The House of the Laird

by Susan Barrie

  “I think if would be very nice,” Karen replied uncertainly, and Mrs. Barrington slipped from the bed.

  “Very well then! That’s agreed—provided, of course, it’s fine! And now I really must go, because the gong’s already sounded, and I’m several minutes late.”

  But she moved unhurriedly towards the door, smiling at Karen until it had closed behind her, and then the girl in the bed looked down thoughtfully again at her soup, but made no attempt to drink any more of it.

  Later that night she lay in her bed and stared at the firelight flickering on the ceiling, and the flood of golden light cast by the golden-shaded bedside lamp on the apple green carpet. This room had just as much comfort as her room at Craigie House, perhaps even more, but she felt utterly alone and comfortless in it, and as she turned her face into her pillow she felt inclined to weep—weep for all that she had left behind, all that was no longer part of her daily life, that she might never see again!

  And then all at once the telephone on the bedside table beside her shrilled, and her heart gave a great uneasy bound as she looked at it on its ivory rest. She put out a tentative hand and picked up the receiver, and the next moment she was ready to cry with relief because the voice which came to her over the wire was so exquisitely familiar.

  “Hullo,” it said, “is that you, Karen! Iain here.”

  Iain here!....

  She swallowed twice, to rid her throat of the lump in it, and forced her pulses to cease behaving like wild creatures imprisoned in a zoo, and managed to say almost steadily:

  “Oh, how nice! How nice of you to bother about me! Unless there’s something—something you want to tell me?...”

  She heard him laugh softly, as if amused.

  “What would I be likely to want to tell you at this hour of the night?” She heard him wait for her answer, and when it did not come he continued, as if still amused: “No, my dear, I was quite well aware you’d have a telephone beside your bed—Auchenwiel has every luxury!—and I thought it just as likely that you might still be awake, and perhaps feeling rather strange. So I decided a familiar voice would probably do you good.”

  “Oh!” Karen exclaimed, and he could hear her breath catch. “I was—and it has!”

  “Good!” he answered, softly. “Then it’s a good thing I remembered how well you were equipped, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not really hating things, are you?”

  “No”—a little uncertainly—“no; I’m not hating things.”

  “I’ll admit it was all a bit of a rush, your departure, but Aunt Horry really will look after you, you know, and perhaps a bachelor establishment was not the best place for you just now. But I’ll be seeing you fairly often, and as a matter of fact I’ve received an invitation for this coming week-end. Do you think you could endure to have me about you again so soon?”

  Karen refrained from answering him immediately, because she knew that if she obeyed every impulse in her body she would simply cry out to him over the dividing telephone wire that already she was missing him so badly that it was a kind of private agony. She had been wondering how she was going to endure it for long if she was not to see him again soon.

  “Well?” he asked, as he did not answer him, and his voice was a little sharp.

  “Of course I’ll be very happy to see you again,” she managed then, and she felt she could almost see him smiling at the other end of the line.

  “That’s splendid!” he exclaimed. “And now,” he added, “go to sleep. You really ought to have been asleep an hour ago.”

  “I’m not very tired,” she breathed back.

  “No, but go to sleep.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “Good night, my dear,” Iain said.

  “Good night.”

  “I’ve got a name, you know,” he reminded her.

  “Good night, Iain.”

  “Sleep well, little one,” he answered her.

  And she quietly laid the telephone back on its rest and slid down into her bed and gripped hard at the frilly edge of her pillow-case. As she lay there with closed eyes she was recapturing every single moment of that telephone conversation, and every vibration in the voice that had spoken to her. She felt now that he had spoken to her she might be able to sleep—she was even happy to go to sleep, because in her dreams she might be back with him again at Craigie House.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Before the week-end, Aubrey Ainsworth arrived at Auchenwiel, and although she had been rather dreading meeting yet another stranger Karen found him quite a pleasant young man, with none of the usual hallmarks of an artist devoted to modern art. He was about a couple of years older than herself, and had fairish hair rather like her own, grey eyes that were utterly unlike Iain Mackenzie’s, and a thin, slightly careworn face.

  The carewornness was explained by the fact that he had apparently little money, although his ambition was unbounded. He hoped one day to be as well-known as Picasso, and in the meantime he thought he would like to attempt a study of Karen’s face and head if she could spare the time to give him a sitting. He told her that there was something in her face which interested him, and that her bone structure was well-nigh perfect. She had a curiously perfect skin, too, although she was so pale, and the tiny blue veins at her temples, and the delicate mauve shadows under her eyes, threw into prominence the perfection of her skin.

  “I should imagine you’d tan well,” he told her, after a particularly prolonged scrutiny, “but at the moment you look positively ethereal.”

  Karen smiled, because even though she still looked ethereal she was feeling very much better, and she was sure that was largely due to the fact that she had been out of doors quite a lot since coming to Auchenwiel. The weather had been very kind—it really did look as if spring was on its way—and for that part of the world almost balmy, and although she had not enjoyed the trip to Inverlochie with Mrs. Barrington—for no really good reason that she could explain even to herself, since Mrs. Barrington had been particularly kind and considerate—there was no doubt that such an outing had provided her with a break in the routine of an invalid. They had had coffee at the George, and she had felt that she was once more caught up in the daily life of ordinary human beings. She had bought herself a twin-set which she had known she couldn’t really afford, but she had been unable to resist the soft, misty blue of it, which Fiona had insisted was exactly right with her eyes.

