christie,’ echoes Elsie. ‘Guthrie will bring another chair for you.’
Can it be that she is slightly nervous? Perhaps she is not quite so experienced in matters of this kind as I imagined. I sit down, unwillingly enough, and ask what she has been doing with herself.
‘Oh, we’ve been all over the place,’ says Elsie, with studied carelessness. ‘Mr. Stuart Thompson has been taking Dad and I for spins in his car.’
Guthrie looks extremely taken aback at this news, but manages to control his feelings. ‘That was very nice,’ he says. ‘But you could have gone for spins with me, if I’d known you wanted to. I thought you must be ill or something – did you get my letter?’
‘Oh yes – but I really hadn’t time to write – we’ve been ever so busy with one thing and another.’
‘Well, I’m glad you weren’t ill,’ says Guthrie in a far-from-glad tone of voice. ‘What about this afternoon would you like to come to tea, and fish afterwards?’
‘I’m rather off fishing just now – I mean to say it’s a bit slow. Besides, I’ve promised to go to Inverness this afternoon with Stuart,’ replies the lady candidly.
At this moment I see a large, fat shape clad all in green emerge from the hotel, and realise that it is Mrs. McTurk. For once she appears to me in the guise of an angel. I murmur that I simply must speak to her for a minute, and dash off, leaving the disillusioned lovers to their fate.
Mrs. McTurk is delighted to see me, and welcomes me warmly. She evidently bears me no ill will for her discomfiture on Sunday. (I had nothing to do with it, of course, but I feel that it is magnanimous of her to be so pleased to see me.) I ask breathlessly after all her relations, and am immediately involved as I had hoped in long descriptions of their various conditions. We stroll round the hotel garden in amicable conversation.
‘I had no idea,’ says Mrs. McTurk suddenly, ‘that Mrs. Loudon had a sister living with her – ’
‘Cousin,’ I murmur.
‘Oh, it’s a cousin, is it? Does she always talk like that?’
‘Yes, always,’ I reply firmly.
‘Dear me – it must be trying. Is the poor thing quite all right, Mrs. Christie?’ asks Mrs. McTurk with an upward movement of her brows.
‘Oh, quite all right,’ I reply hurriedly.
‘Well, well, she’ll be quite harmless anyway, I suppose,’ says Mrs. McTurk, evidently unconvinced by my assurance, ‘or Mrs. Loudon would scarcely risk having her about. You’ve seen no dangerous signs?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Still, there’s no knowing with anybody like that,’ says the good lady anxiously. ‘They might go off suddenly, Mr. McTurk says, and then where would you be? Such a strange way she had of talking I declare it made me feel quite queer. I hope you lock your door at night, Mrs. Christie. I know I would. But anyway when I told Mr. McTurk about it, and we had talked it over, we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do to have her here.’
‘To have her here?’ I repeat in amazement.
‘To have her to dinner,’ explains Mrs. McTurk. ‘People talk so in an hotel – you know the way they talk, Mrs. Christie – and Mr. McTurk and I feel it wouldn’t do unless you could come without her, of course ’ she adds hopefully.
‘Oh, we couldn’t possibly come without her,’ I reply firmly. ‘She would be so dreadfully hurt – but of course I quite understand your feelings – ’
‘It’s very disappointing,’ she says sadly. ‘But Mr. McTurk is very strong about it. It was lucky I said nothing about it to Mrs. Loudon. I shouldn’t like her to be disappointed – and it seems a bit inhospitable somehow. You didn’t mention it to her, did you?’
I comfort her as best I can, and assure her that Mrs. Loudon knows nothing of the projected dinner, and therefore will not be disappointed when it does not materialise.
‘Well, that’s one mercy,’ she says, more cheerfully. ‘I was afraid you might have said something.’
Guthrie is waiting for us on our return; he seems dazed, and has to be reminded that he has the pleasure of Mrs. McTurk’s acquaintance.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ he says. ‘How stupid of me! I don’t know what I can have been thinking of.’
I know exactly what he has been thinking of, but naturally refrain from saying so.
Presently Guthrie and I find ourselves walking home across the moor. He is very silent, and somewhat morose, and I can’t help wondering what has happened in other words has he definitely got the boot, or is he still in a state of suspense?
‘Hester,’ says my companion suddenly, ‘I can’t understand Elsie at all. I’m afraid this man she has been going about with has not a very good influence over her you can’t think how queer she was today.’
