Yet, always conscious of her grief for Pete, still poignant in her heart, it did not dawn on Vivian that her liking for John Ainslie might be the beginning of a deeper feeling still. If it had, she would have been appalled and shocked by what she would have considered her inconstancy, and would have refused John’s invitation.
Asked by Vivian whether she would prefer to travel north by sleeper or by day, Valerie plumped for going by day.
“I’ve never in my life been further north than Darlingford, and it would be such a pity not to know the actual moment when we cross the Border! That is, if you don’t mind which way we go?”
“It’s all the same to me!” Vivian assured her. “And as we had two Scots grandparents, that makes us half Scots ourselves, so crossing the Border will be something of an occasion!”
So, ten days later, they alighted from the train upon an April evening, at the junction where John had said that he would meet them, so that they might not have to wait there and come on to Muirkirk by a slow local train.
Somehow it was typical of John, thought Vivian at the sight of his tall figure waiting on the platform, that he should be opposite their compartment when the long train drew in—typical of his efficient, calm reliability. His head was bare. The tan he had acquired in Switzerland had survived the northern spring. Vivian, used to seeing him against the background of blue skies and dazzling snow, had wondered whether he would seem the same in more everyday surroundings. She thought now that she had never seen him look to better advantage than he did here in his own setting, wearing well-worn tweeds, with grey skies overhead and misty hills behind him. As their eyes met her heart filled with a comfortable feeling of security and reassurance.
“How good of you to come all this way!” he said.
“How good of you to ask us!” they retorted, laughing.
A porter, trundling milk cans, called to John, “I’ll be with ye just as soon as I can get these in the van!”
John called back, “All right, Tom—I can deal with these myself,” took up a case in each hand, and led the way out to his car. Soon they were speeding along a road that took them through a valley, following a river’s curving course. Hills grown with bracken and young birches rose on either side for some way, then the valley widened to a view of farmlands, and ahead they saw smoke rising from the chimneys of a small grey town.
“Muirkirk!” John told them. “We drive through it; Bieldside lies two miles on the far side.”
They drove through residential streets of sedate grey houses, each standing in its well-kept garden, to the centre of the town, where there were shops, and no less than three churches; passed a building surrounded by enclosures which John said were pens to hold the sheep that were auctioned there, and a high grey wall enclosing other buildings—“Our mill. I’ll take you round it, one of these days, if you would be interested,” John told them. Then they were out once more in the pleasant countryside of fields and farms and cottages and here and there a small plantation, until ahead of them they saw a white gate.
“Bieldside!” John told them, and a moment later they passed through, and down a short steep drive that ended in a wide curve before a low grey house.
Bieldside stood with back turned to the hill that rose behind it to the road, sheltering it from the north wind. Its front windows looked out on a lawn that sloped down to a small grass field where cows were grazing. Beyond that lay the river, and beyond that again another field, then a belt of firs and birches, and finally a heather-covered hill. But Vivian and Valerie had no time now to take in their surroundings, for as the car stopped Susan came running out, her face alight with welcome, followed by Harry and a small fair boy and girl who after glancing shyly at the strangers rushed at John and clung one to each arm while they told him in a breathless duet, “Uncle John! Tim caught a baby rabbit!”
“And he brought it in the kitchen and it wasn’t hurt—”
“And so it ran under Janet’s wicker chair where Tim couldn’t get it—”
“So Janet catched it and she told Lizzie to take it out and let it go aside the drying green acause there’s other baby rabbits there and she kept Tim in the kitchen until Lizzie let it go.”
“But when Lizzie said Tim was a bad dog, Janet said he wasn’t, acause catching rabbits is his nature, like it’s Lizzie’s nature not to sweep ahind the sofa!”
Meanwhile the others had been exchanging greetings. Harry took their cases from the car, helped by John when he had disengaged himself from the affectionate embraces of his niece and nephew, who on being presented to the new arrivals by their mother were immediately paralysed with shyness, and after saying simultaneously, “Howjoodo?” relapsed into a round-eyed silence.
“Come along in,” John said, and led them into a small square stone-flagged hall, with light wallpaper and white paint. On an oak table, reflected in a carved gilt mirror, stood a bowl of daffodils. All houses have their individual smell, and Bieldside’s aroma was a pleasant blend of wood smoke and furniture polish, with an underlying hint of something savoury cooking in the background.
Waiting by the stairs they saw an elderly woman whose grey frock, enveloped in a large white apron, reached nearly to her stout, black, buttoned shoes. Her placid face was plump, and she had straight grey hair combed back severely from a low brow.
John introduced them. “This is Janet—my very oldest friend!” he told them, “she arrived at Bieldside a month before I was born.”
