Hospital in the Highlands

by Anne Vinton

  For which Flo was extremely grateful.

  She was not so filled with gratitude, however, when Robert Strathallan attempted similar consolation a little later that day.

  “Don’t look so down in the mouth, Sister,” he advised. “Darvie will be as good as new in time, you know.”

  “Naturally I hope you’re right, sir,” she said, wondering if he ever remembered the time when they could not be near one another with an awareness of overwhelming attraction between them. “I am convinced that this state of affairs should not continue for long, however.”

  “Oh, come!” he encouraged. “You couldn’t have a more affectionate young man! As Sir Felix observed, thank your lucky stars his amnesia didn’t affect his remembrance of you!”

  “He would have had to go back to being a boy of sixteen to oust me entirely from his recollection,” she said sarcastically. “I knew him when he was content to call me Fido, because I reminded him of his pet dog.” She dared him to laugh.

  “Well!” he regarded her. “Fido, indeed! A good name for any faithful friend,” and away he went without another backward glance.

  “What can I do?” she pleaded desperately that evening, fresh from Jim’s possessive, enveloping arms. “I’ll go mad if he makes love to me like this every day! It’s all over. Why doesn’t he know?

  Why can’t he tell?” She held her head as it began to ache, for though she had worked only for a few hours the fact that Jim was her patient proved more of a strain than she had bargained for. “If Jill knew what was going on she would hate me. She sent him home to straighten things out with me and the whole thing’s in a greater tangle than ever. I wonder what she will think when she reads Robert’s letter? At least I’m not mentioned in it, thank God! It’s purely a medical report. But if I was Jill I would come and see for myself. I wonder if she’s a girl like me in some ways, sane as anything one day and madly impulsive the next? Ah, well! I’d better go home and see how my family is faring now, I suppose.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jenny Huntingford, exquisite in a suit of shantung silk, ruffled Pixie’s curls as that young lady squatted on the humpty beside her.

  “At last we’ve run your elusive sister to earth!” she decided triumphantly, smiling across at Flo who—Pixie felt—was not looking Her best in a plain skirt and light sweater, and who was also still covered in bruises from her unfortunate adventure, one of these lying below her left eye like a dark blemish.

  “I’m certainly glad you could come, Mrs. Huntingford, and you, too, Miss Purdie,” smiled Flo, passing the feather-light cakes she had persuaded Janet to make in a hurry. “I must apologize for being so busy in the garden when you arrived that I hadn’t time to change.”

  “That’s the way I like to find people. Unprepared,” Jenny said blandly. “That way you see the person you came to see, not some dressed-up framed portrait dolled up for the occasion.”

  Kate Purdie gave a small, nervous laugh.

  “What a queer thing to say, Mrs. Huntingford! You always hate to be caught unawares. And doesn’t it give you an unfair advantage catching other people unprepared for visitors when you have so obviously taken such pains to prepare yourself?”

  After a telling moment Jenny Huntingford laughed merrily. “Shrewd old Purdie!” she said affectionately. “Do you know, Sister Lamont, I think it’s a mistake to employ somebody who used to be in love with one’s husband! They do know rather a lot about one, because obviously they’ve made it their business to find out, if only to discover what it is you’ve got that they didn’t have. Do you agree?”

  Flo, aware of Kate Purdie’s scarlet embarrassment, looked away deliberately.

  “Are you writing a new novel now, Mrs. Huntingford?” she asked.

  “I am. But it was a mistake to return to Glen Lochallan—for some things. Not all, of course. I was a girl here. This is where Robert and I grew up together and were sweethearts.”

  “Saccharin?” Miss Purdie offered, sweetly. “You’re watching your weight, Mrs. Huntingford, remember?”

  “I remember.” Jenny leaned towards Flo as though about to indulge a confidence. “My secretary’s one of the reasons why I can’t get on with my book, dear. She’s a rabid Scottish Nationalist by association with my husband, of course. Actually her own roots were Polish on her mother’s side.”

  “And Lowland Scots on my father’s,” reminded Kate Purdie, “and there’s nothing rabid about me, Mrs. Huntingford. I am proud to be a Canadian, and I’m also keen on all aspects of history. Your husband encouraged me there.”

  “But not in other ways, eh, Purdie?”

