by A. J. Cronin
To be sure, there was not much profit in the work, but Daniel thoroughly enjoyed it, especially when it took him into the open air among the children. There he was in his element, happy and fussy, a regular master of ceremonies, with a stock of harmless little jokes which he was far too diffident to use upon their elders, but which unaccountably always made the children laugh. These little triumphs did much to compensate him for the exacting task of portraiture in the studio.
He was almost ready when a light tip-tapping on the glass panel of the door caused him to swing round. It was Gracie, her eyes agleam with fun, her smiling face pressed against the pane. The next instant she was in the room.
“I didn’t know if I’d catch you. I hurried all the way.” She breathed quickly, one hand pressed against her slender side, the other sustaining herself against his shoulder.
“Uncle Dan, I’m off for the day. Could you … would you cash me this small cheque?”
He gazed at her, rather taken aback, observing her “dressed-up” air, her trim costume, neat black hat and veil. Then he glanced at the cheque, which was drawn for the very modest sum of 20s.
“Where are you going?” he asked slowly.
She laughed her teasing, infectious laugh, and bent forward to sniff the rose in his button-hole. “ What an inquisitive little man! And what a bonny rose! It’s a nice habit you have to wear something out of your garden every day.” She hesitated, then said with a rush, “Can’t you guess where I’m going, Uncle Dan?”
At her tone, less than her words, Daniel’s brow cleared and his eyes kindled warmly. Six days ago he had written a long letter of explanation and inquiry to Alexander Lang at Methven Farm, near Perth. Thus far there had been no response. What was more natural than that Gracie should wish to take the trip to Perth to anticipate that reply and to see for herself how the land lay?
So, at least, Daniel construed the situation, and with ready, eager fingers he fumbled in his right-hand vest pocket. He never had any money beyond a few shillings to jingle with his keys, but from one Christmas to another, to save his face in case of necessity, he carried a single sovereign in the nickel case attached to his watch chain. Now, with a self-conscious little smile, he slipped out the gold coin and handed it over.
“Thank you, Uncle Dan,” Gracie murmured. “I let myself run short of change. And I need a little for my railway fare.”
Before he could reply she was out and on her way down the street, so bright and gay he had to smile in sympathy. He stood for a minute, still aglow at the thought of her present mission, then, resuming his gentle humming, bent down and began to strap up his satchel.
Down the High Street Gracie hurried, her feet light on the bone-dry pavements, until she came to the railway station. Here she bought a ticket, and, after crossing to the down line platform, entered an empty compartment in the local train for Markinch.
Presently the train clanked off, and after traversing a long tunnel drew up at Dalreoch, a poor-class outlying district of Levenford. This station, seldom used by the townspeople, now held nothing but scores of empty milk cans destined for the lochside and a solitary passenger, a man, who, hastening down the line of windows, stepped quickly into Gracie’s compartment.
“Well,” Gracie remarked as the train moved off again, “we managed that quite well.”
David Murray gazed at her almost unwillingly, from his seat opposite, then glanced instinctively through the window as though he feared they might be observed. He was pale and restive, perhaps a little defiant. He wore a dark grey suit and a badly knotted blue tie.
So ill-tied was it that Gracie bent forward with a pretty chiding gesture and began to pat it into place. “ T ch! What a careless chap he is, to be Levenford’s bright young lawyer. And sulky, too. Aren’t you pleased to be free of your desk for today?”
He answered perfunctorily: “Yes, yes, you know I am. But be careful, Gracie, please.”
“What on earth is there to be careful about?” She sat back, mocking him gently with her eyes. “And what a frightened fellow you have turned out to be!”
He bit his moustache nervously, moodily.
“You know what people are, Gracie. Especially in Levenford. It’s risky and foolish of us to take this trip.”
She did not answer, but gazed distantly out of the window at the soft green landscape slowly rolling past At length she murmured: “I love the loch so much I wanted to see it as we saw it together in the old days.”
“Those days are gone, Gracie.”