I reply lightly that ladies have the privilege of changing their minds.
‘You mean she has changed her mind about me?’ he asks incredulously, and he looks so like a little boy who has offered somebody his cake and has had it thrown back in his face that I have to laugh.
‘It looks a little like that,’ I gasp.
‘But – but he’s the most awful bounder – I saw the fellow – it’s all very well for you to laugh at me, Hester, but he really is.’
‘I can well believe it,’ I reply, as soon as I can speak. ‘From the various accounts I have had of Mr. Stuart Thompson I had visualised a bounder of the most bounding proclivities but, all the same, Elsie will be much happier with him than she would ever have been with you – and I’m not laughing at you so much as the queer way things turn out in this queer world.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘you’re not very sympathetic, I must say.’
‘You’ve already said that to me this morning,’ I reply. ‘And my answer is the same as it was last time – I keep my sympathy until it is needed. Elsie did not require my sympathy, and neither do you. Accept my congratulations instead.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean, Guthrie. It would have been the greatest mistake for you to marry Elsie. It would have resulted in misery for you both, and for Mrs. Loudon as well. Fortunately Elsie has realised that you are not the right man for her, and has been trying to convey the fact to your slightly obtuse intelligence.’
‘You are pretty scathing, aren’t you?’
‘I’m a perfect beast,’ I own cheerfully. ‘But it’s all for your good, my dear. Buck up and look a little more cheerful. You know as well as I do that this is the best thing that could have happened.’
‘I can’t understand it at all,’ he says in a bewildered manner.
Sixteenth June
Guthrie comes down just as Mrs. Loudon and I are finishing breakfast.
‘I suppose you are remembering that you are going over to lunch with the MacKenzies at Inverquill,’ says Mrs. Loudon, with an eye on Guthrie’s oldest and most disreputable trousers.
‘Oh, I put it off,’ replies her son, helping himself to porridge and cream with a liberal hand. ‘I thought we’d fish here– ’
‘Well, you can’t then,’ announces Mrs. Loudon firmly. ‘At least you can fish here, but there will be no lunch.’
‘No lunch!’
‘No. Mary’s away to Inverness for the day – I promised the creature a day in Inverness, and she’s meeting her cousin, and going to the pictures.’
‘We’re lunching at the hotel,’ replies Mrs. Loudon. ‘You need not look so surprised, both of you. I worked out the whole thing in bed last night, and it’s all settled, so there’s no more to be said. Hester will enjoy lunching at the hotel; she must be tired of seeing nobody but her host and hostess day in and day out. It will be a change for her, anyway.’
‘Hester will hate it,’ replies Guthrie gloomily, and I can’t help feeling that he is probably right. Difficult situations will probably arise from meeting the Bakers and the McTurks, and the presence of Tony will not make things any easier.
‘It’s Hester’s last day, too,’ adds Guthrie.
‘It’ll be your last day,’ replies his mother tartly, ‘if you look at Hester like that when her husband’s here. If you want to come over with us to the hotel, you can, but you would be far better to go over to Inverquill, and fish with Ian.’
‘I believe I would,’ agrees the wretched man. I really feel very sorry for him, and when Mrs. Loudon has departed, jingling her housekeeping keys, I beseech him to go to Inverquill, or Timbuctoo, or, in fact, anywhere except the Avielochan Hotel.
‘Oh, I’ll go to Inverquill,’ he says in martyr-like tones. ‘Ian will be quite glad; he said I could leave it open, but I thought we could have a nice long day on the loch. You can tell Mother I’ve gone.’
It seems strange that I should always be saddled with messages which people don’t want to deliver themselves. I try to believe that it is because my nature is sympathetic, but have an uncomfortable suspicion that it is because I am too weak-minded to refuse the job.
The morning flies past with incredible speed, and it is not until we are ready to start that I find an opportunity to give Mrs. Loudon the information.
‘It’s just as well,’ she says, in a relieved voice. ‘I’d never have thought of the hotel with Guthrie. We would have had that goggle-eyed Baker girl tacked on to us the whole time. Where’s Millie? It’s time we were away.’
We walk slowly over the moor. Mrs. Falconer’s legs are less active than her tongue. She stops every few minutes to admire the view, and to inform us what Papa would have said if he had been here. Thus delayed, it is after one o’clock when we reach the hotel, and most of the visitors have gone in to lunch.
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment Page 33