Love Comes Home

by Molly Clavering

  Maggie looked after her plaintively. “I give it up!” he said again. “I give it up!”

  Chapter Eleven

  ANOTHER ENGAGEMENT IS ANNOUNCED

  It was Saturday morning. The Cranstouns, or most of them, sat at breakfast in the big panelled dining-room which looked out to the Greenriggs. There had been heavy rain during the night, and the face of the hills was seamed with white threads, where many burns, increased to twice their normal size by the downpour, rushed headlong over the high, grim cliffs and stretches of shale which made the Greenriggs wear a sombre, frowning aspect even on the sunniest day. Now the air was cool and fresh, faint wisps of vapour lay above the sparkling lawns as the sun drew the moisture from the earth, the tall trees stood motionless, a gorgeous cock pheasant, as if he knew well that for a fortnight to come he was immune, strolled in insolent splendour across the grass.

  “What a grand morning,” said Maggie, returning from the sideboard with a lavish plateful of cold ham.

  “Is anyone coming this week-end?”

  “Only Commander Marsh—dear me, we shall have to learn to call him John now, I suppose,” said Lady Cranstoun.

  “We call him John already,” Maggie pointed out.

  “You may, my dear Maggie. I haven’t got your modern habit of using people’s Christian names as soon as I meet them,” said Lady Cranstoun.

  “Oh, mother, how can you?” This was Jane, brighter than ever now that the day had come when she must meet John as her sister’s fiancé, congratulate him, wish him joy. “What about Peregrine Gilbert? You were going to call him ‘Perry’ at Love’s instigation, quite calmly, though he obviously hated it, and long before I’d got past the Mister stage.”

  “That was not quite the same,” Lady Cranstoun calmly. “I had seen a good deal of Peregrine, even if you had not. Besides, he is a near neighbour, and that makes a difference.”

  “Like the dear Dawsons, eh?” murmured Maggie with a sly wink at Jane. “You always call her ‘Dahlia,’ don’t you?”

  “We won’t discuss the Dawsons, I think,” his mother replied crushingly. “What time does John arrive?”

  No one but Love, it appeared, knew the answer, and Love was not yet down.

  “Too naughty of her,” said Lady Cranstoun, but she sounded resigned rather than indignant. “Janey dear, will you be at home this afternoon?”

  “I’d like to be, but alas!” said Jane with a groan. “The Guides are having a netball practice, in the faint hope of winning that cup which you so kindly and unnecessarily presented, mother, and I suppose I must be there to blow the whistle.”

  “The dear little Guidey-wideys,” said Maggie. “May I ask if you know anything about the rules of netball, sister?”

  “Nothing whatever,” said Jane. “I have a horrid little book which I hold in one hand the whole time, and if anything that looks too flagrantly like a foul happens, the game has to be stopped while I consult the little book.”

  “I think,” said Lady Cranstoun, gathering up her letters and preparing to leave the room, “that for once you might ring up Cathie and tell her to take the practice, Jane. What is she Lieutenant for?”

  As the door closed gently behind her retreating form, Maggie looked at his sister. “Well!” he said, and then, pensively: “Have you noticed a difference in mother lately, Janey?”

  “Ye-es. I think I have.”

  “She’s lost her punch,” Maggie said, almost complainingly. “There’s no zipp to her now. What you and I and Stair have laboured in vain to bring about all these years that young devil Love seems to have managed since she came home in the spring.”

  “It’s wonderful what personality can accomplish,” said Jane with a wry smile, for she was thinking of other things which Love had contrived to do by dint of that same personality.

  “Personality nothing!” said Maggie heatedly. “It’s sheer damned cheek and a sledge-hammer determination to get her own way. I wonder,” he added, “if she used those tactics on John?”

  Jane was not to be drawn. “Quite possibly,” she said. “But so long as he doesn’t mind, it doesn’t matter in the least, does it?”

  “Oh, I suppose not,” he answered discontentedly, hunching his shoulders. “Only, it seems such a rum show to me.”

  “That’s only because you know so little about these things,” she said, and made her escape before he could say more.

