Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (35 page)

‘I say, Loudon, you're sitting on a thistle,' says Tony with solicitude. ‘Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the rug?'

‘I am quite comfortable where I am,' Guthrie replies ungraciously.

‘I wouldn't like to sit on a thistle,' gurgles Betty, between two mouthfuls of egg sandwich.

Apart from this slightly acrimonious exchange, tea is a silent meal. Mrs. Falconer is in one of her silent moods, and confines her remarks to requests for more tea or another scone. Elsie and Guthrie are obviously out of tune, and my thoughts are busy with the phenomenon of the lady in white.

The place itself is sufficient to depress the spirits of most people. There is a damp chill feeling in the air, for the sunshine never falls on this side of the rock. The trees are covered with moss and lichen and a few bright red toadstools cluster round their roots. A huge black bird flies past slowly, the flap of its wings echoing strangely from the overhanging cliff.

‘Raven,' says Tony quietly.

Just at this moment there is a loud peal of thunder, and a gust of wind steals through the trees, shaking their heavy branches and stirring the green water on the loch.

‘We had better get back to the cars,' Mrs. Loudon says, looking anxiously at the sky, which has clouded over with remarkable suddenness. ‘It's going to rain, and when it rains here it comes down in buckets.'

‘Oh no, don't let's go!' cries Betty. ‘It's lovely – just like the pantomime before the wizard appears. It gives me the same shuddery feeling in my spine.'

‘There's MacQuill,' says Guthrie suddenly, looking up from his task of packing the basket of crockery. ‘Shall I shout to him to come with us? He'll get drenched.'

We all look up, and I am just in time to see a man running up the little path between the trees. He is wearing a grey flannel suit and has no hat.

‘It can't be Hector MacQuill,' Tony points out. ‘This is the last place
he
would come.'

‘It
was
Hector. I saw him distinctly,' replies Guthrie, white with rage.

Tony merely smiles incredulously.

I realise there are the makings of a first-class row – it seems strange that these two men can never speak to each other without getting hot.

‘Whoever it was, he will get frightfully wet,' I remark pacifically, as a few large splashes of rain fall on my bare arms, and another peal of thunder echoes rumblingly amongst the mountains.

‘It was Hector MacQuill,' says Guthrie obstinately. He picks up two large baskets and several rugs, and, thus laden, marches off.

The rest of us collect the remainder of the feast, and follow him as fast as we are able. Dobbie is struggling with the hood of the Bentley. Tony rushes to help him. We all scramble into our seats, and the coats and rugs are thrown in on the top of us. Then the heavens seem to open, and the rain comes down in a blinding white sheet of water. The very trees bend under its weight.

‘It's not been a very nice afternoon,' Dobbie remarks, understating the facts with typical Lowland phlegm, as he climbs into his seat and shuts the door. I notice that, in these few moments, his uniform is soaked through, and the water is trickling down the back of his neck.

Mrs. Loudon agrees with him; she is too used to Dobbie's imperturbability to be surprised at his words.

‘Will we start home, Mrs. Loudon?' he enquires, mopping his face with a blue handkerchief, ‘or will we wait a wee while till the shower's past?'

The ‘shower' is drumming on the roof like the rattle of musketry, and Mrs. Loudon has to raise her voice to make herself heard.

‘We'll get home as quickly as we can,' she says. ‘I'll not have your death at my door, sitting there dripping as if you'd just been taken out of the loch. Away home, and mind you get changed as soon as possible.'

Dobbie murmurs something about ‘a wee thing damp', but he knows Mrs. Loudon too well to argue about it, and soon we are squelching through the mud like a buffalo in a wallow, with the rain beating on the windows and the thunder growling overhead.

‘Who would have thought it would turn out like this?' enquires Mrs. Falconer blandly. ‘It reminds me of a picnic I went to when I was a child '

The thunder has made my head ache, so I lie back in my corner and try not to hear; but it is impossible not to hear. Why are we not provided with earlids to work in the same way as eyelids, so that if we want to be quiet we may shut our ears and drift away upon our own thoughts? As it is I am forced to listen to a lengthy account of the picnic which Mrs. Falconer attended at the age of eight, clad in a muslin frock and a blue sash. Today being what it is, and Mrs. Falconer being reminded of the occasion by the storm, it is only logical to suppose that these frail garments were completely ruined by the elements; but I can't be certain of this, for I never heard the story finished. Mrs. Loudon, who for some time has been wrapped in her own thoughts – perhaps
she
has invisible earlids – suddenly leans forward and says:

‘Dobbie – was that young Mr. MacQuill who passed up the path just before the storm broke?'

‘There wasn't anybody passed
me,'
Dobbie replies. ‘I never saw anybody all the time I was there. It's a lonely sort of spot – a bit eerie to my mind.'

‘Yes, it is,' replies Mrs. Loudon thoughtfully.

I can see she is puzzled by the mystery of the disappearing man (and it certainly seems very queer, for the path he took was narrow and led only to the place where we left the cars) but the disappearing lady was an even more perplexing phenomenon, and I can't help wondering what Mrs. Loudon would have made of that. For myself I can make nothing of it at all, and, in spite of an inner voice which assures me that there are no such things as ghosts, I am forced to the somewhat awesome conclusion that there must be, and that I have seen one with my own eyes in broad daylight. If Tony had not seen it too – but then he did. It is all very puzzling.

Ninth June

Guthrie says, ‘But people
do
take the wrong turning sometimes, Hester, and then they can't go back.'

We have been talking trivialities until now I can't remember what but there is suddenly a strained note in Guthrie's voice which catches my attention and holds it fast. I roll over on the soft turf and look at him in surprise. He is raised on one elbow, and is very busy digging little holes in the grass with his fingers. High up in the blue sky a lark is singing a perfect paean of praise to its Creator, the loch dreams in the sunshine, devoid of the slightest ripple, a faint haze hovers over the low marshy ground, and shimmers in the noonday heat.