Wondering somewhat at the severity of Janet’s scrutiny, Vivian and Valerie smiled and shook hands with her. Rather grudgingly she smiled back, but her shrewd grey eyes were watchful still. They would have been amazed could they have known the anxious speculations that had troubled Janet for the last week, ever since Master John had told her two young ladies would be staying here when Miss Susan came: speculations that had been intensified since he had come back at lunch time with violets he had bought in Muirkirk for their bedrooms. And when she had gone to see that Lizzie had remembered to put soap and towels, and make sure that everything was as it should be, and had discovered a cake of Moray’s June Rose in one soap dish and Pink Lilac in the other, instead of the Brown Windsor she had given out to Lizzie, that was good enough for anybody, and was the only kind of toilet soap that she had got since she had taken on the housekeeping when the Mistress died, Janet had known that there was Something In It.
She said, “You must be wearied, coming all that long way! If you’ll come this way I’ll take you to your bedrooms and you’ll get a nice rest. There’s an hour still before dinner time.”
Obediently, with a laughing backward glance at John, who grinned back, they followed the dumpy little figure, her apron strings making a wide white cross on her grey back, upstairs with a slender curving handrail of mahogany, to a wide landing with several doors opening off it.
Opening the first door they came to, Janet stood back for them to enter. Master John had said the married Lady was to have the bedroom that had been his mother’s, so she said to Vivian, “This’ll be your room, ma’am. I hope you’ll find it comfortable. If there’s anything you need, be sure and ask for it. Lizzie’s a real nice willing lassie, though girls aren’t what they were in my young days!”
Having conducted Valerie to the adjoining room—a smaller one, with a connecting door, that might at one time have been a dressing room—shown them where the bathroom was, and told them there was plenty of hot water, she departed.
Anxiously, on her way to put the ducklings in the oven, she wondered which of the young ladies was most likely to be Master John’s Intended? Had he said the married one was to have the best room just because she was a married lady, or because she was the special one? Was she a widow? Surely he would never take up with anyone that had been divorced? ... They both seemed real nice, and they had a pleasant way with them, but for all that Janet sighed. Nobody on this earth would be good enough for Master John!
The bedrooms had solid, comfortable furniture, well-kept and shi
ning. Each had an armchair covered in chintz, charmingly old-fashioned, patterned in roses tied in bunches with blue ribbons. The curtains and the valances on the beds were of the same chintz. On the marble-topped washstands were rose-patterned china basins, each containing a gleaming brass can filled with very hot water, and covered with a padded cosy to keep its contents warm.
“Just look at this!” said Valerie.
“It’s charming,” said Vivian, “but I shall feel guilty every time I wash, thinking of all the work for Lizzie!”
“Couldn’t we empty the slops ourselves?”
“We could—but can you picture Janet’s affronted face if she should catch us at it!”
Laughing, Valerie went to her own room to unpack, but Vivian delayed a little. Both rooms faced the river, but hers, a corner one, had a second window looking westward, over a walled garden, and beyond it up the valley. Sitting on the wide cushioned seat set by this second window in the thickness of the wall, she lingered, looking out with a contented heart into the pale, pure light of the northern spring. She saw the garden in its sheltering walls, sloping to catch every glint of sun; a field; a fir wood; far hills painted in a frieze of blue against the sky, and above all the river, flowing on its way.
Always she had thought how lovely it would be to live within sound of a river! Janet had shut the windows. Vivian raised the lower sash of the one beside her, and at once the room was full of rushing music.
How Pete would love it all! she thought, pierced by the familiar pang of loneliness. Then in her wistful musing she was pulled up with a jerk, as suddenly she found herself wondering whether she was right. For Pete had loved a world of gaiety and action. He had enjoyed travel and change of scene, “going places”, meeting old friends, making new ones. No—Pete would not have loved this quiet valley, where the chief changes were those made by the cycle of the seasons, and the most important happenings those in human hearts. He would have agreed enthusiastically that it was pretty, though for his part he preferred scenery on a more spectacular scale. But he would have wanted to be off as soon as possible to some more “amusing” place of comings and goings, entertaining, witty conversation, plenty of gay company and hustle.
How I must have changed! thought Vivian, amazed. Only two years ago, or less, she had imagined she could enjoy nothing better than the full; gay life she shared with Pete. Yet now she realized it might be possible to find a deeper satisfaction in an uneventful life, filled to the brim with little, unimportant, happy things: finding the first primrose in a sheltered corner of a river bank, gardening, stirring the Christmas puddings, driving to do the marketing in some little country town, taking the dogs out for long walks over the hills, drawing the curtains to shut out the wintry dusk, then settling down to spend a peaceful evening with a book, or sewing, while the wind roared in the chimneys, and the leaping flames sent shadows dancing up and down the walls, and every now and then one looked up to exchange a glance of smiling silent understanding with a companion who was sharing one’s content...
How Pete would have hated all these things! How bored he would have been with such an evening—her darling Pete, with all his zest for laughter and gay company and coming here and going there...
They’d been so close, so much a part of one another, she and Pete, enjoying the same way of life, liking the same people, sharing the same enthusiasms! And now for the first time she saw what must inevitably happen—had indeed begun to happen: saw that as the years went by she must become a different woman, a woman with maturing interests and tastes: while Pete would stay for ever young.
Hating the thought, hating herself for thinking it, Vivian was thankful for Valerie’s opportune arrival.
