The Last of the Kintyres

by Catherine Airlie

  What could she say to him, knowing what she did now? Only that she and Tony would efface themselves as quickly as possible, even before the old laird’s funeral, if he so desired.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HALF an hour later Elizabeth descended the staircase in search of Hew, still not quite sure of what she was going to say to him and far more conscious now of his new status as Laird of Ardlamond than she had been when he had first told her of his father’s death.

  The feeling that they were here under false pretences had grown and strengthened during the interval, blotting out the sense of homecoming which had warmed her heart as the big American car had covered the miles between Oban and Dromore.

  During the journey she had been able to discount her first unfortunate impression of Hew Kintyre and the fact that he had been so obviously unwilling to receive them at Ardlamond, but now he was Ardlamond and they were the intruders, the unwanted strangers within the gates.

  Thrusting her hands into the pockets of her blue dress, she tried to stifle a keen sense of disappointment as she reached the foot of the stairs.

  Hesitating on the bottom step and not quite sure which way to turn, she became aware of a man’s tall figure in the shadows beside one of the deep window embrasures. He was standing quite still, looking out towards the hills on that side of the house, to the glen that ran deeply into them and was now grey in the gloaming hour, and his thoughts had pencilled two deep grooves between his thick red brows.

  “I want to say how sorry I am that all this had to happen—Tony and I coming here when you must want to be alone,” she said into the silence. “It’s no use offering to go tonight. It would only put you to more trouble, but we will leave in the morning.”

  Hew turned to face her, impatience predominating in his expression as their eyes met.

  “There’s no need for you to think of leaving,” he said curtly. “It would be considered odd, to say the least of it, by the people who will be attending my father’s funeral. Most of them are already aware that he was made Tony’s guardian and that he was looking forward to your arrival.”

  “But you?” she questioned, looking back into the unfathomable eyes which were neither grey nor green. “You can’t possibly want us to stay.”

  “On the contrary,” he answered, moving away from the window, “you may be a great deal of use to me. I have to return to Whitefarland tomorrow morning on a matter of business and—people will be arriving. We have a great many relatives and my father made friendships up and down the country during his lifetime. All these people will want to come and pay their last respects to him, and most of them know about your visit. They will expect to find you here and, apart from Mrs. Malcolm, there is no other woman in the house. I shall be—obliged if you will help me out in this.”

  The words were coldly formal, but at least he had made the request. He stood hesitating for a moment, still looking at her directly while he seemed to reject and then accept some suggestion which had been turning over in his mind.

  “If your brother is going to find it depressing being in the house he can come with me to Whitefarland,” he added briefly.

  “I’m sure Tony would like that,” Elizabeth agreed. “I don’t think he’s ever seen over a farm, and certainly not a sheep farm.”

  He looked at her curiously, and she wondered if she had divulged too intimate a knowledge about his home among the hills.

  “I wish this hadn’t happened,” she told him impulsively. “I was looking forward so much to meeting Sir Ronald—getting to know him.”

  “Yes,” he said almost indifferently. “He remembered you as a child.”

  Did he know about the old love affair between their parents, Elizabeth wondered, and was he completely indifferent to it?

  It would seem so, and perhaps he even resented it on his mother’s behalf.

  “If you would give me some idea about whom I am to expect tomorrow,” she suggested nervously, “I’ll do all I can to help.”

  “I should imagine you will be on the phone most of the morning,” he told her. “All sorts of people will ring up to offer their sympathy as soon as the news gets around. I’m not very good at responding to that sort of thing, I’m afraid,” he confessed. “A woman has a better command of words on these occasions.” He turned towards the fire, with his back to her. “My father will have a Highland funeral, of course,” he added. “It was his wish. He will probably be the last of the Kintyres to be buried on Lingay.”

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  “That’s the island at the mouth of the loch,” he explained. “It’s Kintyre land, and the ancient burying ground of the family is over there. Apart from the ruins of an old church, there’s nothing else on the island. Some of the local inhabitants will tell you that Lingay is haunted, but I graze sheep over there, in spite of the fact,” he added dryly.

  “It sounds like Mary Rose’s island,” Elizabeth mused. “We saw it when we came round the head of the loch in the car. It looked lovely in the setting sun.” For a moment she felt that they had struck some sort of chord of mutual attraction, but it was difficult to be sure.

  “I used to think Lingay had the same quality as Barrie’s island,” he said. “But that was when I was very young. There must be some food waiting for you,” he added, dismissing the moment of intimacy as if it had never been. “If your brother is ready I’ll show you the way to the dining-room.”

  Tony put in his appearance on the gallery above them but almost before they were seated at the long rather formal dining-table in the panelled room on the far side of the hall Hew was called to the telephone.

  “Will you carry on without me?” he excused himself, pushing back his chair. “This sort of thing will probably go on happening all evening now. I know you must be hungry after your journey, so don’t bother to wait.”

  He was still talking on the telephone in the alcove leading from the hall when they had finished their meal. Mrs. Malcolm had carried the coffee table from the drawing-room and set it in front of the blazing log fire in the hall but he did not look round as they came in.

