Land of Heart's Desire (10 page)

Christine thanked him, but she was far from happy about the situation. When he had driven away towards the flag-bedecked Port she stood for a long time looking after his departing car, wondering if he had really offered her a warning.

Standing there in the gloaming, she felt once more the spell of the island drawing close, making its demands of her, spreading out the future before her like a challenge, yet, inwardly, she still felt something of the old uncertainty. At first it had seemed to be the will to escape, the desire to go her way and lead her own life elsewhere, but now it was more than that.

She struggled with it and lost as heavy footsteps crunched across the gravel behind her and Hamish came to stand by her side. In the uncertain light he looked taller even than he actually was, big and strong and dependable and full of certainty.

“Oh, Hamish!” she cried, “it’s all so difficult!” Suddenly, weakly, she was hiding her face in his coat. “She’s so old and frail really, though she won’t admit it. I think Doctor Mc
I
lroy has been trying to warn me that she might die—”

“These things happen,” he said, drawing her to him. “I’m afraid we’ve got to accept them, Chris.”

Struggling, she thrust him from her.

“I can’t accept them!” she protested stormily. “I can’t do without her! I have so much to learn—”

He permitted himself the faintest of smiles, pitying perhaps. “You are too intense,” he told her soothingly. “Things mean too much to you, my dear. You allow events to frustrate your own desires, and that’s always an uncomfortable way to live.”

She stared back at him, only half understanding what he meant because the events of the last half-hour had left her numbed and heavy of heart.

“Isn’t that a selfish way to look at it?” she protested, and was deeply hurt when he laughed softly against her cheek.

Once more he was pulling her, half-resisting, towards him.

“Chris! Chris,” he said, “we are all selfish, deep down! We go for what we want most and try to leave our scruples behind for our own comfort.”

“That isn’t true!” she said, but she allowed him to kiss her. “I don’t suppose for one minute that you believe it, either. You say the most outrageous things to—to affront people, but you don’t really mean them. You couldn’t! It’s just a—a sort of a mask you wear to hide your deeper feelings.”

He smiled in the dimness of the overhanging trees.

“By all means,” he agreed, “invest me with a halo if it suits your fancy, my dear. But don’t blame me entirely when it begins to fade!”

She would not linger out there with him after that. The night was too full of conflict, too suddenly dark for her to remain there, waiting for Hamish to tell her that he loved her.

That was what she wanted, of course. To be loved and cherished by him and to love and understand him in return. She had always wanted it, even when he had seemed to be so remote that he moved and had his being in a different world. But now, miraculously, he had come close within her orbit. He was here on Croma again, waiting for her to come of age, kissing her in the gloaming, holding her with tenderness and all but telling her that he loved her!

It should have been the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Why, then, should it seem to be spoiled by some nameless thing in the darkness? Why did it seem that the island itself was against their love?

She turned towards the house, curiously chilled by the thought and scarcely aware that Hamish had not followed up his words with a final, demanding kiss.

“Good night,” she said as she reached the door.

“Good night, Fair Lady!” he answered. “See, you tomorrow—on the great day!”

In the hall she found Jane waiting for her. The wood fire which Mrs. Crammond had built up was bright and inviting, but she did not want to linger in its enticing warmth.

“I’m tired,” she confessed. “I think we ought to go to bed, Jane. All sorts of people will be arriving bright and early to-morrow morning.”

“Except Finlay Sutherland,” Jane mused, almost as if she were speaking to herself. “I wonder why he hasn’t even replied. There must be some reason.”

Christine turned sharply away. “Need we consider it?” she said briskly. “He—isn’t important.”

“No,” Jane said absently, making it sound more like a question. “I think he’s going to be the right sort of person for Croma, though. What the island really needs, you know, Chris, is new ideas and someone who can and will carry them through.”

“Someone with the necessary money, I suppose you mean,” Christine observed, making a great task of setting out their supper tray. “Someone quite unlike us, in fact, who can afford to indulge the whim of the moment but who could quite easily leave Croma flat when the first enthusiasm cooled off.”

“I don’t think Finlay Sutherland came to Croma in that frame of mind,” Jane defended quickly. “He’s been working hard since he got here, too, so Rory says.”

“But now he has grown tired and gone back to Edinburgh, where it is more exciting,” Christine pointed out. “He can afford to do that, too, of course. Money speaks so loudly!”

“I wish I had even enough to cause a whisper!” Jane laughed ruefully. “But, somehow, Chris, I don’t seem to mind so much now that I’m back on the island and likely to stay.”

