Hospital in the Highlands (4 page)

By now the theater wa
s
once again shiningly neat, and loth as she was to break up the happy little conversation she could not deliberately prolong it.

“I’ll bid you goodnight, sir,” she volunteered shyly.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going home. I’m very late already.”

“Well”—it was he who was flustered, now—“if you can wait a minute while I make a final check with Night Sister I’ll be right with you. My car’s outside.”

“Oh, but I have a bike, sir.”

“It’ll keep,” he told her. “I have to come back here in the morning, remember.”

“I
would
have the morning off!” she almost groaned as she dashed away, but still she felt strangely exalted as though she was on the verge of a great delight. “It’s been quite a nice day, really,” she decided as she donned her plain navy-blue uniform coat and tucked her beret into her pocket, unconsciously leaving the crowning glory of her long, brown hair shiningly unadorned and uncovered.

Usually at this moment she took her engagement ring out of her breast pocket and donned it for the ride home. It was an unobtrusive little ring bearing a trinity of small diamonds which Jim had insisted stood for I Love You. Now she merely regarded the circlet for a moment, rubbed it gently on a silk handkerchief and replaced it in the obscurity of her dress pocket.

She didn’t attempt to question her small action. If she had done she might have resorted to telling herself a lie, and you can’t hoodwink your own self for very long.

“I hope my sisters were no trouble, sir,” Flo said rather stiffly, having heard how the laird of Glen Lochallan had taken them to Rowans from the station. “I phoned Jamie, who runs the taxi, to meet them, when I found I was tied up myself.”

“So Jamie told me when I saw him. His taxi had broken down in the middle of a wedding, it appears, and he was most upset. I never got around to asking him if the nuptials were successfully celebrated despite this mechanical misfortune. I happened to be collecting a new sporting gun from the station, so I was on hand to take over the young ladies. By the way, Sister, if I appeared to be looking at you rather hard in the theater it was because I couldn’t believe it.”

“Believe what, sir?”

“That you were their sister.”

“They
are
very pretty girls, sir.”

He took his eyes from the road ahead to regard her in apparent amazement.

“
They
are?” he repeated. The way he said it made Flo feel positively beautiful. “They’re your kin, of course,” he granted, “and I admit the young ladies have a certain glamor appeal. I was completely floored at first. One expects to see creatures of such exquisite mien leaving their footprints outside the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood,
b
ut hardly in the turf of Glen Lochallan. Now
you
belong here, Sister.”

“You mean I’m not glamorous, sir?" she couldn’t resist inquiring.

“What’s glamor?” he suddenly spurned the word. “You know darned well you have all the womanly appeal in the world, Sister, and if nobody has told you that before today you must have existed in a blind mute colony!”

Slowly the color rose in Flo Lamont’s cheeks while her knuckles showed white as she clutched the car’s ancient upholstery. She knew now was the time to stop this hardy and handsome young man from paying her such compliments. It would be so easy to mention Jim and don his ring, putting a polite little chasm between them forever. But instead she relaxed, closed her eyes and glowed. It was so nice to be noticed again as a woman. Keith had wanted to do it, but Keith was a different kettle of fish from the tall, rather arrogant young man beside her.

“I liked the little one,” he suddenly murmured, without explaining himself. “She’ll be good for Hamish.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Margaret Lamont was a worried woman as they drove the five miles to Rowans from the small township of Glen Lochallan, in the strange Highlander’s car. She hadn’t thought her sister’s house would be quite as remote as this. The whole of the five miles appeared to be unpeopled, though Pixie did see her fourteen-point stag, albeit in flight from the noise of the car and the excitedly barking dog, which was apparently quite used to occupying a seat and sticking its foreparts through the window when it saw anything of canine interest en route.

This place looked lonely even now when they were in a group of four, so how lonely would it appear when Fay was off about her business and Pixie at school?

For three years Meg hadn’t dared to be alone. The Great Sorrow that now merely irked her sisters was still a raw wound to her, and only when she was busily occupied, with crowds of people around her, did she manage to keep above it so that outwardly, at least, it didn’t show.

Her sisters said that she had no pride to grieve over a man who didn’t care about her. But there was more to it than pride; there was fear—fear that the cycle, if repeated only partially, would be completed in its entirety. She couldn’t face being so hurt and disillusioned again.