  Flo was shaken by the naked malice in the atmosphere. It was as though Jenny Huntingford was determined to expose a human heart and its pain and suffering, providing it was not her own. Even Pixie, who had been viewing her admired one aghast, now shook her head free of the caressing fingers and resolutely carried the humpty alongside Kate Purdie.

  “Would you care to see my garden, Miss Purdie?” she now invited. “I’ll give you a bunch of my roses if you like.”

  “Really?”

  The two went out hand in hand.

  “I’m sorry for Purdie,” said Jenny Huntingford, “which is why I keep her on, I suppose. She was my husband’s secretary and so obviously doted on him. She even loved him enough to accept me and carry on working for me after his death. I suppose in a way, because I was his, she loves me, too.”

  “Love is a precious, precious gift,” Flo pronounced solemnly.

  One can’t do more for anyone than—than love them.”

  “You know, of course,” Jenny said softly. “You’re in love, and bless you for it!”

  Flo looked into the tawny, lioness-like eyes.

  “What is your book about, Mrs. Huntingford?”

  “Well—it’s a romance, you know, with a historical setting, which is where Purdie proves invaluable. My heroine I call Flora—a good Scottish name—is in love with a Lowland laddie who is happy tilling his acres and serving the King. One night, however, Flora hides a handsome Highland chieftain in her house, and he fills her head for a while with ideas beyond both her station and capabilities. I never have any nonsense in my books about the poor waif being able to make the grand gentleman happy for more than a brief hour. Well, I feel strongly about such things. People can only truly mate with people of their own station in life.”

  “Like you and your husband?” ventured Flo.

  “A case in point, yes. Of course things are much more elastic these days, but the same principles apply. You and your fiancé are two of a kind, and I’m sure you’ll be very happy. Niall chose me, naturally; he couldn’t consider Purdie. Now that I’m a widow I made the fatal mistake of coming back here. That is fatal from a work point of view. I’ve left Flora languishing, poor soul, and am falling in love all over again with my eyes wide open. Of course, Robert was there all my life, and I suppose I took him for granted, his proposal, desolation, everything. He swore by the burn that runs through the glen that its waters would cease to run before he stopped loving me. Now there’s a maturer quality about everything. I—I’m glad I waited, Miss Lamont. I am indeed!”

  In the garden Pixie snipped vigorously at her finest specimens, trying to remember that Auld Willyum’s maxim was “roses cam the mair ye cut,” and hoping this was true.

  “Every bloom smells,” she assured Katie Purdie, “or I should say has a scent, I suppose.”

  “They’re lovely, Pixie. You’re a sweet thing to give me these. I shall keep them next to my bed.”

  “Why d’you let her treat you like that?” Pixie suddenly demanded, embarrassment making her look aggressive.

  “What are we talking about, dear?”

  “Mrs. Huntingford, that’s who. She was saying things about you. Private things nobody wanted to know!”

  “She does,” Kate Purdie smiled suddenly. “It galls poor Jenny that she isn’t sure exactly what was between her husband and me before she came on the sce
ne. She thought if she dragged me out into the open today I would have to defend myself. She wanted me to say, ‘Yes, I was in love with your husband, Mrs. Huntingford, but you were prettier and cleverer and had more breeding and glamor, so he chose you.’ But I didn’t do it, did I? That made her madder, honey.”

  “But why didn’t you say it if it would make her happier, Miss Purdie?”

  “Because it wouldn’t be true, Pixie, and in her heart of hearts she knows it wouldn’t. You’re young, but I guess you can keep a confidence—”

  “With my life,” vowed the youngster.

  “Well, Mrs. Huntingford’s not a very happy person, and Niall—on his deathbed—asked me to stay and keep an eye on her as long as it was possible for me to do so. You see, she’s brilliant in some ways, and like most clever people she has failings, too. She likes to think she’s taking something from somebody else occasionally; it gives her a deal of satisfaction. She thought she was taking Niall Huntingford from me, but actually he rebounded her way when I turned him down. He was a good boss, but I didn’t want him for a husband. Now she doesn’t know that, not for sure, and whenever she thinks I’m off guard she has a little stab at me—like today. See?”