There was a pause. Her head remained averted, her delicate profile outlined against the window.
“Was that why you never answered the letters I wrote you from India?”
This time it was he who made no reply.
With a faint smile she turned towards him.
“And now there’s Isabel, Davie. It was quite a shock when Aunt Kate told me of your engagement. Foolishly, I had always thought of you as unattached … and steadfast.”
“Were you steadfast, Gracie?”
She did not seem to hear the question, but went on, in that same light tone.
“I remember Isabel at school. She used to wear a brown velvet dress that made her look like a prune.”
“You never were very fond of the other girls, Gracie.”
“No,” she answered calmly. “I was more at home with the boys. Anyhow, I’m sure you’ll be happy. Nisbet used to say that homely women make the best wives.”
“Was that his experience?”
Her gay, infectious laugh rang out.
“That’s more the David Murray I used to know.”
He could not help himself, he smiled at last— his sensitive, worried smile. Somehow he had never been able to resist her. He knew it was wrong, the act of an imbecile to be here with Gracie.
When her note had come to the office suggesting this expedition he had torn it up with a frown. He had Isabel to think about, and his widowed mother, who in the most straitened circumstances had made heroic sacrifices to send him to college to take his law degree.
Besides, there was his career—he was linked now in the most favourable way with Isabel’s father over the new gasworks scheme and the Burgh Causeway tenders, and a dozen other profitable ventures. He knew all this, yet here he was, taking this dangerous trip, under the very nose of a suspicious, censorious town.
But they were already at Markinch, and there was no time for further reflection. They left the train together and boarded the tiny paddle steamer that lay waiting at the pier. Almost at once the engine bell clanged, ropes were cast off, and the yellow paddles churned the green water into milky foam. Out of the little harbour they swept, then turning, throbbed steadily up the loch. It was a calm, bright day, and because it was still early in the season they had the boat almost to themselves.
When they passed the Island of Inchlade the water was so calm that the steamer’s bows made no waves, but great smooth ripples which glided outward like quiet serpents. It was so still they could hear the splash of a fish a long way off, and the crisp “tchink-tchink” of a blacksmith’s hammer from the village of Gielston upon the opposite shore.
Because the hills rose steeply the loch seemed deep, rich with mystery and wonder. The tiny piers at which they called were gay with budding fuschia, and the little straw-thatched whitewashed houses had the look of heavenly toys.
Leaning on the rail, Gracie laid her fingers lightly on Murray’s sleeve and watched the lovely vista, like someone in a dream. Neither of them spoke, except to call attention to some aspect of the view, a patch of bracken bursting into green, a flashing waterfall among the high-up crags.
Towards noon the steamer put in at Dunbeg, its farthest port of call. Here they went ashore and walked up the single dusty street between the climbing nasturtiums on the cottage porches. The steamer would be at the pier for the next two hours, loading up with barrels of early potatoes and resting—it almost seemed—in the midday glare, waiting for the few passengers who had gone explori
ng in the woods.
At the end of the village, Gracie and Murray took the winding road up the hill. It was very hot, and the hum of insects filled the air. High banks of fern grew on either side, and there was a swimming, heady smell of wild thyme and sage.
They reached the summit of the hill and stood to view the loch which lay chasmed far beneath them.
“We ought to go back now. Get some lunch at the inn.”
“Must we, Davie?”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
She shook her head and seated herself on a patch of dry soft turf beside a clump of flowering broom.
“It’s too lovely to be indoors.”
After a moment’s hesitation he took his place beside her. There was a silence. Then, as though meditating, she said:
“You don’t know how often out there in the parched heat I thought of us, sitting here. I’m a queer creature, David. I wish I could explain … make you understand why things went the way they did between us. On the surface I must have seemed quite heartless … but underneath I cared for you a lot.”
“You certainly showed it.” Gazing straight ahead, he spoke from between his teeth. “You know you were in love with Woodburn.”
She shook her head.
