Friends and Lovers (2 page)

A white-aproned, square-set, apple-cheeked woman was waiting for them at a cottage door.

“My sister. Mistress Me-Donald,” Ma clean explained.

“Will you not come in and have a cup of tea?” she asked. “The kettle’s singing on the hob.” She stood aside, waiting for them to enter, but with no trace of curtsy in her gesture. She had a gentle voice with music in it, and her eyes were as placid as her brother’s.

George Fenton-Stevens looked anxiously at David. But, for once, David needed no urging. He was saying, with that rare smile of his which lighted up his serious, guarded face with sudden warmth, “Thank you, Mrs. McDonald; that’s very kind of you.” He stepped over the carefully whitened step which led into the cottage, and Fenton-Stevens followed.

Inside the cottage was the smell of a peat fire and freshly baked scones.

The kettle was hissing cheerily, a clock ticked loudly on the high, crowded mantelpiece decorated with an edging of crochet. The table was covered, and waiting. Through the small open window the cries of the cormorants and harsh-voiced seagulls blurred into the background murmur of breaking waves.

The blazing colours of heather and grass and sea were exchanged for a gentler light.

A girl rose as they entered, more startled by the unexpected guests than Mrs. McDonald had been.

It is Mr. Fenton-Stevens, from the Lodge at Loch Innish, with his friend Mr. Bosworth, who have come to see Dr. MacIntyre himself,” Mrs. McDonald was explaining. David found that he had held out his hand, and afterwards he remembered thinking how very odd it was that he had made that gesture so impulsively. But at the time he was looking into a pair of very blue eyes in a very pretty face, and that was all he could seem to see. He did not break that look, as he should have; and, besides, he didn’t want to. He did not even hear the girl’s name as Mrs. McDonald’s soft, precise voice made the introduction. Then he suddenly became conscious that George was saying something to him about one of the curios which littered the mantelpiece, and remembered to drop her hand. He glanced quickly at George, and he was relieved to see that he had noticed nothing.

Neither had Ma clean nor Mrs. McDonald. He relaxed, but he found he was watching the girl as she moved towards the door, and he felt a sudden stab of disappointment. The girl halted at the doorway. Perhaps she wasn’t leaving after all, he thought hopefully. But she was saying that she was so sorry to leave, that she was so very late. Her voice was gentle and yet clear, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman. Her dark hair had strong auburn lights, almost dark red and yet not quite. The sun was gleaming on it now as she stood at the threshold. There was a natural grace to her body as she looked back into the room over her shoulder. And then she was gone.

He saw her pass the small window, hurrying as if she were indeed late. But even now that last glimpse of her through the window, that colour of the sweater which she wore, reminded him again of her eyes.

He looked sharply at George, but Fenton-Stevens was helping Mrs. McDonald to clear a chair of magazines, and Mrs. McDonald was saying that Miss. Penny was always so thoughtful about bringing her something to read, which was a nice change from the knitting. It was clear from her matter-of-fact words, and George’s equally sensible reply, and Captain Ma clean practical absorption in the excellent soda scones and fresh butter, that none of them realized they had just seen a miracle of a girl.

David concentrated on the difficult problem of eating a newly baked oatcake.

He was thankful that George had noticed so little, or else there would have been much leg-pulling for days—perhaps even weeks—about his sudden aberration. He could hear George saying to a group of Oxford friends, when the subject of women came up,

“Remember David and his neat speeches on women being a snare and delusion?

If they are pretty they have no heart, no brain. A pretty girl doesn’t need them: she doesn’t need anything except her face-value, which she has calculated to the last shilling. Well, don’t listen to him … You should have seen him, holding on to her hand, no doubt supporting himself, for he would have fallen flat on his back if he had let go.” At least, David now reflected, he had been spared that.

“You are very quiet, David,” George remarked, with a slight touch of prodding. Sometimes David was really too difficult socially. He had entered this cottage with good enough grace, but here he was in one of those preoccupied moods of his.

“I am wrestling with this,” David said, and indicated the mess of golden crumbs which covered his plate.

“It looks as if I needed a spoon, doesn’t it?”