“Where
will
you stay when you start work at Ardtornish?” Christine asked,

“I shall have to find someone in Scoraig willing to take me in.” Jane’s generous mouth curved in a quick smile. “It’s all rather odd thinking of going back to Scoraig to work at Ardtornish, but I’m glad that I shall be able to help, even in a small way. Finlay Sutherland hopes to add to the library, and he mentioned that he had a good many books of his own waiting to be sent over from Canada.”

“It’s all very vague,” Christine observed, helping herself to a second cup of coffee.

“He hasn’t really had a lot of time to settle in,” Jane said. “But I’m convinced he means to make a success of Ardtornish. He’s that sort of person. Please don’t think I’m being disloyal to Hamish,” she hurried on. “It’s just that—Hamish doesn’t think in that way. Tradition and roots and that sort of thing don’t mean so much to him. He believes far more strongly in the opportunity of the moment.” She looked up quickly, apologizing even before Christine had time to voice her protest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re fond of him, aren’t you, Chris?”

“I’m fond of you all,” Christina said slowly.

She rose to her feet, not quite knowing what to think about Jane’s attitude to Ardtornish and its new owner, but one thing she did know was that Jane would never marry any man unless she was deeply and sincerely in love with him.

“I think we ought to go up now,” she said. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

Jane followed her to the foot of the stairs, pausing there to look back at the garlanded hall where the firelight flickered along the walls and the flags hung in a flamboyant splash of colour from the ancient beams that arched the ceiling. This was how it would have looked a hundred years ago, or hundreds of years ago, at the coming-of-age of an Erradale heir. Nothing was changed, except perhaps that Christine was the first girl who had ever inherited that ancient name.

“Chris,” she said softly, “you must be very proud.”

“Yes,” Christine answered huskily. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

Perhaps it was not until that moment that she had really had time to think about her inheritance. There had been so much to do, so much of excitement in the air and so much of change. But now she could look back, as Jane had looked, seeing it all down the dim procession of the years, recognizing her responsibility to the past with a lump in her throat that choked back speech and brought tears very near to her eyes.

“I wish I could feel really worthy of it,” she managed to say. “But all I can do is try, Jane, and—my grandmother will be there to back me up.”

Jane Nicholson did not answer that. She watched Christine go up to Dame Sarah’s room to see that the old lady was comfortable for the night, and suddenly she was thinking about Hamish and wishing fervently that her brother had never come back to Croma.

CHAPTER V

Early
the following morning their first guests began to arrive. Port-na-Keal was a small hive of industry as launch after launch came in from the neighbouring islands to anchor in the harbour, and when, by mid-afternoon, the steamer came round the headland, there seemed some danger that she would not be able to come alongside the quay without incident.

Hundreds of pennants waved and fluttered in the light breeze and the incessant bark of an outboard motor drowned even the raucous clamour of the gulls.

With cheeks flushed and eyes very bright, Christine watched it all from the vantage-point of her grandmother’s turret window.

“I never thought it would be like this!” she said with that small catch in her throat which was there so frequently nowadays. “You’ve made it all quite perfect, Granny!”

“You’ve got Rory to thank for most of it,” Dame Sarah informed her. “While I’ve been tied to my chair up here I could plan all right, but I needed someone like Rory to carry my plans through. Never minimize Rory’s loyalty, whatever you do,” she added soberly. “He’ll always be there when you need him.”

Christine crossed the room to stand behind her chair, leaning her arm along the high padded back to look over Dame Sarah’s head at the orange glow of the peat fire burning in the wide stone grate, and suddenly she found herself thinking that this steady glow of peat might be the symbol of her life from now on. Nothing flaring nor exciting nor too brightly burning, but a sure, steady flame always there, never dying out, as dependable as Rory’s loyalty and her grandmother’s love.

It was not what she would have chosen for herself six months ago, or even three weeks ago when she had sailed home to Croma with a stranger by her side, but now she knew that she had accepted it as her way of life, the one way that she had to go.

“Bring me over the box.” Her grandmother pointed to the far side of the room where a large ebony chest stood on a side table in the shadow of an alcove. “I’ve something to give you.”

All her life Christine had thought of her grandmother’s ebony box as a sort of treasure chest out of which Dame Sarah had produced surprising gifts at intervals for her childish delight, but now she knew that she was about to be given something of importance, some family heirloom, perhaps, which the old lady had cherished over many years for just this purpose.

She felt her throat contract again as she carried the heavy box back to the fire and laid it on the stool by her grandmother’s side.

Dame Sarah lifted the lid, her thin old fingers trembling a little, and took out a flat, velvet-covered case.

“Open it,” she commanded.

Christine took it and pressed the ancient clasp, which was a beautiful thing in itself. Inside, on a bed of black velvet and white satin, lay a faultless string of pearls. She held them up, and some of the orange light from the peats seemed to be reflected in their milky depths.

