Читать книгу The Gowk Storm - Nancy Brysson Morrison - Страница 11

BOOK ONE. CHAPTER FOUR

Visitors who came to the manse were discussed later in detail by the three of us as we sat round the fire in the evening. We saw so few people that we were inclined to magnify the faults or virtues of those who did come, either enjoying their company out of all proportion or exaggerating their foibles. There was little that evaded Emily’s astute analysis or escaped Julia’s glance, while I listened to the ecclesiastical views of Mr Urquhart, papa’s clerical friend, with an absorption I now realise was quite unwarranted.

One afternoon, some weeks after the ball, two visitors, neither of whom I had seen before, paid us a surprise call. They were Christine Strathern and her father who had come to ask my sisters to drink tea with them that afternoon. Mamma was in bed with a bad chill and papa was officiating at a funeral, so while Julia and Emmy put on their outdoor clothes, I sat alone with our guests in the parlour. I could find nothing to say to them but, while the clock’s ticking claimed the silence, I saw everything there was to note about the father and daughter.

Most kind he looked with a benignant brow. I knew his thoughts were elsewhere for he did not seem to know that I sat there, but sometimes frowned and looked about him and at others seemed to listen. She was little and fair, her small face poking forward under her bonnet. Her features were so indeterminate they made no impression upon me; they were like a wax-doll’s which have melted ever so slightly at the fire. Yet she made a charming enough picture in her brown coat with its little capes edged with fur. For the first time I was conscious that Julia’s dress was too big for me and my shoe buttons did not match. I felt myself, for some unaccountable reason, begin to blush.

He suddenly sat back in his chair until it creaked and smiled as though seeing me for the first time. Then he rose and stood looking out of the window.

‘You must be very near the loch,’ he remarked. ‘It never floods your garden, does it?’

I stood beside him in my eagerness to answer.

‘Once it did,’ I said, ‘when I was very small—a long, long time ago.’

I saw him smile, I knew not why.

‘And you,’ he asked, as though struck by some unspoken thought, ‘have you been away to school or have you always lived here?’

‘Papa taught Julia,’ I replied, ‘and Julia taught Emmy and me.’

‘You are very like—Julia,’ he said, looking down at me closely.

‘Julia and I are supposed to be like papa,’ I informed him, ‘and Emmy like what mamma used to be.’

He bowed in acquiescence. At that moment Julia entered and all was ease again. Christine rose and fluttered to her like a little chaffinch.

‘How hidden you are down here, Juley—we all but missed the gate.’

‘We had to come through the wood to find you, Miss Julia,’ he said, and the look he bent on her made my heart leap.

When Emily came down the stairs, they prepared to depart. I was harassed, not knowing whether I should shake hands with Christine or her father first; then, because I liked him so much the better, I advanced towards him.

‘But what is this?’ he asked. ‘You are surely coming with us, certainly you are. You know, I never knew until this afternoon there was another sister. There are no more of you hiding away, are there? And if they ever leave you at home again, I’ll come to fetch you myself.’

We all walked up the path together through the wood to the gate where the grasses that grew at the foot of the dyke and the mosses that clung to its rough stones were the vivid, intense green of things that grow in shaded places. The manse bum, deep as a river, fell far below in its gorge bed with a sound like eternal thunder. The sun struck wildly between the trees, and the shadows of their boles striped the ground.

It was a pleasurable sensation to sit in the carriage and pass all the places which we passed in our everyday walks and which now seemed so unfamiliar. Well-known landmarks looked inconspicuous and we came upon them so swiftly that I felt the road that afternoon was like a shrunken measuring-tape.

The kindly sun glanced on the sullen hill-tops and lit up every blade of grass growing from the tussocky dykes. In its light a sprouting ash looked unearthly beside a ploughed field and the silver birches, with their leafless fronds, were like petrified falling rain. At the sound of the wheels the bleating lambs ran unsteadily to their mothers. Emmy and I always thought lambs had such wise little faces to grow into silly sheep.