‘But people can always go back to the crossroads, Guthrie.'

‘Not in life,' he says gravely.

Suddenly my heart hammers in my throat, and I search wildly for words. ‘Guthrie, if people have only gone a little way down the wrong road, they can still turn back – the crossroads are in sight – ' ‘No,' he replies, digging his little holes with frightful industry. ‘No, Hester. A man's got to go forward all the time. Besides, people are sometimes farther down the road than you think distance is deceptive sometimes.'

‘Guthrie!'

‘Let's go home,' he says. ‘It's hopeless for fishing today. I think I shall take my gun, and get a few rabbits for Mother.'

As we stroll over the hill I search wildly for words to influence Guthrie. Quite obviously his strange talk refers to his relations with Elsie. He has come to see her in her true light, but intends – like the obstinate chivalrous creature he is – to marry her all the same. It would have been bad enough for him to marry Elsie thinking her a paragon amongst women, but to marry her with no such delusion is infinitely worse. Sailors don't see very much of their wives, and Guthrie might have gone on for years thinking her perfect in every way. The awful thing about it is that it is all my fault. I have laid myself out to be nice to him. I have tried to show him that a woman can be a friend, and it seems that he has learnt his lesson only too well. I have rushed in where angels might well have feared to tread, and destroyed his illusions to no purpose. Far better if I had left Guthrie alone, and returned to Biddington by the first train. Far better if I had stood aside, or made myself deliberately disagreeable to the man. This is what comes of trying to meddle with people's lives; you achieve your object and find it is a disaster.

At last I can bear it no longer, and I seize my companion by the arm.

‘Guthrie!' I cry, ‘it's not fair to tell me a little and then not let me speak to you. You've simply got to listen to me.'

He smiles down at me a little wearily. ‘My dear, I didn't mean to tell you anything. I'm kicking myself now if that's any consolation to you.'

‘None whatever,' I reply firmly. ‘Sit down there and let me speak to you.'

We sit down upon a fallen tree, whereupon speech deserts me. I have so much to say that nothing will come.

‘Well, go on,' he says quite gently.

‘Guthrie, you really mustn't do it,' I say at last. ‘You've no idea what you're doing, or you would not
think
of it. You've no idea what marriage is. I've been married for twelve years, and I can tell you this – happiness is only possible when two people have the same ideas.'

‘Everybody says marriage is a lottery, so what does it matter?' says Guthrie.

‘It may be a lottery, but why draw the wrong number on purpose?' I reply quickly.

‘I've drawn my number.'

‘Oh, Guthrie, do listen to me! Don't make a mess of your whole life because you are too proud to say you have made a mistake.'

‘There is no question of making a mess of my life. Elsie is a dear little girl, and I'm very fond of her; it is only – '

‘It is only that you have nothing in common,' I interrupt him breathlessly. ‘Guthrie, do listen to me, and believe that I know what I'm talking about it wouldn't be quite so bad if you could marry and settle down in a home with friends round you, and each have your own interests and amusements, but Service people can't do that. They've
got
to be pals, making each other do for everything, finding their home, and their friends, and their interests all in each other.'

He looks at me with a face gone suddenly white under its tan. ‘My dear, I know. But I can't go back – she trusts me – she has promised to marry me.'

I cry to him angrily, ‘And do you suppose that
she
will be happy? Be sensible for
her
sake if you won't be sensible for your own.'

‘I think I can make her happy,' he replies stiffly.

We walk on in silence.

Tenth June

Mrs. Loudon announces at breakfast that she is going to have a dinner party. The announcement is received by Guthrie with unmitigated scorn. He says that dinner parties are a winter sport, only just bearable in towns where people are herded together in any case – and that it will spoil an evening's fishing, and, anyway, nobody will come.

Mrs. Loudon replies with spirit that
he
need not come unless he wants to, there are plenty of people to ask. That nice Major Morley, for instance.

Guthrie says
he
won't come.

Mrs. Loudon retorts that we shall see whether he will or not, but, for her part, she has no doubt about it – and we can ask Miss Baker and her father, if Guthrie likes.

Guthrie says
he
won't come,
anyway
– he never goes out anywhere. Mrs. Loudon says if he doesn't want to come he can refuse the invitation, and she intends to ask the MacArbins, because they never have any fun, and Hester ought to see them.

Guthrie says why not ask the MacQuills too.

Mrs. Loudon says it's a pity we can't, but it might be a little
too
exciting if they went for each other in the drawing room.

Guthrie says, ‘My God, what a party!' and opens the newspaper ostentatiously.

Mrs. Loudon repairs to her desk, writes three notes in record time, and summons Dobbie to deliver them – she is not in the habit of letting the grass grow under her feet.

‘ – and we can just go ahead with the preparations,' she says, looking at me over the top of her spectacles as she sits at her desk. ‘For they'll all jump at it.'

‘When is it to be?' I ask her.

‘Tonight, of course,' replies the indomitable woman. ‘Where's the sense of putting things off ? If I'm feeling like having a dinner party, I have it. And you can dress the flowers for the table,' she adds trenchantly, ‘for I know perfectly well that you'll not let
me
do it in peace.'

I am about to leave the room when Mrs. Loudon recalls me ‘Salmon, and lamb, and peas, and trifle,' she says, frowning anxiously. ‘Would you give them soup as well, Hester, or yon newfangled grapefruit?'

– I vote for soup, whereupon Mrs. Loudon's brow clears.

‘It's cold fare for an empty stomach, grapefruit,' she says. ‘I'll admit they always give me the gooseflesh. Whereas a nice spoonful of Julienne is a comforting sort of start.'