  “I thought she was so wonderful!” Pixie quivered, looking down as though she could see her idol shattered about her feet. “Can I confide in you, Miss Purdie?” she ventured.

  “I’d be honored, honey.”

  “Well, I’m not happy about Flo, my sister, the one talking to her. I happen to know that before Jim Darvie came back she and the laird were keen—they were—” Pixie was scarlet—“they were in love,” she finished desperately.

  Kate Purdie digested this.

  “I didn’t know that, Pixie. I remember something now, though. I was taking the coffee things out one evening when we’d just arrived at Glen Lochallan, and I got lost in those interminable corridors of that big house and nearly walked back into the drawing room. I heard Robert say, ‘And you’re the only one who knows how I feel about that girl, Jenny. The only one I could tell, thinking of you as my sister an’ all. Can you help me Jenny? Give me hope?’ I regret to say that I continued to listen, Pixie, though shouldn’t have, of course. Mrs. Huntingford promised to be a sister to him, and to intervene with the lady of his choice, who, I understand, was already betrothed, as my employer expresses it in her books.”

  “Well, that’s Flo,” Pixie said, “and now that Jim’s hurt I’m sure she’s only hanging on to him because he needs her. Sometimes I think he threw himself down the Ben deliberately!”

  “Oh, Pixie!”

  “You didn’t know Flo before. She looks like a—a lost dog lately.”

  “Maybe we’ll help her to find herself, you and me both.” They paused as they reached the open windows leading into the sitting room at Rowans, for Jenny Huntingford was declaiming her love and desire for the Strathallan of Glen Lochallan in unmistakable terms.

  “I—I’m glad I waited, Miss Lamont, I am indeed!” she concluded, and then looked up as the others joined them.

  “Don’t you think it’s time we went, Mrs. Huntingford?” Miss Purdie asked, pointedly glancing at the clock after noting that Flo Lamont was looking more pale and more unhappy than when she had seen her previously.

  “Go, Purdie? Where?”

  “Back. Back home.”

  “Home to Glen Lochallan? Ah, yes.”

  “I meant back to Canada. Home isn’t here for either of us, dear. You know that.”

  Jenny Huntingford looked at her secretary as though she had taken leave of her senses.

  “It’s coming to something when the maid tells the mistress what to do, isn’t it?” she joked, attempting to cuddle Pixie and getting a bony shoulder in the chest for her pains.

  “No, Mrs. Huntingford,” said Kate firmly. “Maids and mistresses exist only in your books. This is your fellow Canadian, secretary and equal, suggesting that we’ve wasted enough time in this backwater. It’s holding up our next best-seller. If you ask me should auld acquaintance be forgot, I say yes, in the circumstances.”

  “Well, now”—this was a new Purdie, probably the one Niall had known, and Jenny eyed her warily—“I don’t know what Robert will say if you take me away from him a second time, Purdie!”

  “I do. He’ll say goodbye with only a mild regret. No man grieves unduly over his sister’s departure, and Robert Strathallan looks on you as a sister. He told me so.”

  “Well!” Jenny Huntingford could hardly leave Rowans quickly enough, and she quite forgot to thank her hostess for a lovely afternoon.

  “Miss Purdie’s nice, isn’t she?” Pixie asked serenely, noting the lifting of Flo’s spirits, and the brightening of her eyes.

  “Very nice,” Flo agreed. “Mrs. Huntingford looked lovely, didn’t she, dear?”

  “Och! You canna judge a book by its cover,” the youngster philosophized, “or a toffee by its wrapping. I’ll bet the laird knows fine what he’s daein’ when he calls her his sister!”

  “You’re being a little Glaswegian again, Pixie!”

  “So what?” demanded the other. “I think in dialect and when I speak it the truth pops out.”

  “Then we must send your subconscious to take elocution lessons,” joked Flo, and she was laughing again; actually laughing.

  Pixie, who didn’t know what a subconscious was, marvelled and was content.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Pixie was not entirely satisfied with life once the long summer holidays were over and she became just a “school kid” again in place of true love’s intermediary, a role in which she considered she shone and deserved some thanks from somebody, no matter whom.

  For one thing the true lovers themselves were not exactly proving cooperative, for with the somewhat offended withdrawal of the “other woman” from the Strathallan ménage, an event not unduly regretted by either party, as Kate Purdie had forecast, they should have behaved differently, fallen on one another’s necks or at least looked at each other with soulful eyes occasionally.