It was a drive of some eight miles to the Stratherns’ house, which stood on a hill overlooking the valley of the Dorm. The river, blue as the cold spring sky above, wound through the desolate glen between low red banks, which made me picture Jeremiah digging up his girdle on the shore of the Euphrates, of the kings who came to war against Joshua pitching by the waters of Merom, and of god-lit Elijah standing by Jordan.

The gates were open and the carriage passed slowly between two green-stained pillars each of which was topped by a round stone marked to represent a crude face, two circles doing duty for eyes and a curved stroke forming the mouth. The avenue approached the dwelling from the side so that much of the house’s effect was lost. It is a curious thing that, although in the days to come I often visited and even lived there for some weeks, I have no picture in my mind of the house as a whole. I can remember parts of it as vividly as though I had seen it only yesterday, yet I have no recollection whatsoever of its outline.

It had been built less than a century ago. Mr Strathern was the heir of a long line of merchants who had imported tobacco from America, the trade that made Glasgow. He often wearied of his home in Virginia Place and so some years ago had bought Gel Lodge where he and his family could spend their long and frequent holidays.

If I had no impression of the house from without, I, who was easily awed, had a distinct impression of richness and grandeur whenever I entered. We were taken into the drawing-room where the view was hidden from us by heavy curtains. Mr Strathern was a widower and I was introduced to his sister who had looked after his household since his wife’s death many years ago. Two other people stood there: Nicholas, the elder son, a handsome, angry-looking man with slightly distended nostrils like those of a rocking- horse, and Martin, who was too stout for his twenty-three years and who looked as though, in convivial company, he might become ribald.

Tea was brought in and Aunt Bertha, who was clad in what Julia called ‘Biblical Purple,’ presided with the pompousness of one performing familiar rites. I felt she was hostile to us all although, to do her justice, she tried valiantly to make herself agreeable. I knew Emmy, who sat beside her, was disliking her intensely and she in her turn was not drawn to this aloof girl whom she longed to patronise but could not. I could tell, however, from the manner in which her attention constantly strayed to where Julia sat, that it was with my elder sister she was chiefly concerned. Julia had been papa’s most constant companion and ever since she had been small he had been accustomed to treat her as though she were his contemporary. At home we all took her power of conversation for granted, but that afternoon I saw Christine’s two brothers looked admiring yet askance as she sat disputing most charmingly with their father. As for Aunt Bertha, she was suspicious, on principle, of Julia’s charm, for she belonged to that school which considered only the disagreeable could be sincere.

After tea we went outside and saw enough of the gardens, sloping to the south within high walls, to visualise how beautiful they would be in mid-summer. The gardens and well-kept lawns clustered round the house. Beyond them the ground was uncultivated, as though the gardeners had grown discouraged and been content to plant rhododendron bushes on either side of the avenue to screen from view the barren land which gave the place an uninhabited appearance.

They asked us if we would care to play a game of croquet; this would be the first time they had played this year, they told us. Edwin Strathern partnered Julia and I was coupled with Nicholas. He was rather quelling to look at and I expected him to be impatient or angry if I played a poor shot and felt inordinately grateful when I found he was neither. Emmy played with Martin, whose eye glittered when it fell on her, as it always did when it rested on any pretty thing.

We were all laughing and Emmy was clapping her hands when I noticed, striding towards us, a tall young man, his fair hair shining yellow in the sun. Christine dropped her mallet when she saw him and ran over the lawn.

‘Why, Stephen,’ she said reproachfully, ‘you never told me you were coming to-day. The Misses Lockhart met you at my ball, didn’t they? This is their youngest sister, Miss Lisbet. And now you must come and partner me, for I am being disgracefully beaten.’

He joined in the game and play grew most exciting. Julia was very poor at it and a serious handicap to Mr Strathern, but Emmy was winning until Stephen Wingate suddenly knocked her ball out of bounds.