Master of Glenkeith (6 page)

“It looks as if you’ll need them right away,” Margaret decided. “We don’t go to Braemar till market day as a rule, but perhaps Andrew will take us in the brake seeing that it’s something of an emergency.”

“Oh, no! We couldn’t ask him,” Tessa protested, feeling that Andrew had been deflected from his duty long enough and that, in any case, he would not wish to leave his grandfather’s bedside for such a trivial reason. “Please let me wait. I won’t feel the cold, and perhaps I can buy some wool in the village and begin to knit a jumper.”

“You’ll need shoes, too,” Margaret recommended. “I don’t think I can do anything for you in that respect,” she added with a smile. “My feet must be miles bigger than yours. Grandfather always used to say that I had a ‘good grip of Scotland’!”

“You’ve lived at Glenkeith all your life?”

“Most of it. My father died when I was very young, and my mother came back to Glenkeith to keep house for her father and brother—even before Uncle Fergus married again.”

“He married my mother,” Tessa said thoughtfully. “Do you remember her, Margaret? You would be at Glenkeith when she came here as a bride.”

“Yes,” Margaret agreed uneasily. “My mother considered it her home, although sometimes I’ve wondered if she was ever really happy in it, coming back as she did.”

“Do you think she resented my mother marrying her brother?”

Margaret flushed scarlet.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“My mother did not stay at Glenkeith very long,” Tessa mused. “Her husband died and she came south again and married my father. They were very happy together. It’s the sort of thing you feel about people, isn’t it? But I think she must have been happy with Andrew’s father, too. Glenkeith is so lovely!”

She turned to the window, looking down across the wide sweep of pastureland rising gradually to the knees of the hills where the black polled cattle grazed contentedly on the lush green grass. It looked like a painting by one of the great masters with all that quiet beauty steeped in the mellow rays of a setting sun, and somehow it seemed that conflict could not live there for very long.

Her spirits rose and she tried to forget Hester MacDonald’s harsh reception of her, feeling that there would surely be something for her to do at Glenkeith, some niche which she might carve out for herself in time.

Leaving her to unpack the remainder of her clothes, Margaret went off along the landing, but presently she came back carrying an armful of woollen sweaters and cardigans.

“Try some of these on, and then you had better keep a couple of them for a day or two till you have time to get some for yourself. They’ll probably be too big, but you can pull them in at the waist with a belt.”

Tessa wondered what Hester would say when she saw her in her borrowed plumage, but she decided not to worry about it beforehand. The kindly gesture on Margaret’s part had cancelled out much of her mother’s bitterness and she decided to forget about it.

There was so much to Glenkeith apart from Hester, and a surging, youthful enthusiasm made her want to explore immediately.

“What do you do, Margaret?” she asked. “If I can help you, I will.”

Margaret glanced at her watch.

“I’ve got the milking to see to, and the hens,” she said. “Taking the brake in to Dyce has made me late, but I’ll soon catch up. I knew Andrew would want to get back as quickly as possible and there wasn’t a suitable train.”

“He lost a lot of time coming to Rome to fetch me,” Tessa said, feeling the deep sense of resentment in the air again at the suggestion of time wasted. “Is he always— wrapped up in his work?”

Margaret took a moment to consider the question as they went back downstairs together.

“He’s very conscientious,” she said at last, “and, of course, he runs the farm. There’s a missing generation, you see. Normally, his father would have been in charge and Drew wouldn’t have had such a heavy burden of responsibility to face at an early age. My grandfather has been too old to take a full share in the running of Glenkeith for some years now. It’s all left to Drew— the active part. Perhaps it has made him—more serious in his outlook,” Margaret added. “Not so inclined towards the lighter side of life. Less inclined to play, perhaps.”

They had reached the hall and Hester met them, coming from a room at its far end.

“There’s a meal ready,” she intimated briefly. “Andrew will come down to it, I’ve no doubt. It’s not our usual time,” she added, “but I dare say it is expected. Will you share it, Meg?” she asked, turning in her daughter’s direction, “or do you want to get on with your work? The milking must be behind as it is.”

Margaret hesitated.

“I can’t leave Agnes to do everything on her own,” she said, “but if I ate something now we needn’t have another meal later on.”

Her mother regarded her frostily.

“I have a routine at Glenkeith which I have no intention of breaking,” she said. “There will be a dinner, as usual, at seven o’clock.”

“I’ll go and see to the milking, then.”

Margaret gave Tessa a faint smile and sped away. She was afraid of her mother.

Hester had ruled at Glenkeith for so long with a rod of iron that probably no one sought to question her authority now, Tessa thought, going slowly into the room where a large mahogany table had been spread with a snowy cloth and heaped with all the bounty of a farmhouse tea. Hester MacDonald had certainly not been sparing in that respect. There stood brown and white bread and butter and scones, and two kinds of home-made jam, together with triangular biscuits which seemed to be made of meal, reminding Tessa of the Tuscan maize cakes which Maria baked every few days to satisfy her hungry brood. They were finer, perhaps, and more brittle, but they were the same rich brown colour that made you think of harvest and all the good things of the earth.

In the centre of the table was a large square cake filled with fruit, which looked as if it was made to be cut into again and again, and on top of all this there was a rather formidable row of boiled eggs, each with its small knitted cosy to keep it warm.

Would Andrew come, she wondered, for no doubt he had already been summoned by his aunt.

She stood uncertainly by the table, hearing small sounds in the world outside the window: the cackling of geese; the bark of a dog; the distant lowing of cattle as the cows were brought in from the fields, and the far-away, almost raucous cry of a bird she could not name. Only the room where she stood waiting seemed deadly quiet. There was not even the friendly ticking of a clock to assure her that time and first impressions would surely pass.

