The Last of the Kintyres (18 page)

A swift flush of pleasure rushed to her cheeks as she looked up at him.

“I’d love that,” she admitted. “Did you remember about my mother?”

“Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “We can have tea somewhere on the road, if we’re quick. On the way back,” he added as they crossed to the door, “I want to call in at Whitefarland. I have to evacuate the house itself by the week-end, and there are still one or two bits of furniture to bring away. We can quite easily fit everything in before dinner.”

Elizabeth walked ahead of him into the hall. The prospect of Loch Tralaig—of going there alone with Hew, even for an hour—had been wonderful, but now there was this visit he had to pay to Whitefarland. Was he
ar
ming
himself with her presence in case he should meet Caroline there? For, after all, Caroline was now the owner of the farm and had every right to be on her own property when they arrived.

Almost before the thought had taken shape in her mind she realized that Hew didn’t need to arm himself against anyone. He would not fear an encounter with Caroline or anyone else. Only circumstances could defeat him.

When he brought the Daimler round to the front of the house she had found her coat and told Mrs. Malcolm that they would not be in for tea.

“If Tony comes in you can tell him that we’ve gone to Loch Tralaig,” she explained.

The little secret lochan lay half hidden among the hills. The sun had almost set before they reached it, for they had lingered over their tea at Kilninver, and the purple light of the gloaming hour was creeping down the glen.

Deep in its heart the water lay like black glass, with the shoulders of the hills hanging inverted in it, the reflection as clear in every detail as the image itself. There was no sound anywhere. It was as if the whole glen and the silent lochan stood waiting for their coming, waiting down through the years, for her mother and Hew’s father had come here long ago. Was it here,
perhaps, that they had first discovered their love?

Suddenly Elizabeth turned.

“Thank you for bringing me, Hew,” she said. “Somehow I knew it would look like this.”

He stood beside her, looking down into the loch for a long time before he spoke.

“There’s something I want to give you, and I thought you would like to have it here,” he said, at last.

Feeling in his pocket, he brought out a flat leather case, and when he opened it she saw that it contained a bracelet of most excellent workmanship set with several square-cut amethysts. The stones were a rich, deep purple, like the colour of the heather when it first comes into bloom, and beside them, deeply embedded in the white velvet lining of the case, there was a ring of equal depth and beauty. Hew lifted the ring out first.

“The stones are found locally,” he explained. “There’s quite a lot of quartz in the district, but these are particularly fine examples. Mrs. Malcolm said the other day that it was time you had an engagement ring ‘so that folk would know it was a fact’!” he added.

Elizabeth tried to smile, but she could not. Her throat was quite choked with tears.

“It’s lovely,” she said, holding out her hand. “The loveliest thing I’ve seen for a long time.”

He put the ring on, slipping it over the third finger of her left hand and looking at it with a small, onesided smile while she longed for him to take her in his arms and kiss her.

“Well,” he said, “there it is.”

“Yes.” The tears were so near her eyes that she thought he must surely see them. “It’s exquisite,” she repeated.

“There’s this, too.” He held out the bracelet. “They appear to go together.”

He turned her hand over, his head bent to the task of clasping the delicate, linked stones about her wrist, but as the little safety-catch slid into place his eyes came up to meet hers.

“It could be an amulet—or a handcuff,” he said dryly.

“I’d rather it proved an amulet,” she told him steadily.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, his lips came down, sealing hers with a kiss, and they stood there for an endless moment, letting the silence envelop them, letting time run out without thought. Then Hew drew her back on to the narrow moor road where he had left the car.

“Time to go,” he said with a
hin
t of regret in his voice. “I want to get to Whitefarland before dark.”

Elizabeth held the amethyst bracelet close against her wrist as they drove away, leaving Loch Tralaig in the shadows.

Whatever gift Hew might give her in the future, there would be nothing quite like this again. She would wear his ring and bracelet and nothing could harm her love. Even, now, half-way to Whitefarland, she was t
hinking
of the linked amethysts as an amulet against anything that Caroline might do in the future.

They reached the croft, and it seemed more bare and empty than before.

“I’ll get what I can into the back of the car and the boot,” Hew said. “If I can get it all aboard this time it will save me a second journey. Caroline has bought all the heavier stuff,” he added briefly. “She plans to put in a shepherd.”