  “What happens now?” Tony asked restlessly, pacing to the window as they waited for their coffee. “Don’t tell me we’re expected to go to bed. It’s only nine o’clock!”

  Elizabeth glanced guiltily at the alcove, but Hew was still listening intently to the person on the far end of the line.

  “I don’t think there will be any hard and fast rules about that sort of thing, Tony,” she decided. “But we must remember that both Mrs. Malcolm and—Hew have been up from very early this morning. They may even have been up all night, so they won’t want to be out of bed till midnight.”

  “O.K.!” he shrugged. “But if it’s going to be like this all the time we’re here I shall probably have to jump in the sea out of sheer boredom!”

  Elizabeth did not answer that, saying instead: “Would you like to walk to the end of the drive or out along the cliff? We needn’t go very far, and if Ardlamond is like most other Highland houses the door won’t be locked, anyway.”

  “I’m ready,” he agreed. “Do you want a coat?”

  “I expect I’d better take one,” Elizabeth decided. “And I’ll tell Mrs. Malcolm we’re going out.”

  The old house seemed curiously empty when she went in search of Jessie, but presently the housekeeper came hurrying through from the back premises to say that she would wait up for them. Hew had evidently finished his conversation on the telephone while she had been upstairs collecting her coat and he had not touched the coffee they had left for him.

  “The young master has gone out,” Jessie informed her. “He’s probably gone up to Whitefarland for an hour. He lived alone up there and there’s a lot to do. He’s been dipping sheep for the past three days, with only a hired boy to help him. He must have the heart of a lion,” she added with a sigh.

  Elizabeth joined Tony at the open door.

  “I suppose the old man dying will have made a differenc
e where we’re concerned,” he remarked as they set out together along the moss-grown drive. “I mean, Hew Kintyre won’t want us to stay here. We’re not exactly his responsibility, are we?”

  “No,” Elizabeth agreed with regret in her voice. “I wish we could have stayed, Tony, in happier circumstances. It’s a lovely old place.”

  “You have to admit it is a bit of a backwater, though,” he argued. “There might be compensations, of course,” he went on thoughtfully. “The set-up at the Castle, for instance. Caroline Hayler looked a gay enough type, and that car of hers was really something! She must have livened Dromore up considerably since she came to live here.”

  “She always lived in the glen,” Elizabeth told him with a peculiar sense of reluctance. “She married, and came back to buy the Castle after her husband’s death in Canada.”

  He was completely taken by surprise.

  “I had no idea she was a widow,” he mused. “She couldn’t have been married for very long. She’s not much older than you are, is she?”

  Elizabeth smiled.

  “No, I don’t think so. But a wise old lady of twenty-two is much too old for you!”

  “You underrate me!” he grinned, linking his arm companionably through hers in the old, endearing way which made her forget all his superficial faults. Handled the right way, she thought, Tony would get over his wilfulness in time.

  That first walk down to the shore with the sound of the sea in her ears and the scent of pines in her nostrils was a wonderful experience to Elizabeth, and in the days which followed, as the old house filled gradually with friends and relations from all parts of Scotland she felt glad that Hew Kintyre had asked her to stay.

  He needed her help. There was no doubt about that as each guest brought his or her own little problem to the quiet house, and curiously enough, Caroline Hayler did not return to offer hers. She telephoned Hew twice, but Elizabeth heard him refusing any assistance, courteously but firmly.

  On the day of the funeral people began to gather from near and far. Hew had been up from early morning, after spending most of the day before at Whitefarland, which Tony had described to Elizabeth as “a bleak sort of place right up in the hills”. He met people and made them welcome with a distant look in his eyes which reminded Elizabeth of that first evening when she had come slowly down the staircase to surprise him at the window, but now most of the bitterness had gone. He seemed to have accepted the inevitability of the situation and had taken the laird’s place with an unconscious dignity which added to his stature if not to his approachability. It was as if he had shut himself into the old citadel of reserve with a difference. He was now the laird, their host in spite of himself, and until they freed him from the invidious position he would meet them with the necessary courtesy and restraint.

  I can’t really be angry any more, Elizabeth told herself, because I see now how difficult it must be for him.

  When the cortege was ready to leave he came towards her.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked. “Would you rather wait behind at the house?”

  In that moment she saw him so utterly alone in his grief, even among so many friends, that she said impulsively:

  “I’d like to come, Hew, if you don’t mind. Tony ought to go too,” she added. “He was Sir Ronald’s ward.”

  He looked down at her with a hint of surprise in his eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said briefly. “You will have to walk with me. It will be expected by the tenants. They know that Tony was made my father’s ward. We go straight to the island through the estate,” he added briefly.

  That long walk, with the lament on the pipes echoing back into the very heart of the hills, was to imprint itself on Elizabeth’s mind and remain there as one of her most vivid memories. She had never heard the Highland bagpipe played in its natural setting, and the wild and melancholy notes pierced straight into her heart. The whole experience seemed to bring her closer to the stern man who walked silently by her side, his kilt swinging, the plaid across his shoulder blown in the wind from the sea as the long procession wound downwards to the shore. Tony walked on her other side, but she hardly seemed to notice him until they reached the spot where a launch was waiting to take the old laird across that familiar stretch of water for the last time.

