by Anne Vinton
“Oh! I want him so!” Flo moaned into her hands, quietly. “I can’t believe I’ll never be like that again with him—as we were in the garden at the ceilidh.”
She closed her eyes again, trying to recapture the touch of Jim’s shy lips on her cheek as they had sat side by side looking out over the river at Queensferry, which had been a favorite jaunt of theirs.
A light touch on her arm and she remembered she hadn’t yet ordered tea.
“Tea and cakes, plea—” she stopped short, for it was not the elderly waiter who stood regarding her. “Robert!” she gasped, far too gladly, and half rose. “Robert!” she repeated. “You!” Their eyes had somehow become locked in the intensity of a glance, and the approach of the waiter was timely in that it disconnected them and gave them the chance to seat themselves and at least appear normal.
“Is tea and cakes sufficient?” he asked formally.
“Oh, yes, thanks. At least for me. What would you like?”
“Hot buttered scones will set me up for an hour or two, and bring a pot of tea for five, Jamie. I’m verra thirsty.”
Flo actually found herself laughing though nothing had changed in her circumstances. It was impossible to be completely unhappy in Robert’s company; that was one of the reasons she had forbidden herself the pleasure of it.
“I’m so glad you relented at last, Flo,” he now said earnestly. “I couldna believe my luck, until I saw your sweet face light up a minute ago. You are glad to see me, my dear?”
“I am. Yes. But—”
“This is no time for buts. You called and I came. At this moment I’m satisfied. I’m not looking for ribbons round the parcel.”
“Oh, Robert!” she sighed.
The music was now heartrendingly sweet, and as she poured tea from the large silver-plated pot she felt that if only the scene had been truly domestic, with just the two of them, she could have asked for nothing more.
“How did you come to be here?” she felt obliged to ask.
He stared at her suddenly.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” was all he replied.
His eyes clouded suddenly as she bent her head over her plate. “What is this all about, Flo?” he asked. “I don’t understand you. You ask me to come. Where are we, exactly?”
“Robert, I—I can’t answer you. Please don’t make me!” She passed a hand across her eyes. “Why, oh why did you come here today, of all days?”
He laughed bitterly.
“Then what is to be discussed between us? Why did you summon me? Your note seemed like the lifting of an impossible ban.”
“Which note?”
He took the fold of paper from his breast pocket.
“This is your writing?”
“Yes.” Her hands trembled as she read. “I wrote it, but—”
“ ‘But’ again. I would never have thought you such an indeterminate young woman, Sister. You ask me to meet you and then appear confused at my appearance. Shall I leave you?”
“No, not like this, all outraged and formal. Drink your tea. It’s all much simpler. than you think, Robert. I did write that note—but not to you.”
He looked at the letter again blankly, then back to her.
“It was in my pigeon-hole,” he asserted.
“It probably got there after it left Fay’s hand. She’s the one I wanted to see, and here she is!”
Fay had drawn up a chair and was pouring herself a cup of tea. “Five minutes while the ’cellist gets his solo out of his system,” she announced. “Well! it’s nice to see you both. Heard from Jim lately, Flo?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Fay drank thirstily and then beamed on the laird.
“I really never thought you’d fall for that!” she said impudently, indicating the letter that lay open on the table. “You must want to see Flo very badly to assume an untitled message was for you, even though it happened to be amongst your mail. Or else”—her eyes widened to a look of innocent mischief— “you’re already on terms of sending billet-doux to one another?”
“I made a mistake,” Robert Strathallan said levelly, “and not intentional as yours was.”
“I’m glad to hear that. By the way, Flo, have you lost your ring?”
“No, I haven’t,” the other said tiredly. “I’m in uniform and that doesn’t go with jewellery.”
“But I’ve noticed you don’t wear it even when you’re out of uniform. In fact I haven’t seen it on view since we joined you here.”
“Haven’t you? You shall see it this evening. I promise.”
“Isn’t your five minutes up yet, Miss Fay?” the laird asked, his eyes glinting dangerously. “This happens to be a table for two, and you weren’t invited.”