  Helped by a listless, heavy-eyed Love, Jane did the flowers before luncheon. The little room off the pantry where this pleasant task was always performed was full, that morning, of delicate pastel-tinted larkspur destined for the drawing-room, where the white walls would show it off to the best advantage, of dark red roses for the dinner-table, and a great sheaf of gladiolus, burning scarlet, faintly flushed pink, white, yellow, deepest purple, which Jane decided would look well in tall jars to lighten the daik corners of the hall.

  Finally: “Here’s a little glass bowl that will just hold these small dahlias,” said Jane, filling it as she spoke with the brilliant heavy-headed flowers. “Wouldn’t you like to put it in John’s room?”

  “Yes, if you like,” said Love, as if she did not care very much. She picked up the bowl and was starting for the door when Jane suddenly spoke passionately fiercely.

  “For heaven’s sake, Love! Aren’t you glad John’s coming? This sort of creeping misery is most awfully unfair to him!”

  Love swung round, gave Jane a long, considering look, and said: “I have a headache.”

  “Then,” said Jane, her patience snapping, all the pent-up unhappiness of the past many weeks pouring out like the burns down the hillside, “you have no business to have a headache—or if you had one, the thought that you’re going to see John ought to cure it!”

  “So that’s what it should be like, is it?” murmured Love strangely, and went away with the bowl of flowers between her hands.

  Jane sank down on the stool that stood in the little room and buried her face in her hands. All round her rose the smell of cut flower-stems, bruised leaves, rose-petals; and all her life she was to connect it with the flash of understanding which told her that no matter what John’s faults might be, she could never love anyone else. He could run after other women, be turned from his allegiance by a glance from bright eyes or the touch of soft fingers, but it would make no difference to her. And he was going to marry Love! Love, for whose lack of spirits the forthcoming interview between her fiancée and the reluctant Sir Magnus could not possibly be entirely responsible; Love who, in fact, did not really care for him and was dreading his arrival.

  “Oh, what’s to be done about it?” thought Jane desperately. But in a few minutes she had pulled herself together. Whatever Love’s feelings, presumably John loved her, or he would not have asked her to marry him. Stoically deciding that nothing could be done by her, Jane carried the last vase of larkspur with steady hands to the drawing-room.

  Her mother and Love stood there, and had it not been that Lady Cranstoun was in the habit of indicating what she wanted done, and never having to descend to argument, Jane would have supposed the two who stood by the long window to be engaged in arguing, though languidly and without acrimony.

  “But surely,” said Lady Cranstoun, “you will want to be here when John arrives? In fact, you must be here, Love.”

  “Mother, I’ll be back long before he gets here. If I want tea, you know that Mrs. Waddell is sure to offer me some. I can start after lunch.”

  “Janey,” said her mother. “What do you think? I do rather want a message taken to Mrs. Waddell—it’s to tell her that I can get her youngest daughter that place as kitchen-maid at Balmore, but I don’t think Love ought to risk not being back in time to meet John, and it is a long way to Nether Craigie.”

  “Oh, she’ll be back,” said Jane carelessly. “You haven’t anything else you want to do this afternoon, Love? If you have, I can go to Nether Craigie quite well.”

  “I feel as if I’d like the walk,” Love murmured with a k
ind of meek obstinacy most unlike her, and very irritating to her mother and sister, who looked at her half-worried, half-angry.

  “Very well,” said Lady Cranstoun with a sigh. “But start soon after luncheon.”

  The injunction was unnecessary, for the others were still lingering over coffee when they saw Love pass the window, bare-headed, the sun catching bronzed gleams from her glossy dark hair. She went at a great pace, hurrying as if to leave her thoughts behind, but they dogged her steps, a dark and perplexing company. It was the first time in her confident young life that she had not been sure of herself, and the experience was troubling her to a far greater degree than it would someone more diffident by nature.

  In fact, she had reached the stage when her urgent need to ask advice of some helpful outsider was almost more than she could bear. Almost anyone would do, she thought—anyone but the detestable Peregrine! She would much rather die than seek his help. . . .