  There was no doubt, Pixie brooded darkly, that as Meg sailed on light-heartedly toward marriage and her new life as a missionary’s wife, a fate which her youngest sister frankly wouldn’t have wished befall her worst enemy, Flo became in private the more downcast. Pixie was sure that Flo couldn’t be envious if she tried, and that the trouble was deep, dark and quite personal. Nobody could tell Pixie that she wasn’t secretly in love with the laird, had been for months and always would be. If Jim was holding her to the engagement, well, he was a bigger cad than she had thought, and somebody should tell him about it, bump on the head or no!

  It had been ridiculously easy to cycle into Glen Lochallan one Saturday, after lunch, knowing Flo was having a day off duty and helping Meg sew her tropical trousseau; present herself at the hospital at visiting time and request to be allowed to see Mr. James Darvie.

  Jim, who was feeling bored, bad-tempered and unaccountably depressed, stared disbelievingly at his visitor before his countenance lit up in welcome.

  “Pixie!” he expostulated. “You could not have grown that much in the time! You’re a—a young lady!”

  “Well, thank you, Jim,” she said blithely, and gave him a grown-up kiss on the cheek, to prove she wasn’t a sticky child any more. “One does grow at my age, you know.”

  “I do know, but”—Jim looked her over afresh—“you must be unique, my girl. Or is it Fay?” he demanded.

  “You’re kidding,” Pixie decided, sitting down and crossing her brown-stockinged legs. “Haven’t you seen Fay lately, then?”

  “Not since I last saw you—all the family. Is she up here, too?”

  “Yes.” Pixie frowned. “She does the library here, though when she goes away with her—with Madame Dunfonteau—she’ll have to give it up, of course.” They have talked long enough, she decided, of irrelevant things. “And how are you, Jim? You look very well, to me.”

  “I am well—I think. My leg’s better and I’m allowed to sit up
in my room and totter to the bathroom. Occasionally, however, I get bad headaches and dream wild dreams. That is when the doctors tell me to bide here a bit longer. You do understand all this?”

  “Of course,” Pixie assured him sympathetically.

  “Why haven’t you been to see me before? Have you just arrived up here? Are you all at Rowans? How’s your dad?”

  Faced, with so many questions Pixie was finally out of her depth. The last both amazed and upset her. Surely Flo had told Jim that Adrian Lamont was dead? Her lip trembled because she still couldn’t admit her father’s demise without a welling of grief. “Didn’t you know?” she asked, her mouth working.

  “Know what, cherub?”

  “That Daddy was dead?” She took a grip on herself, rose and smoothed her dress, furtively wiping her eyelashes and preparing to make a dignified exit.

  Jim’s face startled her. It was paper-white and his eyes stared fixedly so that she felt suddenly afraid.

  “When was this?” he demanded.

  “J-just after Christmas. I’ve got to go, Jim. Goodbye!”

  He didn’t speak again and she let herself out, feeling as though she must surface after floundering out of her depth. Now she knew she had done wrong by seeing Jim: suspected why Flo always sheered off from discussing his condition with the family apart from the more obvious facts of the case.

  “Why didn’t he know Daddy was dead?” she brooded miserably as she cycled along. “Why did he think I have changed so much in two years as to be almost a freak?”

  She was afraid to see Flo, of all people, for Flo’s anger was a quantity unknown to her, and she feared that the mild, when roused, must be terrible indeed. She wanted to tell someone what she had done, however; an outsider, preferably, who would advise and direct her next step in this rather miserable adventure. Providence—Pixie believed implicitly in the Omnipotent—flashed the sun on the windscreen of a car at that moment, a car which the youngster recognized as the laird’s, cresting the hill far ahead of her. He would listen to her, she felt sure, if she could secure his attention and make him stop. A sure way of making anyone stop was to block their way, and this Pixie did, standing with her new shining cycle broadside across the narrow road. Unfortunately she was standing—in her agitation— the wrong side of a blind bend. The big car hooted while Pixie held her ground, then screeched to a standstill over a bundle grown ominously limp. The new bicycle was in the ditch, buckled and scarcely recognizable from any other heap of scrap iron.