That was all. No further explanation, no mention of the sale of the furniture being a personal matter between him and Whitefarland’s new mistress, no hint of any feeling at all. His face looked mask-like as he pushed open the door and went into the house.

“Is there anything I can do?” Elizabeth asked.

She had stood hesitating on the doorstep, not really wanting to go in because that old memory of Caroline, might still be there, haunting the place.

“You could fold up the bedding, if you wouldn’t mind,” he suggested. “That’s all personal stuff. I’ll see what has to go from the kitchen.”

Elizabeth reached the door of the bedroom, wondering if he had forgotten about the photograph of Caroline he had kept there for so long to remind him of the past.

When she looked for it, it had gone.

It was no proof, of course, that Caroline had gone completely out of his life. The portrait might be at Ardlamond now, for all she knew, treasured there as carefully as it had been up here on the face of the hill.

She told herself determinedly that she must not think of that. If I do, she thought, I’m going to spoil everything. It would be like meeting Caroline half-way.

When they went out to the car again, laden with his belongings, a wind had sprung up and it looked darker than usual away to the west. Stars had pricked out immediately overhead, however, and the moon rose suddenly over the rim of the hi
l
ls. It had a veiled look, and Elizabeth saw Hew glancing at it speculatively once or twice as they crammed everything into the boot. As they drove away he said:

“Time to get the sheep off the island. I’ll see to it in the morning, I think. We can’t expect this present weather to continue much after the end of the month. One can take a chance on October, of course, but I like to be on the safe side.”

As soon as they reached Ardlamond he tuned in to the shipping forecast, but it was normal enough for that time of year. Tony, who had followed them in, asked what was amiss.

“Nothing, at the moment,” Hew told him. “But I shall want the sheep off Lingay before the week-end. I thought of doing it tomorrow, but I have a buyer coming for some of the Whitefarland stock.”

“Let me do it,” Tony offered eagerly. He had been deep in thought and almost morose since the day , before, and this seemed a complete reversal of a difficult
mood. “I could do it quite easily, with someone to help me,” he added.

Hew looked undecided, but it was obvious that he thought the island should be evacuated right away. He probably sensed a storm, knowing from bitter experience the havoc which several days of gale-forced winds could do, especially when they were driving
high
tides before them. The ewes on Lingay were valuable and he could not afford to lose them through carelessness, especially at this time.

“Take Duncan,” Hew advised. “He knows about the launch and how to load it safely.”

Elizabeth supposed there would be a certain amount of risk involved if the weather was bad. There was always a danger where the sea was concerned, and where it was the enemy man was a puny adversary.

That night she was listening to the rising wind and the clock striking the hours and the half-hours. It was as if some portent of evil had encircled the house, wrapping it round in a grey gloom. The minutes fled away, taking sleep with them; she could not clear her mind of the thought of disaster.

The dawn came at last, grey and cold, with a peculiar yellow light along the horizon which she had never seen before. The overcast, angry sky seemed to press down against the hill tops, leaden and ominous-looking, waiting for the wind to rise and lash the sea into a fury of snarling waves.

Yet, when she looked out across the stretch of water between Lingay and the mainland, there was little sign of a storm. The sea lay brooding and still, a monster only half awake, the yellow weed that edged the shore rising and falling against the rocks with its heavy breathing.

The fears of the night had been groundless, she told herself, and promptly fell into a restless sleep.

When she woke it was broad daylight. A grey day, with little fretful waves breaking endlessly down on the shore and the suggestion of white horses far out between Lingay and the red bastion cliffs of Mull.

The clock on her bedside table told her that she had been allowed to oversleep. It was after ten.

“Mrs. Malcolm,” she protested when she reached the sitting-room where she generally took her breakfast with Hew’s housekeeper, “you should have called me ages ago!”

“I did look in on you,” Jessie explained, “but you were sleeping like a lamb and it seemed a shame to disturb you. The master was out and away earlier than usual this morning,” she added, “and young Mr. Tony was in a hurry, too.”

Elizabeth glanced out of the window. Her nerves felt on edge, and the sea had a curiously sullen look to her anxious eyes.

“Do you
think
we’re in for a storm?” she asked.

“It looks like it,” Jessie said, slicing bread at the sideboard. “It’s the time of year for them now. We generally get a bad spell round about the end of September. It passes, though, and we can have lovely, fine weather after it. A right Indian summer, in fact.”