  And she began to toy with the idea of having brain-fever, brought on by mental strain, of lying pale and lily-like on her death-bed while he sobbed his remorse at his unhelpfulness to her unheeding ears. Improbable though the picture was, it carried Love over three of the five miles she had to go before she reached Nether Craigie, that outlying farm of her father’s estate. When it showed signs of fading, in spite of the colours she laid so thickly on its canvas, she added the sorrowful figures of John and Jane, reunited by her, in floods of tears by her pillow. . . . But there her imagination revolted, for had not her cherished plan been to prevent John from marrying Jane? Of course it had, and, cost what it might, she would carry it through. Now, instead of dying, she was standing, still lily-white, at the altar, having the plain gold band placed on her shrinking finger by John, her only reward the knowledge that she had saved Jane for better things. . . . The fact that John was the last person in the world to play the part of brutal suitor assigned to him did not for a moment trouble her. Once the reins lay loose on the neck of her imagination, the Flying Horse could not compete with its flight.

  By the time she stood on the whitened step before the farmhouse door, she was hungry, her appetite, that faithful friend, which, to her pride, had actually failed during the past week, was now as hearty as ever. She began to hope that Mrs. Waddell would press on her the boiled new laid egg which she had frequently refused in the past, and she knocked firmly at the dark-red door a second time, wondering a little why no one had answered her, or why the door should be shut at all on a fine afternoon with the sun shining. Hens clucked and scratched busily on the outskirts of the midden, one of the farm cats made its stealthy appearance round the end of the barn, and seeing a stranger, quietly withdrew backwards, and Love, raising her hand to knock more loudly, heard heavy footsteps clumping along the passage to the door, which was presently opened by Mrs. Waddell herself.

  She looked, as Love instantly realized with sinking heart, quite unprepared to give anyone tea. A mob-cap, drawn low over her forehead, concealed her hair, there were smears of black on her heated face, her bare fore-arms were thick with soot, and in one hand she held a flue-brush, witness to her occupation.

  “Eh, Miss Magdalen!” she exclaimed in great distress. “I’m that vexed ye should fin’ me in siccan an upturn! But Sir Magnus sent word he an’ the gentlemen wad be takin’ their lunches here on the Monday, they’re shootin’ the laigh grun’ by the burn, an’ I wis anxious to hae a’thing richt for them. Sae, wi’ the morn bein’ the Sawbath, I juist rolled up ma sleeves, an’, thinks I, thae flues’ll no’ be the waur o’ a redd up, an’ here I am. I doot I’ll no’ can bid ye ben the day tae tak’ yer tea, for the kitchen’s in a stour, an’ forbye the fire’s black oot. Waddell, d’ye see, ’s awa’ tae Lanark tae the ram sales, an’ I look the chance, him bein’ oot the hoose. Eh. I’m rale vexed, Miss Magdalen!”

  “It doesn’t matter a bit, Mrs. Waddell,” said Love, stifling the pangs of hunger with an effort. “I’ve brought you a message from mother, that’s all.”

  She delivered the message, listened to further lamentations from the farmer’s hospitably-inclined wife, and left to a shower of injunctions, chief among which was “Ye’ll be sure an’ look in for yer tea the next time ye’re by!”

  ‘The next time!’ thought Love despondently as she started to trudge tealess back to Craigrois. ‘That isn’t much good to me. It’s like jam yesterday and jam to-morrow—never tea to-day!’

  It was absurd that just missing tea should throw her back into the gloomy state from which she had escape for an hour or two; but it was not the actual food and drink itself, though she was hungry and very thirsty, but all that went with it, that she craved. It was the big cave-like kitchen with its glossy black open grate, the shining brass kettle and candlesticks winking from the dresser, the framed photograph of the cow that had taken first prize at Milton show many years back, the china dogs staring down from the mantelpiece, the general homely comfortable atmosphere and the knowledge that her hostess, bustling to spread the table with a snowy cloth, the best china, the newest making of jams and jellies, crisp oatcakes, freshly-baked scones, was delighted to see her, that she really missed. Now everything seemed to conspire to depress her further.

  Passing the cottage where the roadman lived, an old cottage with outside shutters fastened back from the windows, once a toll-house, she heard a dreary voice singing a hymn:

  ‘Change and decay in all around I see,’ went the voice, accompanied by an obligato of violent scrubbing. Love, rushing past as quickly as she could to hear as little as possible, wondered why in the world she could not have chosen ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ or something inspiring if she felt impelled to sing hymns at all on a Saturday afternoon.