Fay was still seething that the man at the wheel had matched his will against hers and won. Ever since she had left school she had lived in a world where men were prepared to be either her sweethearts or her slaves: her father’s friends—mostly artists and musicians—had seen perfections in her of one sort or another, mostly physical, but she had no ambitions at the moment beyond the beauty that goes skin-deep. She liked to think of herself as a modern version of Scylla, a lure as fatal as she was irresistible, but this Strathallan creature had merely made her appear gauche and rather young. If she hadn’t scrambled into the car at the finish, with more haste than dignity, he would have been quite capable of leaving her behind in the station yard. This she knew and it didn’t endear the fellow to her one bit.

“Who plays the fiddle?” he asked cheerfully.

“Fay does,” Meg and Pixie said in duet.

“I play the violin,” she corrected, cuttingly.

“Do you play well? Maybe I shouldn’t ask!” he laughed.

“I
do
play well,” she told him, “by most standards. I could always get a job with an orchestra, if I wanted to, but I aim higher. I’m working on the Bazelosky Concerto, if you know what that is?
”

Her tone implied that she expected him to be a musical ignoramus, and he bit back the smile that lurked on his lips.

“Would there be an arrangement for the pipes?” he wanted to know.

“God forbid!” was Fay’s answer to this.

They turned into a dark drive over which the pine
s
met and wept.

“In the Highlands we build to keep the weather out,” Robert Strathallan said as they drew up in front of a square, gray-stone building. “You’ll find Rowans as dry and warm inside as a house should be.” He loaded the hand-luggage on to the wide porch and tugged at the bell. “Will you be all right now?”

“Thank you, yes. I’m sure we will,” Meg said, wanting the stranger to go away before she should panic at the hopelessness of it all. “Thank you very, very much.”

“And do come and see us again,” Pixie invited blithely.

“How much?” was Fay’s parting shot, standing with her purse open in her hand.

Robert Strathallan regarded her quite kindly, however, so that she knew she still hadn’t found the chink in his armor.

“That’s all right, Miss Lamont,” he assured her. “Now that you’re in the Highlands you can keep your money in your pocket most of the time.”

“I prefer not to be under any obligation,” she insisted.

“You’re not. One’s neighbors are never obligations hereabouts. Glad to have been of service,” and saluting all three inclusively he drove away down the drive.

“How do we get into this jail?” Fay demanded angrily, hammering on the door with both hands. “What has Flo got us into?”

“It
is
depressing,” agreed Meg, rarely finding herself in accord with this sister. “I do think she should have met us herself.”

“I’ve been around the back,” Pixie cheerfully appeared to announce, “and there’s an auld woman hiding in the kitchen. The door’s open, though.”

The two elder girls followed Pixie round the house and entered by the kitchen door. Old Janet was huddling against the dresser, looking scared.

“Are you the maid?” Meg asked. “This is my sister’s house. We rang the bell.”

Janet began to cry.

“She’s the village idiot, obviously,” Fay said tiredly. “We come two hundred miles to the back of beyond and a gruesome creature like this welcomes—or rather doesn’t welcome—us. Take a good look at her, Meg, my love.
You
’ll
be like that fifty years from now!”

Janet cried harder and Meg tried not to abandon herself to hysterics.

“If Flo were here I’d tell her a thing or two,” she brooded darkly.

“Oh, shut up, both of you!” Pixie suddenly cheeked her elders. “It would be wonderful if you’d let it be. You’re a couple of spoilsports and wet-blankets. Some things we can’t quite understand. So what? We can make a cup of tea, can’t we, and look around?”

Old Janet dried her eyes at this and beckoned Pixie to her. She mumbled for a few moments and then the youngster turned to her sisters.

“What did I tell you? The auld woman’s afraid tae answer the front door in case o’ they murderers an’ burglars ye read o’.”

“Pixie!” Meg
cried despairingly. “Your accent!”

“Well, that’s what
she
said,” the other explained, “and if it’s tea we want she’ll be glad tae oblige if we’ll go oot o’ the kitchen. Come on and explore.”

“I don’t really think I want to explore, thank you,” Meg said dully as they went down a dark passage and then into a surprisingly pleasant room overlooking a long meadow with a stream running through it. “Oh! this is quite nice, and there’s a fire.”

“You sit down and wait for tea, then,” Pixie advised. “I’m going to see everything there is to be seen. Coming, Fay?”

“No, and you be careful. If there are such things as ghoulies and ghosties this place’ll have them.”

Meg looked round the sitting room at the old but good leather furniture and worn velvet cushions.