  All among the crags and back as far as she could see the humble people of the estate and the old laird’s personal friends were gathered, their heads bared, their sombre clothing blending into the muted colour of the background where the spent heather lay against the hill. There was only one exception. A girl in a scarlet coat with a gaudy headscarf tied over her hair stood at the point where the road came nearest the sea, the ends of her scarf fluttering defiantly in the wind.

  Behind her, on the road, the conspicuous white Cadillac had been parked with its wheels on the grass verge. There could be no mistaking Caroline Hayler even before she came swiftly down across the headier towards them.

  She did not quite reach Hew’s side, however, because at that moment he was motioned towards the waiting launch and he turned to instruct Tony and Elizabeth to follow him aboard.

  Elizabeth averted her eyes from Caroline, but Tony stood gazing at her as if he could see no one else.

  “Tony!” Elizabeth urged in a swift undertone.

  He turned, then, following her to the water’s edge, and Caroline stood back with an angry little movement of annoyance to wait her turn for one of the other launches that were coming up behind.

  The slow cortege moved out across the narrow sound, and soon they had reached the island and had gone ashore at the north end of it to the little stone chapel where the lairds of Ardlamond had been buried for hundreds of years.

  The strong sense of tradition was everywhere, and nowhere more prominent than in the person of Hew Kintyre. Yet Elizabeth could not quite shake her mind free from the thought of Caroline Hayler and her presence there behind them. Even the sad, impressive nature of the simple committal service could not free her thoughts from the girl in the startling red coat who had so obviously come intending to stand by Hew’s side.

  If Caroline had thought to catch Hew’s eye, however, she was doomed to disappointment. As they had come they returned to the mainland, and very soon the tenants had dispersed and most of the other mourners with them.

  Only those who had come a very long way returned to Ardlamond, and Caroline was not among them. She drove away, the big white car seeming to flash angrily between the tall boles of the pines as it ate up the miles between the bay and Caroline’s spectacular castle home.

  Elizabeth was glad to be able to help Mrs. Malcolm in the dining-room for the next two hours, although she could eat nothing herself. Tony had disappeared, and suddenly she wondered if he had gone with Caroline.

  Surely he would not do such a thing! A deep flush burned suddenly in her cheeks as she met Hew’s eyes across the crowded room.

  “When all this is over,” he said, coming across to where she stood, “I’d like a word with you and Tony.”

  “Yes,” she said automatically. “I’ll find him.”

  But what if she could not? Tony was quite capable of taking the law into his own hands and remaining away as long as he thought fit. He would not consider that he owed anything to Hew at such a time, any loyalty or respect. Thoughtlessly, he would go the way of his own desire.

  “I saw that Caroline Hayler on the shore,” Mrs. Malcolm mentioned when Hew had gone. “Dressed up in red, like the Jezebel she is! It’ll be a sorry day for Ardlamond if the young master marries her. Ay, a sorry day!” she repeated.

  “Are they—going to be married?” Elizabeth asked with an odd constriction in her throat.

  Jessie set down a pile of used plates with a heavy sigh.

  “He might need the money,” she said.

  “But—he wouldn’t marry for that reason,” Elizabeth protested immediately.

  “Many a man has done it before him,” Jessie reminded her practically. “And for far less
worthy reasons than saving their home. Ardlamond means more to Hew Kintyre than most family houses. There’s the years behind him, and all the Kintyres that served this place without thought of self—some of them with their life’s blood! Ay,” she mused, “a name and a place like Ardlamond can be a grim mistress!”

  Automatically Elizabeth stacked more plates on to the tray, feeling as if a ruthless hand had taken her tightly by the throat and was threatening to strangle her.

  “There—might be some other way,” she suggested vaguely. “If he isn’t in love with Mrs. Hayler.”

  “There was a talk of it at one time, but mostly from her side,” Jessie was forced to admit. “The young master isn’t a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, though. She played fast and loose with his affections before she went off and married money herself, and I don’t suppose he’s ever forgotten that. Or forgiven her. She’d like it all to be the same again, I dare say, now that he’s the laird, but you can’t go back over the years and live them twice!” Jessie drew in a deep breath. “She took the Canadian, and although her marriage didn’t last long, it left its mark on the young master. I’d be surprised if he risks his affections again, even for that amount of money.”

  But for Ardlamond? If Ardlamond were in need of money?

  Swiftly she turned away from Jessie Malcolm’s penetrating blue gaze. Jessie herself did not want Hew to marry Caroline, but that was no reason why she should suddenly regard her as an ally.

  “I must see if I can find Tony,” she excused herself.

  “As like as not he’ll be away with Mistress Hayler in her flashy big car,” Jessie suggested dryly. “Any man’s better than none! The fact that your brother is three years younger than she is wouldn’t make a bit of difference to her, though she’ll tread warily enough when the young master’s about. She’s a fly one, and no mistake. You mark my words, Miss Stanton, and don’t be impressed by her, whatever you do!”