“Oh, but I was!” flashed Fay, sweetly. “I trapped you into gatecrashing, and now you’re more of an interloper than you think!”
“Please go back to your playing, Fay,” Flo urged quietly. “You’ve accomplished what you aimed to, and that should be a great satisfaction to you.”
“I’m hanged if I’ll be ordered about like—”
Flo rose.
“Robert!” she called. “Shall we go now?”
He, too, left the table hurriedly, and Fay was seething and alone.. He caught up with Flo in the comparative privacy of the conservatory, and pulled her round to face him.
“Now what was all that about?” he demanded. “If that girl wanted to make me mad she’s surely succeeded. I’m beginning to wish she had drowned that night.”
“Please don’t say things you might regret, Robert.”
“Well, what was she up to just now?”
Flo looked at him, her lips parted, her eyes wide and tragic. Robert Strathallan followed his natural inclinations and kissed her, and when she broke loose the first words she gasped caused him to grow rigid as he stood.
“I’m engaged to be married, Robert. I have been for over two years. Fay was right. It’s time you knew.”
“Well”—he finally addressed a rubber tree in the humid heat as though it was his bosom pal—“so that’s why the brake went on! I must have been pathetically dense not to suspect before now. I suppose I don’t really understand women. I thought when they belonged to someone you could tell!” Now he looked at her, his eyes cold and appraising. “How was it you didn’t head me off from the start? Wasn’t I offensively obvious in showing my preference?”
“Not offensively—no,” she said unhappily.
Still his bitterness and hurt poured out like suppuration from a wound.
“I don’t remember you putting up any Keep off the Grass signs either. Maybe I was standing in for this—this Jim? And didn’t know it? Some things went just far enough to please your ego, eh? But kissing went too far. When I wanted to enjoy myself you remembered your precious engagement!”
“Please, Robert,” Flo begged, unhappily, “don’t say any more! I’m so miserable about it!”
“I suppose you’re miserable because you can’t have your cake and eat it? Maybe I should be grateful to Miss Fay for making you admit the truth here and now, or the joy-ride to nowhere might have been longer. And in any case”—he lashed her unmercifully—“I would expect my fiancée to be more loyal to me than you appear to have been to—to Jim.”
That hurt most of all because her plea—to this of which he accused her—must be guilty.
“I must go back on duty now,” she said dazedly. “I hope you believe I’m truly sorry.”
“Just a moment,” he stayed her icily. “May I know when you expect to marry?”
“I don’t know that myself. Jim’s coming home soon, I hope.” Her prayer was promptly misunderstood.
“The sooner the better! After me, who else will be required to help you pass the time by falling in love with you? Remember to wear your damned ring on every possible occasion in future. Oh, and if you’re Sassenach enough genuinely not to know better, a female does not wear a man’s tartan unless she’s telling him by doing so that her
heart and his way are clear of other impedimenta. Good afternoon, Sister!”
She watched him go and her heart was numb. Sometime she would remember all the cruelty of his words and her tears would flow to heal her wounds a little. Just now she wanted to sink through the floor and disintegrate into nothingness. How could she hold up her head and go back on duty as though nothing had happened, when the one she now knew she loved beyond all others had so recently regarded her with eyes that despised what they saw?
Promptly on the stroke of five p.m. Sister Lamont was sailing down the surgical wards looking the picture of efficiency and tranquillity. Beneath her eyes were twin purple shadows, as though she hadn’t been sleeping well for some time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Meg noticed nothing different about her sister. She was too full of her own affairs. That afternoon she had been down at St. Stephen’s Church Hall helping to arrange parishioners’ gifts for a Bring and Buy Sale. Michael Lammering had enthusiastically directed her activities; in fact they had seemed to be mutually occupied for hours. Meg had been happy, and her happiness had been crowned by the news Fay had sprung upon her. In the next breath Fay had dampened it with a further, less savory item, but still she was aware of a bubbling within, as though a spring of regeneration welled despite herself.