“I suppose this could be quite a nice room if it was cheered up with some bright chintzes, or something. I see it in lemon yellow with the woodwork a rich turquoise. Do you agree?”

Looking round as she sprawled in a chair, Fay snorted.

“I see it exactly as it is in a sort of dirty chewing-gum color and chocolate brown. I suppose that was old Mother Nightingale’s idea of interior decoration.”

“Well, it isn’t mine. If we stay I shall do it over.”

“
If
we stay? Where can we go?” Fay asked with mock eagerness. “I thought you were bluffing,” she added derisively. “We’re here whether we like it or not, and you know it. But whether Flo will want you to change the color scheme is another kettle of fish altogether. She’s the boss hereabouts.”

Suddenly the silence of the house was rent by a childish scream, and then Pixie could be heard in flight, half running, half falling down the stairs.

Meg had paled: even Fay looked startled and dashed out of the room, picking up the shaking bundle from the stone flags of the hall floor.

“I—I saw a ghoulie!” Pixie stated, looking ready to faint. Fay looked up the wide oak staircase. Leaning out of the shadows, long, gray hair dishevelled, was a thin creature who reminded her of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, with the same “sharp blue eyes each like a pin.”

“Ah didna lay a finger on the wean,” this apparition stated. “Ah shouldna a’ been up the stair, ye ken, but Ah didna touch her. Ah swear it.”

“Who are you?” Meg asked.

“Ma name’s Willyum. Ah’m the gardener.”

“Then what
are
you doing upstairs?”

Old Willyum began to come down the stairs crabwise.

“Ah was just puttin’ flowers in her room.”

“Whose room?”

“The Mistress’.” Willyum looked surprised at the question. Flowers in whose room, indeed, but hers?

Pixie began to find recovery in tears.

“Ah’
ll
no let anything hurt ye,” auld Willyum assured the youngster, timidly, lest she reject him. “There’s nae such things as ghoulies an’ ghosties. Only wee folk, and they’re maistly guid. Ye ken?”

Pixie smiled and rubbed her eyes firmly. Obviously this old man had to be humored, like the old woman in the kitchen. “Have you seen one?” she asked more cheerfully.

“Ay. Dozens. There was one wha’ took my guid shears tae cut himself a piece o’ the rainboo fer a pair o’ breeks. Ye ken?”

Pixie smiled happily once more.

“Show me your garden, Willyum,” she requested confidentially. “I’m sorry I thought you were a ghoulie. Anyway, you’re a nicer ghoulie than imagined.”

Meg sighed as the new friends went off together, envying the resilience of childhood which could raise one from a crumpled heap of stark terror to laughing again, and all in a matter of minutes! Would that one had the same powers of regeneration ten years later to overcome as quickly the ills which affected the heart!

Though Flo Lamont was eager to meet her sisters, she would still have wished that car ride with Robert Strathallan five times as long. With some people it is so easy to be on friendly terms, and this, she told herself, was one such relationship. She had known members of the medical staff to be so conscious of their status that they never encouraged fraternization with lesser fry, who were there simply to carry out their orders. She had also known doctors who—ventriloquist-wise—had one voice which they kept for issuing edicts regarding their patients, and quite another that was used for whispering compliments into the ears of any pretty nurse in their vicinity. But Mr. Strathallan was the same person both on and off duty, and it was not difficult to like him as he was, without guile, and minus the common urge to increase his professional stature where he could at the expense of lesser fry.

As the car stopped outside Rowans she felt rather embarrassed when Robert Strathallan so obviously lingered expectantly.

“Well—sir—
”
she said, “I’ve kept you long enough. I’m sure you want to go home now.”

“No, not particularly. I can come in for a moment.”

He bounded up the steps as she fished for her key in the small pocket of her dress.

“Can you manage?” he asked brightly. “I have a flashlight in the car.”

Her engagement ring dropped ringingly on to the stone and off on to softer soil.

“Was that your key?” he asked, groping.

“No.” Flo was flustered. “It’s all right, Mr. Strathallan. I have my key. It was—only a button or something,” she lied, and flung open the door revealing the panelled hall, softly lit by lamplight at this hour.

“Come in for a drink, sir. I haven’t seen my sisters yet.” An invitation and sharp hint all in one, it seemed. He only cared to acknowledge the invitation, however, and followed her into the sitting room where both Meg and Fay were sitting looking absolutely out of their element.

“Hello!” Flo kissed each sister in turn while they both regarded the visitor. “Mr. Strathallan kindly brought me h
o
me. We’ll have a drink to celebrate, shall we?’