“It wasn’t love, David. If anything it was pity.” As he swung round abruptly and stared at her she met his eyes unflinchingly, and continued in a low and steady tone: “Henry was ill, David, far more so than anybody guessed. He’d been for months in a sanatorium without showing any improvement. One lung was riddled and the other was beginning to be affected. Oh, I admit I was carried away by his charm and his fearlessness. I had never met anyone like him before, but more than anything it was the sadness that he had so little time left that blinded me and made me want to give him something in return.”
Tiny beads of sweat had broken out on Murray’s brow.
“Isn’t it rather late in the day for these intimate confidences?” he said in a voice that he tried to make indifferent.
“Yes, David, that’s true,” she answered simply, “but it is the first—and only—chance I have had.”
He dared not look at her, but when he raised his eyes at last a faint smile touched her lips and her lashes fluttered. And, all caution gone, he leaned towards her with a kind of groan.
“Gracie, oh Gracie!” he whispered, losing himself in the shining of her eyes.
At five o’clock that evening, a little later than usual because of his heavy day at the Academy, Daniel returned to the studio. From a distance he saw the druggist waiting for him on the doorstep with a surprised look on his face.
“Well, it’s you,” said his friend. “ How is Gracie?”
Daniel felt his face flush. “Gracie’s very well,” he replied quietly.
“No doubt, no doubt, as she was travelling today.”
“And why not?” said Daniel with rising annoyance. “She had business in Perth.”
The druggist shrugged. “ Perth?” he said. “She was on the train to Markinch. I was on it myself.”
Daniel started. He stared at Hay and slowly his heart contracted and sank within him. He could not doubt the druggist’s word. Among Hay’s many queer possessions he had—strange fancy in a metaphysician so desiccated—a little houseboat on Loch Lomond, a ramshackle craft anchored in Cantie Bay, about five miles above the village of Markinch.
Here, in the summer, Hay would come to spend agreeable week-ends, often taking Daniel with him for the dual purpose of argument and companionship. It was this houseboat which authenticated Hay’s statement—he had told Daniel only last week that he meant to go to the loch on Wednesday “to make things ship-shape” and to leave instructions about buying in provisions.
Daniel swallowed dryly. He muttered: “ Like as not Gracie changed her mind.”
“To be sure,” agreed Hay, cracking his bony fingers. “Ay, ay, to be sure. No doubt that’s why David Murray was with her.”
“No,” Daniel faltered.
The druggist answered with a pitying shrug. “ I saw them take the Dunbeg boat with my own eyes.”
A pang shot through Daniel. He remembered the look on Gracie’s face when she came in that morning. He turned without a word, and moved slowly towards his studio. Here, as he entered the tiny lobby, he noticed a letter upon the brass salver which stood upon the hall-stand. He gazed at it dumbly.
Then, with a queer sensation of having seen it before, he picked it up. It was his own letter which he had sent to Alexander Lang at Methven Farm, near Perth. And it was marked: “ Not known. Gone away.”
Next day the doors of the Wellhall Photographic Studio were closed. On the afternoon of that day, about four o’clock, Daniel descended from the northern express and, leaving the station with a tired, despondent air, set out towards his home.
Half-way across the common he discerned ahead of him the figure of a woman—it was his wife. From the work-bag which she carried and the chastened angle of her head, he saw that she had been to the weekly meeting of the Church Sewing Circle. Dutifully he overtook her, and with a word of greeting they passed along the toll road together.
Daniel had been secretly to Perth to seek definite information upon the Langs, and, civilly enough, the present tenant of Methven Farm, a sturdy young countryman, had given him the facts.
Lang himself was dead these three years past; indeed, if the truth must be told, he had “ drunk himself into the grave”, and in the process of personal disintegration had let the farm go to rack and ruin—it had been a hard job to reclaim the wasted land. As for Mrs Lang, she was believed to have gone to the city of Winton, but no one knew for sure; she had felt her disgrace keenly and had severed all connection with her friends. There had been a child, the young farmer believed, in fact several children, for the woman had made a practice of adoption, and these, presumably, she had taken with her. But more than that he could not say.