“Goodness! Not begun unpacking yet?” Valerie exclaimed, then, having seen her sister’s face, she said no more, but shut the window and began unpacking for her.
“Don’t you do that! I was just being lazy for a little. Why don’t you go and lie down for half an hour, if yours is done?” said Vivian. Leaving the window she began unpacking the dressing case that held her toilet things.
Valerie went on shaking out skirts and laying away jumpers in deep drawers scented with lavender. She had had more than enough of being alone with her own thoughts. Even in these charming new surroundings memories and longings had pursued her, and when Vivian said, “Isn’t that’ a glorious view from the side window?” she could only think how wonderful it would be if, as she looked out, Rory should come in sight, striding towards her down the river bank, virile and vigorous, keen eyes smiling as they met her own.
At the selfsame time that Valerie and Vivian were unpacking in their rooms at Bieldside, Rory was taking the stairs up to the flat, two steps at a time. He gave one glance at the table where a letter would be lying if one had come for him, but without much hope, for he had almost given up expecting to hear from Valerie. She must have had his letter days ago, and if she had been going to answer it, surely she would have written before now? And yet he could have sworn she would accept his explanation and apology for that disastrous evening...
Barry looked up from the books and papers spread about the table in the window where he had been working all the afternoon.
“I say, d’you realize next week-end will be Easter?”
Rory said indifferently that he supposed it was if Barry said so, but he hadn’t thought about it.
“I hadn’t either, till I got a letter by the second post from Uncle Henry. The old boy wants me to go there for that week-end.”
Despite his cousinship with Barry, Rory had no connection with that young man’s Uncle Henry, about whom he was a trifle hazy.
“I thought he lived in Scotland?”
“So he does!”
“A deuce of a way to go for about three days!”
“It’s in the Borders, just about as near as it can be, for Scotland. And he says he’ll pay my fare.”
“Decent of him! That does make it rather different.”
“It’s a form of bribery,” Barry explained. “He’s potty about the R.S.P.C.A. Always getting up things to raise money for ‘em. Brains Trusts, and Whist Drives, and what nots. This time it’s a apparently the tickets aren’t going too well. So I gather that he’s trying to collect a few to lure the girls along.”
“He must have strange ideas about finances! If he’s going to fork out fares for all of them, he might just as well have given the money to the R.S.P.C.A. and done without the dance!”
“Oh, well—I don’t suppose he’s offering to pay anybody else’s fare! He knows I’m always broke. And; I’m his only nephew, and he has no offspring of his own—could be that he wants to see me ... I suppose you wouldn’t care to come along too? Uncle Henry says that if you do, they will be very glad to put you up. The dance is on the Monday night, but no one would kick up a shindy if you took an extra day—they must be used to it by now!”
Rory said nothing. Hands deep in his trouser pockets, he was staring at the opposite houses, wearing an abstracted expression with which Barry had become all too familiar lately. He was worried about Rory. Not like him to moon about as he’d been doing these last weeks, fretting about a girl who hadn’t even got the manners to accept his apology for something that was an accident. He said persuasively, “It’s lovely country, and they live on the fat of the land. Cream by the gallon! And we could fish. And one meets very pleasant people round about.”
Rory shook his head. “No thanks! It’s very decent of them to suggest it, but I don’t feel in the mood for junketing.”
“All the more reason why you ought to come! It’s weeks since you put on a dinner jacket! Do you good to have a bit of fun.”
But Rory would not change his mind, saying that if he came he’d be the wettest of wet blankets. He would go home for Easter.
After further argument, Barry gave it up as a bad job. Being a well brought up young man he wrote without delay to Uncle Henry, saying that he would love to come and stay for Easter, and was sure the dance would be
great fun, but that unfortunately Rory’s people were expecting him at home.
Then he addressed the envelope to
Henry Ogilvie, Esq.,
Pitmeddo,
Muirkirk, by Lochmavan
and went out and posted it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vivian and Valerie had been staying at Bieldside for over a week when one fine morning John suggested over breakfast that they might like to pay a visit to the tweed mill.
They assured him they would like it very much indeed.
“I’ll take you round this morning, then. Let’s see—I won’t go off as usual, directly after breakfast—we’ll all set out at ten, instead. Then when you’ve had enough of it I’ll leave you at McKeggie’s to have coffee, while I deal with any urgent letters, and collect you later. Sue, d’you feel like coming with us?”
His sister, buttering a piece of toast for four-years-old Sally, smilingly shook her head. “I’ve been round the mill more times than I can count! And I must do some ironing this morning.”
Sally’s brother, a year older than herself, was puzzled by his mother’s way of expressing herself. “Why can’t you count the number of times that you’ve been round it, Mummy? I can count every single time—I went at Christmas and last summer and the Christmas afore that and every time we’ve been here since I were a little boy! Can I come with you, Uncle John? I’d like to come!”
He was dissuaded by a reminder that Tom Thompson from the farm had said that he would show him where a water ousel had its nest beneath a ruined bridge that spanned the river a little way above the house.
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