“Wasn’t it nice of Matron to offer me the job of doing your nursery?” she asked excitedly. “Of course I shall accept. I’ve thought of a motif.”
Flo looked with hollow eyes on Fay, who actually turned away and flushed.
“So she told you about it?” Flo asked tonelessly.
“Yes. Was it supposed to be your treat, dear? Anyway, it doesn’t matter who told me because I’m delighted.”
Flo looked up without speaking. Other people’s pain and disillusionment she could not accept at this moment, and neither was she capable of assimilating any pleasure they wished to share.
“Fay also told me that you did your utmost to turn Miss MacDonald away from the idea of employing me,” Meg went on more coolly. “You know I have hours and hours to spare, Flo. Have you no real faith in my work, then?”
Flo sighed. How much simpler if Fay had told all, the evil with the good.
“Of course if you’d rather I didn’t do this job,” Meg flung at her offendedly, “I won’t push myself into what is, after all, your domain. I appreciate my position too well for that. But if you won’t help me to earn my living I can see us existing on your charity ad infinitum.”
Flo sighed again, and even Fay became a little anxious as the silence grew heavy and thunderous.
“I’m going up to my room,” Flo announced in a stranger’s voice, “and I don’t want to be disturbed for any reason. Fay has had quite a day. Now she can crown it by telling you why I didn’t want you at the Glen just now in any capacity whatsoever. She knows as well as I do. If she hasn’t the guts to go through with what she has—unfortunately—started, I’ll tell you myself in the morning, Meg. Goodnight!”
So she crept away at last, determined at least on the luxury of privacy. She lay for more than an hour with her face upturned to the ceiling, feeling like one who has been stricken with emotional paralysis and making no effort to struggle out of it. As from a great distance she heard Meg’s bedroom door slam and she knew that she had been joined in an upheaval of thought by her elder sister.
“Poor Meg and poor me!” she pondered, without real sorrow. “I wonder if we’ll ever be happy again?”
From another distance Fay began to play her violin defiantly, but her defiance integrated into a wonderful sweetness that made one wonder which was the conveyor of such perfection; the instrument or the musician?
“Perhaps I did Fay a great wrong by coming between her and Robert when they were on a musical plane together,” she thought. “The way we—I—allowed us to be did sweep us along, rather, at the expense of everything and everybody else.”
But that was being in love, she knew; and if she had had the right to fall in love nobody would have disturbed them in the small, secure, sparsely populated wonderful Eden where all lovers dwell for a while, having mutually resigned the rest of the world for the core of perfection they hold within their grasp.
“I was stealing,” Flo concluded with an ache of wonderment at the simplicity of it all, “and now justice has caught up with me. I have simply given up what I never had any right to in the first place. No matter how much of a nuisance Fay may have been I was the only real villain of the piece. I do hope Robert isn’t really hurt, that he never actually cared!”
But could she sincerely wish this when her own heart was in little splinters from the impact of his wounding words? If tomorrow he told her of a new love, and flaunted his jewel, would she not wish she was dead or blind—unable to see the triumph denied her?
Of course she would, and she was well aware of it!
In the morning Meg was already at the breakfast table when Flo appeared, looking like a sleep walker, early though the hour was.
“You’re not going out without something to eat,” Meg said firmly. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Oh—” Flo felt at a loss. “I was going to have some coffee and toast. I usually do.”
Meg squinted at her.
“This isn’t a usual day though, is it? Not for either of us.”
“Oh,” Flo said again, nervously, “so Fay told you about Keith being at the hospital?”
“Yes.” Meg sat down firmly behind the coffee pot.
“I think I would rather have known all along,” Meg said challengingly at length. “I think I would have liked to see him. Fay says he was very keen to come out here and you wouldn’t let him.”
“No.” Flo ate mechanically. “I may have been mistaken, of course, but I thought only of you. Not in the least of him, or what he wanted.”