“They’re yours!” she said, looking at the old lady with starry eyes. “I remember how you told me about them once and said that I should wear them one day.”

“All young things like pretty baubles!” Dame Sarah said gruffly. “Put them on and let me see how you look in them before I give you the others.”

Her hands not quite steady, Christine clasped the necklace about her throat, standing back to let Dame Sarah admire it. Then, impulsively, she put her arms about the old, bent shoulders and kissed her grandmother on the cheek.

“They’ll always be a sort of—amulet to me,” she whispered sincerely. “I’ll wear them a lot, Granny, and—I’ll never let Erradale down.”

“You see that you don’t!” Dame Sarah was her old, bluff self again. “While we’re together, we’ll manage somehow,” she added, “and when I go you’ll have other folk to help you. I’ve told you there’s little or no money left, but I’ve got a sort of faith in things coming right for us. Some people call that weakness—waiting and hoping that something will turn up to reverse your bad fortune—but it’s not just that.” Suddenly her eyes were remote, with a look in them which Christine had seen often in Callum’s down on the shore as the old man watched the changing patterns of the clouds and the saffron weed rising and falling against the rocks with the heavy breathing of the sea. It was a look of distance and wisdom and the power to see beyond the present, perhaps, but more than anything else it held the shining quality of a simple faith. “I’ve little enough to leave you,” Dame Sarah went on, fumbling in the box once more. “But there’s this legacy of your mother’s that you must use for yourself alone. I won’t have you using it for Croma. It never was MacNeill money, and it will be a safeguard for your future if anything should go wrong. You must use it as you wish.”

She put a long, buff-coloured envelope into Christine’s hand, and while her granddaughter read the terms of her mother’s small bequest to her, she seemed to lose herself in the further contents of the ebony box.

When Christine looked up the gnarled old fingers were searching about among what looked to be a selection of highly coloured pebbles. Her grandmother was picking them up and letting them drop again idly, as if her thoughts were very far away, and Christine recognized the little colourful objects as the small, semi-precious stones which they had often gathered along the base of the cliffs.

She had not seen any for years, had hardly troubled to look for them as she grew older, but her grandmother seemed to have cherished some of them.

“Croma is full of lovely things,” she said, stooping to take up a handful of the stones and hold them to the light. “These are really beautiful, Granny, when you look at them closely.”

“A good many things can bear a second look!” Dame Sarah agreed somewhat dryly. “And most of all folk! It’s best to look and look again before you finally make up your mind—especially about a man.”

Christine’s eyes sparkled.

“I take that as sound advice for the future!” she laughed. “What are you going to do with all your ‘chuckies’?”

“I’m giving them to you,” Dame Sarah said. “You may never find any use for them, but they’re a nice collection. If you should want to do anything with them,” she added, as if on an afterthought, “take them to Callum. There was a time when he made fine settings for them and sold them on the mainland—in Oban—to the summer visitors. All that passed with the war, of course,” she sighed. “So many things change and die when there is a war.” She closed the lid of the box with a small, determined snap. “But that’s hardly a thought for to-day,” she declared. “It’s time, too, for us to be getting down among our guests. How many are there?”

“Nearly everyone has accepted,” Christine answered, picking up the box with the stones to replace it on the table. “They will all be here for the main meal in the evening—and the ball!”

Her excitement was mounting with each passing second, tinged by a certain amount of nervousness. Until that moment she had scarcely realized how important this day really was, to her grandmother and to Croma, as well as to herself. She saw the love of the islanders surrounding her like an ancient shield and Dame Sarah’s pride and thankfulness that this thing should be, and she felt curiously humble and inadequate, yet determined, too, that she would play her part.

Presents had been arriving for her for over a week, from friends in Port-na-Keal and Scoraig and from the neighbouring islands as well as from the mainland. Jane had helped her to open them and lay them out in the billiards room leading from the hall, but many of their guests had brought their gifts with them.

The MacLeods from Heimra and the Strafen MacDonalds had been the first to arrive, and after that she had scarcely had time to think. Laughter and light banter and the lilt of the Gaelic tongue had echoed among the rafters in a rising tide of goodwill and sincere good wishes for her future, and people she had not seen for years—friends of her childhood—greeted her as if she had never left the island to go to Paris or anywhere else.

They all took it for granted that she had come home to stay, and the warmth of their affection and loyalty felt like a benediction whenever she remembered her former uncertainty.

This is where I belong, she thought. This is where I have to stay.

Half an hour before Mrs. Crammond beat the great brass gong to summon them to tea in the garden room, Dame Sarah came slowly down the wide staircase, supported by Rory and Jane.