That amused his hostess; and her brother remarked, as he tactfully demonstrated how to spread butter on oatcake by putting the cake on the flat tablecloth rather than on the curved surface of the plate, that Mr. Bosworth was a great one for the joking. David saw a gleam in George’s eye, and knew that if any reminiscences about this visit were to be created in Oxford—for George rather fancied himself as a storyteller—then Ma clean summing up would be the chief reason for mirth. George would develop a masterly rendering of the Highlander’s pronunciation of the initial consonant. “He’s a crate one for the choking,” George would say at the right moment after David had produced an attempt at wit. But that was the kind of leg-pulling that David could take.

So now David smiled round the table as he thanked Mac-Lean for the excellent advice, and began to talk about the mantelpiece, crammed with some particularly hideous presents from Shanghai and Singapore which the late Captain McDonald had brought home from his voyages.

It is rather pleasant, I must say,” George began, and then thought better of saying it. They were walking up the winding road which would take them to Dr. MacLntyre’s house.

“What is?”

“To see the island from the inside, as it were. I’ve visited this place each summer, but I’ve always left Ma clean at the jetty and then strolled inland.

But this is the first time I’ve got to know any of them. They are very polite, but very remote to strangers.”

“Foreigners, you mean.”

George looked as if he did not like to accept that idea. After all, he was English, and these islands were part of the British Isles. And he had been coming to this part of Scotland each summer for six years now.

“Well,” he said, ‘they accepted us all right today.”

“Because we had the right password, I suppose.”

“Dr. MacLntyre’s name?”

“I’m afraid so. Quite a blow to admit it wasn’t for our sweet and charming smiles, isn’t it? But cheer up, George: the right password is the key to any fortress. Here it is quite simply a matter of friendship. It wouldn’t have mattered to Mrs. McDonald who we were, or what we did or thought: we came as friends of Dr. MacLntyre’s, and that was good enough for her.”

“I must tell that to Mother,” George said.

“She is completely baffled by these Highlanders, you know. When we first came here she tried visiting the cottages in the village at Loch Innish, taking the people some fruit from our garden and that sort of thing. But some weeks later they returned the visit, bringing home-made scones and heather honey. It set Mother back for weeks.”

David let out a roar of laughter, and George joined in eventually. He had the uncomfortable feeling that David was laughing at quite a different side of the story.

“You do throw yourself into things, old boy, don’t you?” George remarked, when David had recovered.

“No half-measures for you in anything, it seems.” Then, thinking of his mother, with a hint of guilt for having laughed too, he said, “Might be rather’ nice to bring Mother and Eleanor over here some day. It would be definitely a new experience for them.” David said quickly, “Good God, not that.” And then more slowly, tactfully, “They will be much too busy, anyway.”

“Yes. One always is busier than one imagines,” George paused. With a sudden flash of sensitivity he said, “Women are such damned snobs, come to think of it. They just couldn’t have tea in a kitchen without feeling all the time that it was the kitchen. Now men, for instance, enjoy a pleasant hour anywhere, and they don’t care where it is as long as it is pleasant.”

David nodded. He was thinking again of the girl he had met in Mrs. McDonald’s kitchen. Her voice had no Highland intonation. Was she a summer visitor, and where was she staying, anyway? He halted suddenly, and looked back at the village. What an idiotic way to behave, he told himself angrily, and turned quickly to walk on with George.

They said good-day to two children, an old man, and a young boy. But of the girl with the blue eyes and the dark auburn hair there was no sign.

Chapter Two.

DR MACINTYRE AS LORD CHESTERFIELD.

Silence fell on the pleasant room. Dr. MacLntyre, sitting in his favourite armchair by the side of the large brick fireplace, wondered just how long they had been talking. The conversation had been interesting enough: it was always a delight to hear the news from Oxford, or to catch an echo of his own experiences when he had been an undergraduate, or to watch a young man’s ideas and enthusiasms suddenly reveal themselves in spite of pretended diffidence. For it was the fashion among young men these days to be diffident. But every now and again their natural exuberance would break down the pretence. And a damned good thing, too, Dr. MacLntyre reflected.