“Well, that’s very nice of you,” Meg admitted somewhat cynically. “I’m inclined to believe you.”
Flo merely shrugged as though to imply it didn’t really matter whether she was believed or not.
“Actually I’m amazed to discover I’ve survived the news so well,” Meg went on, energetically battering her own breakfast egg. “I hardly lost any sleep over it as a matter of fact.”
“Good!” Flo forced herself to say.
“Naturally I’m curious to see Keith again. I’m certainly not allowing his presence at the hospital to deter me from accepting the job Matron has offered me.”
“Good again,” Flo decided.
“I’m looking forward to it as a matter of fact. You—you don’t think Keith wants me back, do you?”
“How can I answer that?” Flo demanded wearily. “I hope you don’t take him back. He isn’t worth it.”
“How do you know that? Tell me—has Keith ever—ever—?”
“Ever what?” asked Flo, suddenly uncaring.
“It doesn’t matter. Here’s the toast now. I may come and see Miss MacDonald today.”
“Do. I’ll be glad to show you around.”
“I think I’ll ask Keith to do that,” and Meg was actually smiling to herself as she stirred her second cup of coffee.
Whatever adjustments Meg had to make, Flo was busy making her own. Robert Strathallan was still Consultant Surgeon at The Glen and she was required to attend to him, as unobtrusively efficient as before. He did not make it too difficult for her, and even cracked little jokes across the patient on occasions in Tier direction, as though drawing her into a pleasant public relationship in place of the old private one. This was better than open resentment and rebuke, but she might have known that such a splendid character, with centuries of the breeding of chieftains behind him, would not be so small-minded as to allow wounded pride to heal only as far as permanent ill will towards his offender.
The weeks passed through the long drawn out late spring of the Highlands into early summer; cool, golden-bright days when it never seemed to be really dark at all and on a clear evening the Northern Lights could be seen flaming beyond the
head of the loch. The town was now a throng with visitors, mostly enthusiastic regulars who either yachted or golfed. The hotels were packed and Fay was enjoying her work, especially as she had made several friends among the hotel guests and there was no dearth of pleasurable occupation.
Meg was seeing Keith again, Flo knew, and there was nothing she could do about it. Meg wasn’t a child and she seemed settled and fairly well content these days. Pixie was never any trouble, and in her loneliness of heart Flo turned more and more to the youngest sister, trying to enter into her youthful enthusiasms and imaginative games. Sometimes, however, even Pixie would catch her unawares, unprepared, on the raw edge of her emotions.
“You got a letter from Jim, didn’t you?” the youngster asked one Saturday as they cut flowers for the house together.
“Yes—yes, I did,” Flo said cautiously.
“Any message for me?”
“No. Why should there be?”
“Well, Jim usually says ‘love to the cherub,’ or ‘a big kiss for Pixie' or something big brotherly. Just lately he either hasn’t been minding me or you aren’t passing on his greetings.”
“Take it as said, always, darling,” Flo assured her.
“Well, things aren’t the same as they were between you and Jim, so why pretend?”
Flo turned slowly, her cheeks as scarlet as the rose she had just cut from the bush by which she was stooping.
“What are you saying, Pixie? Who told you such lies?”
“Nobody told me,” the other said sulkily, “but I’ve got eyes in my head. You’re not in love with Jim any more. You like Mr. Strathallan better.”
“I—I—” Flo hardly knew how to express herself, or exactly how much Pixie was simply stabbing in the dark and hitting the truth only by accident—“I hope you haven’t said such things to anyone else? What has come over you?”
“There’s nothing come over me! I’m the only unchanging thing around this family. You I thought I could depend on: you were as—as safe as the Rock of Gibraltar until a couple of months ago, and then you began to look sort of queer and shut me out, and when I saw the same things had happened to yon Strathallan I knew the worst had befell!” Dramatically Pixie rose and pointed a finger at the other. “Not only my word for it, either,” she continued, "because young Hamish took me into his confidence, swore me to secrecy and told me that his brother was daft over you. His very words.”