“It was today I was thinking about,” Elizabeth confessed. “Do you know if Tony has gone across to the island?”

“I heard him saying something to the master this mor
ning
before he went out. He’ll be worried about the sheep,” Jessie mused, obviously thinking about Hew. “They’re generally taken off before this, but he’s been busy settling up at Whitefarland and one thing and another. The Lingay sheep will mean a lot to him now,” she added. “They’ve got to help to make Ardlamond pay, to put this place on its feet again. I think that means more to the master than anything else,” she concluded.

Elizabeth dragged her eyes away from the sea, trying
n
ot to panic.

“How long will they be—if they’ve gone across to Lingay?” she asked.

“All day. It takes a fair time to round up the ewes,” Jessie explained. “Some of them get into crannies in the rock for shelter and the dogs have to ferret them out.”

Elizabeth had no appetite for her breakfast. She spent what appeared to be an interminable morning filing estate correspondence in the business-room and carrying the purely domestic documents to Hew’s study for his perusal later.

In the afternoon she went slowly down to the shore. The wind was really strong now, blowing the spume high into the air as the big Atlantic breakers came rushing in across the bay to dash themselves to pieces against the rocks. The whole scene had changed in the matter of an hour or so. There was no break anywhere in the leaden sky and distance had dwindled. Mull, that magic island where the sun had lain trapped, was hidden behind a grey pall of mist, sinister in its isolation, and even the nearer isles were invisible. Sound had become limited to the rhythmic beat of waves and the intermittent, lonely cry of a gull.

She could not stay there and believe that anyone could possibly survive in such a sea, but when she returned to the house Jessie said that it was
‘
no’ so bad.”

She had experience of storms, of course, of the cruel ravaging of the sea, and this, Elizabeth was to believe, was no more than a minor trouble.

But for Elizabeth the fact remained that Tony, whom she loved, was out there in a frail boat, battling his dangerous way from Lingay with a few sheep on board. He was out there because Hew had sent him on this errand, thinking more of his stock than he did of her brother’s life.

She knew that the accusation was unjustified even as she made it, but her nerves were frayed by the long waiting and facts could so easily become distorted when they were viewed through a haze of anxiety for someone loved. Tony was very dear to her. In spite of
his
many indiscretions, he was the baby she had nursed, the little boy she had watched grow almost to manhood, the impetuous youth who had no real fault in him except an insatiable desire for living every minute to the full.

Hew had not returned all day, and by four o clock she could not remain closed up in the house for a minute longer.

“I’m going out, Mrs. Malcolm,” she called to Jessie, who was busy in the kitchen. “If—anyone comes in will you say that I’m down on the shore?”

She meant to go in search of Duncan, to see if, by any chance, Tony had returned with the old shepherd to his cottage at the far side of the bay.

W
hen, finally she reached it, the cottage was deserted. There was no sign of life in it at all. Duncan lived by himself, his sole companion the grey-and-white collie who worked with him on the hill. His wife had died five years ago and he “managed” for himself. He was seventy-five, but he could still do all that was needed about the house and on the hill, too.

Elizabeth stood before the closed door, not even attempting to knock because she was quite sure that the old man had not returned.

Hew must have known, she thought. He was bound to know and recognize all the signs of an approaching storm. He had seen the prelude to them so many times. He should never have let Tony go.

Shivering, she began to make her way back along the shore. The cliff path was narrow and dangerous in places, so that the going was necessarily slow, and by the time she reached the other side of the bay she was all but exhausted.

Buffeted by the wind and deafened by the roar of the waves, she could not think of anything but a small boat trapped out there in its hopeless fight to reach the mainland across the inferno of that narrow, boiling strait.

Nothing could survive in that mounting sea, she told herself. All the fury of the roused Atlantic was behind it as it pounded Lingay’s western shore and came rushing through into the narrow neck between the mainland and the island. It was a death-trap even for the experienced seaman, and Duncan was an old man.

Once she paused to wonder if Hew had gone over to Lingay with them and felt immeasurable relief. The three of them may even have decided to stay on the island and would be unable to communicate with Ardlamond. They could be marooned there for days, she supposed.

Hopefully, but still apprehensive, she clambered over the rocks, taking the short cut to the house. She would ask Mrs. Malcolm what she thought about Hew being on Lingay, too.