  She had also, because she felt so dowdy and colorless, bought herself a new lipstick, and some new face-powder which had just the right touch of creaminess in it to deal with her pallor. When she put it on she knew that her skin looked even more perfect—more healthy was the way she put it herself—and the lipstick had a positively magical effect on her lips. They glowed like the pink petals of a flower, and at the same time they were alive and warm and generous.

  Aubrey Ainsworth seemed to find it impossible to take his eyes off her when she appeared for the first time wearing her new make-up, and Aunt Horry looked faintly surprised. “It’s extraordinary how illness can pull one down,” she said, “and how something fresh in the cosmetic line can do so much for one.” She put her head on one side and studied the girl consideringly. When she had first seen her and she had thought her almost painfully plain, and she had been amazed because Iain had announced that he intended to marry her. But now—now she was no longer so certain. The girl had a flower-like beauty which might well pull at the heartstrings of a man like her nephew, who had seen so much of indisputable feminine beauty, and was possibly a little bored by it. The girl, even without her new make-up, had a pathetic poignant quality in her face, and with it she was almost if not quite lovely.

  In Iain’s eyes she might even be very lovely—that intense darkness of his was probably attracted by the extreme fairness of Karen—and if only she were really well dressed she might be capable of dazzling quite a few people.

  Aunt Horry began to puzzle her brains as to how
she could provide new and suitable clothes for Karen with offending (a) the girl herself, and (b) her nephew, because it was very likely his intention to provide them for her himself as soon as they were married. But she couldn’t be married without a suitable outfit, and something would have to be done about it. She would have to consult Iain, because the girl herself was .as poor as a church mouse, although she was very gently bred. In some ways she would not be out of place as the mistress of Craigie House.

  On the Saturday afternoon when Iain was due to arrive for his week-end Karen appeared in her new twin-set, and her mirror had told her that it really did suit her. Her eyes were bright and very blue. Inside her she was unable to deny the excitement which coursed through all her veins because the man she was supposed to be engaged to marry was coming to stay at Auchenwiel for at least one night, and perhaps two, and it already felt like years since she had last seen him. There was a faint excited glow in her cheeks, like the blush on a drift of apple blossom, and her lips hardly needed the application of lipstick they received before she went downstairs.

  When she heard his car speeding up the drive and then coming to rest at the foot of the flight of steps before the front door her heart started to hammer so wildly that she was afraid those about her would hear it. And then the door was flung open, and Aunt Horry embraced her nephew on her own doorstep, and he kissed her with a light, audacious smile in his eyes. The audacious look was still there when he advanced to greet Karen, and although for a moment surprise at her appearance almost banished it, it was there when he bent to sweep her into a quick embrace also, and she felt his hard masculine mouth claiming hers for a moment.

  The color receded from her cheeks, and for one instant she looked so white that she felt everyone looking at her. Then, with a rush, it swept back, over her throat, and chin and brow as well as her soft cheeks, and Iain’s eyes were looking into hers with some amusement, although there was also something else very intent in his gaze.

  “How delightful you look!” he told her, paying her the normal compliment of a fiancé might be expected to pay under the circumstances, especially when she really did look delightful. “And very much better,” he added, more gravely.

  There you are, you see!” Aunt Horry exclaimed triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you I could look after her at this stage of her convalescence better than you could, my dear?”

  There was no disputing that she had obviously looked after Karen very well. And then, from the foot of the stairs, Fiona came forward to greet him.

  If Karen looked delightful, Mrs. Barrington’s appearance was so near perfection that it couldn’t fail to bring a glimmer of admiration to any man’s eyes. Karen saw it; she noticed that he also seemed to start slightly when Fiona appeared suddenly in front of him, holding out her hand, with its blood-red finger-nails, as if she had taken him aback. She was wearing a fine woollen dress in a burnt amber color, so moulded to the shape of her slender figure that it was almost as revealing as an evening dress. She wore chunky jewellery that appeared to be carved out of jade, and her make-up was exotic. As always she brought her exciting Paris perfume with her.

  “Hullo, Iain,” she said, and smiled up at him under her entrancing eyelashes. “So you’ve managed to survive without Karen! And she has just managed to exist without you,” stealing a look at the other girl which, although nobody else probably recognized it, contained the merest suspicion of something which could have been a kind of half-affectionate contempt.

  “Oh, I don’t think I can agree with that,” Iain replied, looking more carefully at his fiancée. “Karen has obviously found it very easy to exist without me, which is undoubtedly due to Aunt Horry’s skill as a hostess.”

  But he smiled very gently at Karen nevertheless, and she wanted to assure him that although she was so much better she had been counting the minutes until his coming, and that part of the glow of animation in her face was due to the fact that he had arrived. But this was something she had to keep to herself, as she knew.