  A short distance beyond the cottage she left the road by a stile for a field-path, which wandered along the banks of a large burn, faithfully imitating its bends in a series of soothing curves. Unconsciously Love, as she followed the narrow ribbon of trodden turf between long grass tangled with the purple thistle-heads of knapweed and yellow of hawkbit and rank-growing, evil-smelling ragwort, began to feel a little more cheerful. At least she would meet no one here who could assail her unwilling ears with dismal hymns sung out of tune: and even as she thought this she heard a dreary whistling coming nearer every second, which resolved itself into ‘The Red Flag.’ The whistler was, of course, Danny Buchanan, walking very slowly with bent head. His whole attitude, the droop of his shoulders, even the doleful sounds he made, spoke of a depression at least equal to her own, and she said, stopping in front of him and trying to sound severe: “That’s a jolly sort of tune to hear, Danny!”

  “Ay. No doubt ye’d rather hear ‘Land o’ Hope and Glory’ or ‘Rule, Britannia,’ eh?” he answered, pugnaciously .

  “Well, they’re certainly both much better tunes,” Love flashed back at him.

  “We’ll no’ quarrel over them,” he said, his combative air falling from him, and leaving him merely dull and obviously miserable.

  “Oh, Danny!” cried Love impulsively. “I believe you’re unhappy too!”

  “Ah. I’m unhappy a’ right,” he agreed. “But a young lass like you has no need to be, surely?”

  “I have my own troubles,” Love said with dignity. And then, with the spontaneous friendliness which made her so difficult to resist, however outrageous her remarks: “Let’s tell each other about them. I’d like your advice, and”—generously—“you can have mine in exchange.”

  He could not help laughing, the suggestion was so ridiculous, for how could a girl of her age and class ever begin to understand the troubles of a man like himself?—but she looked at him so frankly that he was touched. “It puts me in mind o’ a bit out o’ Shakespeare,” he said.

  “Oh, I know! ‘For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings,’” cried Love. “Well, for God’s sake, Danny, let us!”

  “Ye shouldn’t be swearin’ like that. What would yer mother say?” he said austerely.

  “S
hakespeare isn’t swearing. You can say the most awful things as long as they’re Shakespeare,” Love assured him. She sat down firmly on a large stone, and after a moment’s hesitation, he sat down on the grass, a little way off, where he could see her.

  “If all Tories was as frank as you and the Major,” he said suddenly, “I doot if there’d be much o’ a Labour party.”

  “Then it’s just as well they aren’t. Where would you be without your precious party?” retorted Love. “And anyhow, I’m not a Tory—yet. I don’t know that I ever shall be. Tell me what’s wrong with you.”

  “It’s Spain!” he burst out, as he had on the Sunday of their flight over the moor, and Love dimly realized that the plight of that country meant something vital to him.

  He stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and looked at her shyly, Danny Buchanan who could outface anyone. “I’m forgetting my manners,” he said. “It should hae been ladies first.”

  “Oh!” Love, now feeling strangely ashamed, spoke humbly. “My trouble isn’t nearly as important as yours, I’m afraid. It’s just—I’m engaged. Please don’t say so to anyone, because it hasn’t been announced yet—and I don’t believe, now, that I want to be.”

  “Then ye don’t,” he said decidedly. “What do ye ken aboot it yet, fresh from the school as ye are? Take yer time, and ye’ll be all the readier for it in a year or two, or even three. Ye haven’t tasted yer freedom yet, no, nor felt yer bounds. What does yer faither say to it?”

  “Not much. Father isn’t really an interfering person, but I don’t think he likes the idea at all.”

  “Take my word for it, he’s right.”

  “Danny, I never expected to hear you say that father was right about anything!” cried Love.

  “Sir Magnus is a sound man, though him and me doesna agree on politics, an’ I think he’s a’ wrang thegither there,” said Danny. “But he’s done a lot o’ good, though in his own way, and he takes care o’ his folk!”