Christine thought she had never seen anyone so regal as her grandmother in that moment. With her white hair piled high on the top of her head and a fine tartan plaid about her shoulders she walked almost erect, leaning only very slightly on Rory’s arm as he guided her down to the hall. Her tweeds were homespun, a lovely grey-and-lavender check which Christine had seen on the island looms as a child. The texture and the colours were the islander’s secret, but very little of the cloth was actually produced nowadays. The length which had made her grandmother’s suit might quite easily be the last of its kind, and she experienced a deep sense of loss at the thought. The colour of the fading heather was there, and the hue of mist as it drifted in ethereal scarves across the grey pinnacles of Scuirival. Surely, oh surely, it would be a treacherous thing to let it all be lost!

“Hullo!” said Hamish Nicholson at her elbow. “How does it feel to be an heiress?”

She did not turn. She was still watching Dame Sarah, still fascinated by the aura of nobility that clung about this grand old lady who had been Erradale’s laird for so long. She would never be like her grandmother, she thought, but she could try.

“I didn’t see you come in.” She turned to Hamish at last. “And I don’t think being an heiress makes me feel very much different. I’m still the same person I was yesterday!”

“Officially you’re not, Chris.” His eyes were almost watchful as he looked down at her. “You are now quite definitely Erradale.”

Something in his tone jarred, although she could not have named it if she had been asked, and Hamish changed the subject with consummate ease, holding out a small parcel for her attention.

“Something to add to the loot!” he said lightly. “I should have liked it to be something more personal, but that can come later.”

Christine fumbled with the wrapping paper. His words had been intimate, holding out a promise, but she still did not know that he loved her. Did he mean to tell her to-night, at the dance, perhaps?

Her fingers shook a little as she opened his gift. It was a most ornate little vanity-case, such as she could only use in the sophisticated atmosphere of a London restaurant, or in Paris. Not on the island. Not here on Croma.

“You see,” he said, “I don’t mean to let you forget that there’s another world just around the corner. That is for when you decide to go back to the Bright Lights, Chris!”

She looked up at him, smiling.

“I wonder when that will be?” she said. “I haven’t even begun to miss them yet.”

“You will!” he predicted easily. “But being Erradale now you can please yourself. We can come and go,” he said, holding her eyes with his, “very much as we please.” Her heart fluttered and lay still. Was he suggesting that they should leave Croma together?

“Thank you for your present,” she said unsteadily. “Everyone is being more than kind to me to-day.”

“Why not?” he said. “It’s your day.”

He stayed to tea at her grandmother’s invitation, and afterwards, when the deputation arrived from the village to present Port-na-Keal’s birthday gift to her, he dropped back into the shadows of the old hall, watching.

Christine felt acutely aware of his presence as she listened to the speech made by Donald Gillies in the Gaelic, and she could imagine him smiling sardonically as she fumbled with her reply in a language which, to her sudden shame, she had neglected to learn, apart from the odd word or two. “Good-morning to you, Donald” she could say in the old man’s native tongue, and “God be with you” when she met an ancient islander on the rutted moor road above the Port, but beyond these everyday salutations she could not go.

A regatta was being held in the bay and sports for the school children in the playing fields at the foot of Askaval, to which she went to present the prizes given by her grandmother.

The mounting excitement in her veins was pure pride in lineage and tradition, pride in the past and the fact that she was to play her own part in all this in the future. In a good many ways, she mused, it would be a pleasant life. It would have to be a largely unselfish one, but it was the life she knew, and she would have Dame Sarah’s splendid example before her.

In that moment she did not link Hamish Nicholson with the future as she saw it. She did not see him either as an asset or a liability to Erradale. He had remained so long the desired and unattainable that it was almost impossible to include him in her scheme of things, although it was not to be very long before he was to play his part.

When she went back, to Erradale House to dress for the evening, for the banquet and ball which Dame Sarah had planned so lovingly ail these months ago when she was in Paris, Hamish was with her, but so, also, were Jane and Rory and several others of the small house-party which her grandmother hoped to entertain for the next two days. Hamish walked close by her side, however, as if he alone had the right to do so, as handsome and confident an escort as any girl could have wished for on such an important day.

When she had dressed she ran quickly along the passage to Jane’s room, flushing with pleasure when Jane exclaimed:

“You look like a princess, Chris!”

“What with princesses and heiresses I don’t quite recognize myself!” Christine laughed. “Hamish wanted to know this afternoon what it felt like to come into an inheritance.” Her face clouded a little. “I felt so sorry for him—so guilty in some ways,” she added.

Jane did not answer, and when she looked round at her Christine was surprised by the guarded expression in her friend’s eyes.. “You needn’t have worried,” Jane said after a moment. “I don’t think Hamish was reflecting on his hard lot.” Her tone was suddenly brittle, her brown eyes remote. “He would be far more interested in you as the heiress.”