For a moment, as he walked beside his wife, Daniel, discouraged by his fruitless expedition, had a longing to unburden himself to her. But a side glance towards her pale, resigned face deterred him. Always at the Sewing Circle was she set back upon herself, patronised by the minister’s wife and the well-to-do women of the congregation, made to feel that her struggle for social recognition was futile, that all her thrift and painful endeavours, her shifts and economies, her patching and mending and polishing, were of no avail, that all, all was useless and without purpose, that she would always bear the stigma of her husband’s contemptible failure, a dowdy, disappointed little woman with work-worn hands and shabby clothes, wife of a “stickit” minister.
Yet, despite her self-imposed silence, as they turned the last corner of the road an exclamation was forced from Kate’s lips. Outside the front of the house stood a car, the natty little Panhard belonging to Mr Harmon, the Khedive agent.
Daniel also was visibly surprised—automobiles were rare in Levenford, and never before had one stood at his gate. They both hastened their steps towards the house.
As they entered the hall there came from the parlour a deep masculine voice followed by Gracie’s laugh, that individual, provoking, fascinating laugh. With her mittened hand Kate pushed open the door. Frank Harmon, very smart in a short covert coat and check waistcoat, his yellow dogskin driving gloves resting on his well-creased knees, was reclining in the best armchair, smooth, smiling and expansive, with a glass of sherry in his strong fingers and a plate of biscuits at his elbow. On a low stool, not far from the chair, wearing one of her nicest muslin afternoon gowns, sat Gracie. Her own glass of sherry stood on a little table beside her.
The situation was so unexpected, so intimate and complete, Kate scarcely knew how to meet it. On the one hand it outraged her to find Gracie playing hostess in her sacred parlour, carelessly dispensing sherry—which was never used except on the most ceremonious occasions—and actually drinking the wine herself. Yet upon the other it gratified her pride to be visited by a person of Harmon’s standing. Not only was the agent a man of me
ans—it was said he had extensive holdings in the Khedive Company—but he went about largely in Levenford society, dined at Sir John Ralston’s, for instance, and was generally-much sought after. A faint spot of colour had risen from Kate’s earthy checks. In her embarrassment she cleared her throat.
The sound caused Gracie to turn her head and immediately she was on her feet, her expression gay and smiling, in no way discomposed.
“Aunt Kate… Uncle Dan… you know Mr Harmon. He called on me this afternoon, and as he doesn’t drink tea I offered him this little refreshment. May I pour you a glass?”
“No, thank you,” Kate could not forbear an acid compression of her lips. “ I would not dream of partaking in the afternoon.”
“Sherry is surely a mild tipple, m’m,” Harmon protested heartily. “Why, out East…” Here it seemed as though a warning glance from Gracie restrained him. He broke off, took up a biscuit, and crunched it amicably between his strong white teeth.
“I understand you knew our niece in India,” Kate remarked more pleasantly
“Yes, indeed, m’m,” Harmon agreed courteously, “though less well than I would have wished. My visits to Calcutta were never prolonged. But your niece’s bungalow was always an oasis for the traveller on such occasions.”
“Oh, Frank,” cried Gracie with laughing eyes, “you are a wicked flatterer. But I forgive you because you are such a dear, kind friend.”
Her tone, excited and a little unrestrained, caused Kate and Daniel to gaze at her more attentively. Daniel in particular was perplexed and somewhat troubled to find Gracie suddenly upon such terms of “first name” intimacy with the Khedive agent. Harmon had the reputation of a gay bachelor, a ladies’ man, and there were one or two queer stories concerning him—perhaps merely the sort of small town gossip likely to be connected with a man not native to the district; who travelled a great deal, coming and going without warning, and whose local establishment consisted of a suite of rooms at the Castle Hotel. Beyond the fact that he had once found him savagely beating a springer dog for some misdemeanour, Daniel knew nothing wrong of the man, yet he shrank from him, as from something evil.