The wind seemed to have doubled in fury when she reached the headland, but she did not look back. It was
be
ginning
to grow dark—earlier than usual because of the heavy layer of cloud—and a cold, biting rain was
f
alling
.

She climbed the fence between the road and the shore, her heartbeats increasing as she quickened her pace almost to a run. She had forgotten how long that winding road was until now when it seemed that it would never end.

The entrance lodge came in sight, at last, small and crouching beside the heavy stone pillar of the gateways, as if in an attempt to shelter behind it from the bludgeonings of the storm, but she did not linger there. The heavy iron gates lay open and she went straight through, hurrying along the drive, every minute precious to her now.

The wind snatched at the rain, blowing it in heavy gusts against her, making her gasp for breath, but she would not slacken her speed.

When the house was almost in front of her, round the final bend, she heard the sharp barking of a dog. It came from the hill above her and she turned that way, instinctively seeking the reassurance of Hew’s presence.

Yet, if he were here, on the hill somewhere behind Ardlamond, he could not also be on Lingay.

The certainty arrested her where she stood. She could not go on, nor could she go back. She could only wait there, hoping, praying that both Tony and Duncan would come down off the hill with Hew.

When she made out the shadowy figure approaching through the sheet of rain she could neither speak nor move. It was Hew. He was alone, and both dogs were with him.

“Elizabeth—!” He came up to her, peering at her from under the brim of the tweed shooting hat which he wore pulled hard down over his eyes. “What is it? What’s gone wrong?” he demanded.

She stared at him for a moment without answering. He was here—safe—while Duncan and Tony—Duncan and Tony—

Coherent thought eluded her. She could only remember the dark gulf of water surging between Lingay and the mainland and the waves tearing at the rocks and the desolate cry of the gulls high on the cliff face.

“What is it?” Hew repeated, catching her arm. “Why are you out here in weather like this? Answer me, Elizabeth!”

She looked at him, seeing him as if had retreated
to a great distance.

“Because Tony is out.” She did not recognize her own voice. It had all become tangled up with the plaintive,
ago
nizin
g
cry of the gulls. “Because Tony is out on Lingay—because you sent him there.”

His fingers tightened on her arm like a vice and she thought vaguely that he was about to shake her, disbelieving what she had just said.

“This is ridiculous.” His voice was like ice. “He can’t have gone to the island.”

“He went because you sent him!” Her words were an accusation now, tumbling out between her trembling lips, words she had never meant to say. “You wanted the sheep brought over—safely—before the storm broke. That was all you thought about!”

He forced her along the drive ahead of
him
“Go back to the house,” he commanded. “You’ll not do the slightest bit of good standing here.”

She obeyed him automatically. There was nothing else to do. She even thought, vaguely, that he was angry, but it didn’t seem to matter any more. She was too numb and cold to care. Numb all through.

When they reached the house he pushed open the big main door and called for Mrs. Malcolm, saying something to her that Elizabeth did not hear.

There was a log fire burning in the hall and he led her towards it, kneeling down to take off her sodden shoes, but she drew her feet away with a little cry of protest.

“No!” she said. “No, I must go out again.”

He got to his feet without a word.

“Stay where you are just now,” he insisted after he had taken a quick turn to the window and back. “I’m going for Duncan.”

“He isn’t there,” she heard herself saying with dreadful finality. “Duncan isn’t at the cottage. I’ve been there. He’s—over on Lingay, with Tony. They’re both on the island—”

He made no answer to that, turning on his heel to go out again without even changing his coat.

Jessie Malcolm came hurrying through from the kitchen with a tray between her hands.

“It’s not going to do any good to worry,” she advised in her forthright way. “If Mr. Tony is on Lingay he’ll be all right. There’s the wee kirk to shelter in, and a hut at the far side of the island. He won’t come to any harm so long as he has the sense to stay where he is.”

“They could have started to come across—”

That was the fear in Elizabeth’s heart, the desperate, consuming fear, for no small craft could have survived the passage in that murderous sea.

“Duncan wouldn’t attempt the crossing, would he?” she asked, like a child seeking comfort and guidance from someone more experienced than itself.

Jessie hesitated. It was only for a split second and it was several hours before Elizabeth recognized the significance of that infinitesimal pause before the housekeeper said:

“No, Duncan wouldn’t attempt it in weather like this.”