David suddenly thought of looking at his watch. He rose quickly to his feet.

T’m terribly sorry, sir,” he said. T’ve taken up far too much of your time.

I had no idea …”

“Then we both enjoyed the afternoon,” Dr. MacLntyre said tactfully. He rose too, and knocked the ashes from his pipe into the fireplace. He was a tall man, and he still carried himself erectly, but he had become thinner since he had ordered his tweed suit, for it hung loosely on him. His age, in spite of his white hair, was only noticeable in his deliberate movements. His blue eyes were unfaded, and there was youth in them: they were interested and amused. The flesh on his face was firm over the strong bones, and there was a fresh, healthy colour in his cheeks. He had surprised David when they had first met: he gave the impression of vigour and of enjoyment, as if his life had been completely successful and surprisingly entertaining.

David hesitated, looking round the room, knowing that he really must take his leave and yet regretting to go. It was a room to work and talk and think in, a large room that was friendly and comfortable.

Bookcases, tightly filled with books —and not all scholarly books either. A piano and a heavily filled music-rack. A wireless-set beside the fireplace.

A gramophone and a good variety of records. At the west window there was a large desk. At the east window, looking over the Sound towards the mainland, there was a low table with a game of chess in progress and two comfortable armchairs. David’s eyes travelled back to the desk, with its busy disorder of work interrupted.

He said, “I’m afraid I have been rather a nuisance.”

“Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,” Dr. MacLntyre said. He was satisfied with his pipe-tapping. He straightened his back, and then stood for a moment looking at a photograph on the mantelpiece. He seemed lost in thought, and David felt he was being politely dismissed. This was the way in which Chaundler, in Oxford, gave him warning. I’ve stayed too long, and I’ve talked too much—God, much too much—David thought miserably, and all the pleasure in the visit vanished as he realized how bored Dr. MacLntyre must have been.

But Dr. MacLntyre, taking a keen look at the embarrassment on the young man’s face, said, “If you wait until I find my tobacco I’ll take a turn with you in the garden.

I have some surprising hollyhocks.” He noted the relief on David’s face.

Young men did not change very much, after all, in spite of fashions in behaviour …

No doubt Bosworth had come here out of a sense of duty, not really expecting to enjoy himself. And now, because he has enjoyed the visit, he is having an attack of guilt in case he has bored me, Dr. MacLntyre thought.

“I believe he likes roe,” Dr. MacLntyre said to himself, and then shook his head over his own vanity.

“Now where did I put that tobacco-tin?” he asked.

David was looking at the three healthy children in the silver-framed photograph which, along with a faded picture of a very pretty woman in Edwardian dress, held the position of honour on the mantelpiece.

“That was my wife,” Dr. MacLntyre remarked quietly.

“Anc these are my grandchildren,” he added, straightening th silver frame to let the three young faces smile directly into the room.

“Charming,” David said politely, but he was much more interested in the photograph of Mrs. MacLntyre. She remindec him strangely of some one.

“Brats,” Dr. MacLntyre said, not without affection.

“Thani Heaven it was decent weather to-day, or we shouldn’t have been given a moment’s peace. Chopsticks on the piano, cuttings from magazines scattered everywhere, portraits of me being made … I can’t even fall asleep in my own armchaii in case I am drawn with my mouth open. Ah! Here it is! He retrieved the tobacco-tin from the side of the chess-table He filled his pipe thoughtfully, looked down at the chessrnei on the board. Til have to watch out, or I’ll be running into difficulties.

The schoolmaster plays a canny game. Of course I can always blame my mistakes on the view.” As he lit hi; pipe he raised his eyes and looked out over the Sound an its shining waters.

David came over to join him. The two men stood ir silence for a few moments.

“I envy you living here,” David said suddenly, and wa; surprised to hear his own words.

“You are seeing it at its best to-day, I might warn you,” D. MacLntyre said deprecatingly, but he was pleased all the same. And now, he thought, Bosworth will say it must b< quite awesome in the winter months. His visitors always did But David’s next remark made him turn to look at the young; man with surprise.

“Beautiful, but cruel,” David was saying.

“So much land, s( few people, so little for even those people to live on.

An( why?