  She was, however, unreasonably thrilled when he picked up her hand and drew it through his arm, conducting her over to the fireplace in the great library where they were to have tea. And he placed her almost tenderly in one of the comfortable chairs near the blazing logs that were lighting up all the handsome panelling, afterwards taking up his position near her, and giving her a wonderful feeling of being once more under his protection. And although Aubrey Ainsworth waited on her when the tea was brought in on an enormous trolley weighted down with old-fashioned silver and flowery porcelain cups, obviously taking a kind of pleasure in pressing her to an endless assortment of sandwiches and hot cakes, baps and bannocks, Iain merely regarded his efforts with a look of faint amusement, and agreed at once when he somewhat naively asked permission to paint her portrait.

  “Certainly,” he said, “so long as you don’t paint her in cubes, or oblongs, or anything of that sort.”

  And Aubrey looked frankly delighted by the permission obtained, and fell to studying Karen afresh, and with even greater enthusiasm, while he planned the medium he would use for consigning her to canvas.

  That night, when they all came down to dinner, Iain was wearing the Highland evening dress in which Karen had been secretly certain he would look at his best, and when she first set eyes on him when she entered the drawing-room where he was talking to his aunt she knew—and felt her heart give a kind of wild leap within her—that she had been absolutely right.

  The velvet doublet and the lace jabot, which were a part of the dress, more than emphasized his dark good looks, and the swinging kilt seemed to have been expressly designed for his lithe and graceful build. As he came across the room to her she saw the shoulder brooch glittering where it caught up his plaid, the falls of lace over the hands she had so often admired in secret, and the skeaa dhu tucked into the top of one of his stockings.

  She did not know it, but her admiration was plainly given away by her eyes as she gazed at him, and Aunt Horry looked a little amused. She was wearing black velvet and diamonds, and for once she, too, looked impressive, and only Karen was aware of the inadequacy of her attire when apparently everyone else was going to be unusually splendid tonight.

  She was wearing her one evening frock, which although it would have done very well for a simple evening, failed her altogether against the background of the Auchenwiel drawing-room, with its Hepplewhite furniture and its damask curtains. Or so she was quite prepared to believe until she saw Iain looking at her with a smile in his eyes, and to her astonishment she discovered that he was not even looking at her frock, of the same rather shadowy blue as her twin-set, but at her shining hair.

  “You’ve done something to it,” he said, puzzling over the transformation. “I don’t quite know what it is, but it’s different.”

  She smiled, with an immense sensation of relief inside her, but as Fiona came into the room at that moment, followed by Aubrey, she was spared the necessity of explaining that Aunt Horatia’s own maid had washed and set it for her about an hour before dinner, and the finished result had amazed her, too.

  At dinner she had Iain on her right hand, and once again she had that wonderful sensation of being protected and supported which was not hers when he was not there; and although most of his conversation was directed at Fiona, who demanded across the table a complete account of his recent travels, that did not seem to matter very much to Karen, who was happy because she was allowed to sit quietly and say nothing and just listen intently to the pleasant baritone voice of the man in the Mackenzie tartan.

  By comparison with Iain, Aubrey, in an uninspired dinner-jacket, looked completely ordinary, she thought.

  After dinner Aunt Horatia wanted to play bridge, but as Karen did not play she had to sit alone and look on at the others, which, however, she declared, she was quite happy to do. Iain found her a large pile of magazines, and when he was dummy he moved over to talk to her, and even while he was playing he carefully watched the clock to make sure that the
girl he was still inclined to regard as an invalid did not sit up beyond what he considered to be her most suitable bedtime.

  Fiona Barrington watched him with a kind of open amusement in her golden eyes.

  The next day, plainly to his disappointment, it was raining and blowing half a gale, and when he told her that he had planned to take her for a short walk on the moor and discover how well she was using her legs these days, Karen realized how much she had missed. In fact, as she turned to look out of the window at the driving rain, and saw the still bare-branched trees being lashed by the wind, she felt for a moment as if she had been wilfully defrauded of something quite invaluable, which it might never be her good fortune to enjoy again. She was so ridiculously disappointed that her disappointment must have showed in her face; for Iain laughed and looked at her in faint surprise and reminded her that there would be other occasions.

  “I’ll be over next week-end—if nothing prevents me. And you’ll probably be able to walk half a mile farther by then.”

  He was rallying her, she knew, possibly a little perplexed by her, and the one thing he did not know was that the space of time between one week-end and the next could be an eternity under certain conditions.

  Before he returned to Craigie House on Monday morning he said lightly to Karen:

  “Any messages? Anything you’d like me to say to Mrs. Burns?”

  “Give her my love,” Karen answered.

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “You really mean your love? Isn’t that a little extravagant?”

  “I don’t think so,” Karen replied seriously. “I’m very fond of her, and she’s been awfully kind to me.”

  “And you make a practice of bestowing a portion of your love on people who are kind to you?”

  “Of course not,” she assured him, with a sudden rush of color to her cheeks, for his grey eyes were gazing directly down at her, and there was something besides amusement in them which she did not understand.