Even as she wondered if she should begin her meal without Andrew, she heard voices in the hall, going towards the front door, Andrew’s voice and another, which she supposed might be the doctor or the specialist from Aberdeen, and in a few minutes there was the sound of a car being driven away. The crunch of heavy footsteps sounded on the gravel at the side of the house and Andrew’s broad figure appeared outside the dining room window. He was walking with his head down and his face looked grey and drawn in the waning light.

Tessa’s heart seemed to miss a beat. Was the old man dead?

Andrew came into the room and seemed to stare at her for a split second without recognition, so that she could not find the courage to put words to her fear.

“My grandfather wants to see you,” he said, “when you have had something to eat.”

“Oh!” Her eyes lit with relief. “I’m so glad, Andrew! He is going to get well?”

“He’ll live,” Andrew said, “but we can’t expect him ever to be quite the same man again.”

She felt stricken, but she had seen so much poverty and disablement during her short lifetime in Italy that she wanted to offer him comfort.

“It’s wonderful what can happen even in the worst of cases,” she said. “People can sometimes get about even after the most dreadful accidents as if—as if there had been a miracle.”

“Doctors don’t often make mistakes,” he said briefly, sitting down at the head of the table and waiting for her to pour out his tea. “Not with a man of my grandfather’s age.”

She felt silenced, inadequate in so far as she had been unable to offer him the solace he needed.

“Will you have an egg?” she asked, sure that Hester’s first principle was to look after the needs of the body and the mind would soon adjust itself to the resulting feeling of well-being. She was also sure that Hester would consider the waste of good food one of the more deadly sins.

“No, thanks. But you eat what you can.” He took his cup from her, pushed back his chair, and walked to the window. “When you’re ready, I’ll take you up to him.”

It was impossible to force herself to eat after that. It was not that she was afraid of meeting Daniel Meldrum—she was more than eager for that moment to come—but it was Andrew himself who had added to her uncertainty at Glenkeith. He appeared to have withdrawn himself completely behind a facade of politeness which seemed forced and unnatural in the circumstances in which they found themselves, so that, as she followed him back up the wide oak staircase, she wondered how they were to go on living together under the same roof without some sort of explosion occurring between them. Either he must hate her or he must include her in his life, as Margaret was included, and perhaps he had already made up his mind which it was to be.

“You understand, of course, that this is very much against my inclination,” he said, pausing with his hand on the amber knob of a heavy oak door facing the head of the stairs. “I thought your visit to my grandfather could very well have waited, but he was insistent, and finally Dr. Coutts and the specialist agreed.”

“If you like,” Tessa said, “I won’t go in.”

“I don’t give all the orders at Glenkeith,” he said briefly. “My grandfather is still very much in command and he is a man of unwavering determination once he makes up his mind.”

As you are, Andrew, Tessa thought, following him into the room. Perhaps she would end up by disliking Andrew very much.

Daniel Meldrum lay in a large, canopied bed at the far end of the room and she was conscious of two very alert blue eyes watching her progress across what appeared to be a vast expanse of carpet. She was aware, in that moment, that he did not look his great age, although his face appeared slightly shrunken, as the faces of the old invariably look in illness, and then she was conscious that it was the blue eyes which dominated everything. They were almost young and eager of a sudden, in spite of his evident weakness. He looked transfigured, as if age and circumstances and time itself had whirled back in a bright kaleidoscope of changing patterns to settle in the past and he was able to see it all with the clear and fearless eyes of youth.

“Come nearer,” he commanded in a voice which just reached her. “Come and stand beside the bed.”

She moved forward and the blue eyes searched her face for a long moment before he spoke again.

“Ay, you’re like her!” he said. “For a minute I almost thought it was the same.”

“You mean my mother?” Tessa asked, and heard Andrew turn away with a sharply-indrawn breath.

Daniel Meldrum shook his head.

“I was thinking about your grandmother when she was a girl,” he said slowly. “She would be about the same age as you are now when she left Scotland.”

And you loved her, Tessa thought. You loved her! The conviction spread a warmth about her that was like some physical well-being running swiftly through her veins and she put out her hands to touch the thin fingers lying helplessly on the white counterpane.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” the old man said. “You are to make your home here.” A spark of laughter lit the blue eyes as they moved towards his grandson, resting on Andrew’s broad back where he stood by the window looking down at the outside world where most of his interest lay. “We thought you were just a bairn,” he said. “What had Andrew to say when he first saw you?”

Tessa felt cornered and at a loss for an answer. How was she ever to tell what Andrew was thinking?

“He didn’t say anything,” she confessed, “but somehow I think he was—surprised.”

Laughter to match his own tumbled in her eyes and Daniel Meldrum nodded, recognizing a kindred spirit in spite of the years which separated them.

“Glenkeith has been too long without laughter,” he said softly, and Tessa knew that only she was meant to hear.

“Time’s up, I’m afraid,” Andrew announced, turning and coming towards them. “You know what the doctor said. Five minutes, and maybe ten to-morrow!”

“Coutts is an old woman and sometimes he fusses like an old hen with her first brood o’ chicks!” the doctor’s patient declared. “I have the use o’ my speech back, haven’t I? And my sight. What more can the man want? He could get me out of here in a week, if he tried!”

It was obvious that he had not been told about the paralysis of his limbs, and Tessa found herself looking hastily away from the blue eyes and up at Andrew.

“You do mean that I can come back to-morrow?” she asked.

Looking down into her eyes, he seemed to close a heavy door between them.

“My grandfather has asked you to come,” he said.

CHAPTER IV

FROM that moment onward Tessa knew that her way had been cut out for her at Glenkeith, planned and willed by two people, who, for a reason that she might one day discover, resented her presence there from the first.