After that they could do very little but wait with whatever patience they could muster.

Pacing backwards and forwards in the far-too-quiet room, Elizabeth watched the light fade out of the sky, grey deepening to black, with no outline of cliff or hill to be seen and only the sound of the wind and the rain
filling
up the vastness beyond the streaming window panes.

Heavy gusts came in, flinging spear-like shafts of
r
ain
against the ancient bastion of Ardlamond’s thick wall and, defeated, returned anew to the onslaught, but she did not fear for Ardlamond. It had survived gale and storm and siege down through the centuries. It would survive this night, too.

But what of Duncan, that old, hardy shepherd, and Tony, and Hew, and herself? Would they survive?

A terrible sense of inevitable defeat caught her by the throat. Hew had not spoken one word of comfort to her, not given her any hope.

The hours passed, crawling on leaden feet, and when the telephone rang she could not answer it at once. For a split second she remained where she was, like someone who had been turned to s
to
ne, and Jessie passed her and got there first.

The ago
nizing
wait as she stood listening to one side of the conversation was almost more than Elizabeth could bear, and she watched the changing expressions on Jessie’s face with a thumping heart.

“Yes, yes, we’ll do that, Mr. Monro,” Jessie was saying. “How long have they been out searching?” She paused, listening to the person at the far end of the line. “I’ll see to that. Do you think—”

Do you
think
there’s any hope? Jessie may as well have uttered the words, Elizabeth thought numbly, staring at Hew’s housekeeper as she hung up the receiver and came from the alcove. They looked at each other for a full
minu
te
before either of them spoke.

“They’ve called out the lifeboat,” Jessie Malcolm said, at last, no longer attempting to minimize the gravity of the situation. “The master has gone out with it,” she added.

After that Elizabeth could not remain , in the house. Jessie did not try to stop her, knowing that it would be of little use, but she made her put on a yellow oilskin coat and a sou’wester before she went out again into the rain.

Elizabeth cared nothing for the fact that her shoes squelched wetly along a drive that was now little more than a rushing torrent. She had no very definite idea where she was going, and she knew that she could do nothing to help. This was a man’s job, but she could not stay in the house.

Fear mounted, shaking her as the wind shook the crouching thorns that bent before it along the edge of the cliff, fear because she could see no
thing
and hear nothing but the fury of the storm.

She thought of the lifeboat out there, searching, searching, buffeted by that cruel sea because a small boat had left for the island and not come back. Had they landed on Lingay and found it deserted?

It was ten o’clock before she returned to Ardlamond. She could not have said where she had been. She had probably walked for miles, struggling against the wind, searching too.

The rain had stopped, that fierce lashing rain which had driven her back so many times, but she hardly seemed aware of the fact. All she knew was that the greyness had lifted a little, letting her see the house.

There were lights in all the downstairs rooms and a car and a little knot of people standing before the open door. Some of the people—three men—got into the car as she came slowly forward, and it drove away, passing her on the rain-wet drive.

A shaft of light cut the night in two, streaming out from the doorway, and she saw two figures silhouetted against it. One of them was Duncan. The other was Hew.

She ran then, blindly, covering the remainder of the distance somehow, her limbs trembling, her throat so parched that she could scarcely utter the one word that was hammering against her heart.

“Tony—?”

Hew strode towards her, catching her before she reached the door, holding her icy hands firmly in his.

“Have you found him?” she begged in a low, hoarse whisper.

“Not yet.”

The deliberate words struck her with the force of a physical blow.

“But—Duncan?” she protested, looking beyond
him
to where the old shepherd stood, cap in hand, on the broad step.

“Duncan wasn’t with Tony.” Hew’s voice was low and controlled. “He went out in the launch by
hims
elf.”

Elizabeth watched Duncan move away in a silence which seemed to stretch out and touch the edge of the world.

“Because you sent him,” she heard herself saying, at last, in a calm, dead voice.
“
Because you sent him.
Because you valued a few sheep more than my brother’s life—”

Hew’s fingers tightened on her arm, but she scarcely felt their pressure. He had killed him as surely as if he had drowned him with his own two hands!

“Don’t say any more,” he advised her. “Not just now. Go in.” He led her towards the door. “Go in to Mrs. Malcolm and let her take care of you, Elizabeth.”