“To celebrate what?” Fay asked stonily.

“You didn’t tell us there was no electricity,” Meg accused.

“Well”—Flo laughed as she busied herself with bottles and glasses at a sideboard—“frankly I haven’t missed it, dear. Where’s Pixie?”

“She’s in bed, of course, at this hour,” Meg stated, implying that as it was now almost midnight it was no decent hour for anyone to be coming home. “What kept you, Flo?”

“Work, of course. There was an emergency operation.”

“We’re seeing a lot of
you
today, Mr. Strathallan,” Fay decided, as he handed her a glass of sherry. “How come? Do you hang about waiting for damsels in distress to appear, or something?”

“Not as a rule,” he said mildly, “but one hopes, of course.”

“Flo never mentioned you in her letters,” the green-flecked eyes narrowed speculatively.

“I never actually met Mr. Strathallan until today,” Flo said from where she was leaning against the fireplace, still wearing her outdoor uniform. “He performed the operation. He’s our new consultant surgeon at the Glen.”

“Oh, is he?” Fay decided a little more respect must be shown their neighbor. Physicians and surgeons were on a par with artists and musicians in her opinion. They were possibles should one require an escort at any time. “Married?” she wanted to know.

Flo flushed, which did not escape her inquisitive younger sister, but she, also, wanted to know the answer.

“No,” smiled Robert Strathallan. “I have a wee handicap from a wife’s point of view. I’m rearing my young brother, Hamish. He’s rising seventeen. It’ll be four or five years before I can bring a mistress home to Glen Lochallan.”

“A
mistress
?” Fay smiled mischievously.

“In good Scots a mistress is the wife and woman of the house, Miss Lamont,” he bowed in her direction, as though anxious to help in her education.

“Your house is named Glen Lochallan, like the town?” Flo asked hastily.

“At one time Glen Lochallan town was part of the estate, Miss Flo. My forefathers rallied to the Jacobite cause where the fishmarket now stands, alas!”

“Alas for the Jacobites or the fish?” Fay asked.

Meg, who had been sulking, now saw that Flo was becoming distressed and decided to rally to her aid.

“You said you were going to bed ages ago, Fay,” she said sharply. “Come along with me, now. Maybe Mr. Strathallan wishes to discuss the operation with Flo.”

“No, please stay,” the young laird begged. “It is I who must go. Goodnight, all!”

“I’ll see you out,” Flo said, hurrying into the hall ahead of him. Fay glued her eye to a keyhole.

“I smell a rat,” she decided from her stooping position. “Did you notice how those two looked at each other from time to time? And she wasn’t wearing her ring. I’m watching to see if he kisses her.” There was a short silence, then the front door closed and was locked and barred. “He didn’t,” Fay said disappointedly, and stood up. “She’s coming back and she’s mad, I can tell.”

Flo re-entered the sitting room and stood with her back to the door as though barring her sisters’ exit from her wrath.

“How could you?” she asked with difficulty. “How could you be so brash and rude? I was so ashamed I could have died!”

Fay surveyed her as though she was some curiosity.

“We were just being ourselves,” she said sweetly. “It was you, dear sister, who were out to impress.”

“I don’t understand you,” Flo said tiredly.

“Don’t you? I think you’ve got your eye on friend Strathallan and his lordly acres, if I must put things more clearly, and I can’t say I blame you if that’s your line of country. I only hope you’re not being greedy and keeping poor old Jim dangling, too.”

“I’ve told you I only met Mr. Strathallan today. About three hours ago, to be exact.”

“It takes only five minutes to fall in love,” Fay said, surveying the scarlet rose hips of her finger nails.

“Don’t be ridiculous, please.” Flo realized she had been nearer to losing patience with her family than ever before in her life, and now she fought to regain her old, easy-going attitude toward them. “I’m sorry if you don’t find Rowans all you expected, and that I couldn’t meet you to bring you here myself. I’m tired now, and I’m sure you are. I’m not on duty until midday tomorrow, so we can talk in the morning.”

“Yes, let’s go to bed,” Meg agreed, and they all went upstairs together.

Half an hour later Flo crept down and opened the heavy front door as quietly as possible. She carried a small electric torch and by its light found what she sought, then—half weeping—she kissed the modest ring as she rammed it on her finger and surveyed it.

“Jim!
”
she cried with closed eyes. “Oh, Jim, don’t let me forget you, darling! If you can hear me, come home now. Now!”