Читать книгу Flemington And Tales From Angus - Violet Jacob - Страница 9

AUNTIE THOMPSON came round the corner of her whitewashed cottage with a heavy zinc pail in either hand. The sun beat hot upon her back and intensified the piercing scarlet and yellow of the climbing nasturtiums which swarmed up the window-sills and seemed likely to engulf the windows of her dwelling. The whole made a strident little picture in the violence of its white and scarlet and in the aggressive industry of its principal figure; and the squeaking of one of the pails, the handle of which fitted too tightly in its socket, seemed to be calling attention to Auntie Thompson all down the road. There lacked but one further touch to the loud homeliness of the scene, and that was added as the two immense pigs in the black-boarded sty for which Auntie Thompson was bound raised their voices to welcome their meal. There is no sound so unrelievedly low as the gross and ignoble outcry by which a pig marks his interest in the events which concern him.

Perhaps there was something appropriate about the unseemly noise with which Auntie Thompson was hailed, for in this quiet neighbourhood she was not far from being a public scandal. Her appearance, which was intensely plebeian; her tongue, which was very outspoken; and her circumstances, which were a deal better than her habits warranted – all these disagreed in some undefined way with the ideas of her small world. A woman who had laid by as much as she was reported to own had no business to keep no servant and to speak her mind on all subjects to those who did, as if she were on the same social level as themselves. She was unabashed and disgraceful; she did not deride convention, because she seemed to be unaware that it existed. She kept her fingers out of everyone else’s affairs, and though she expected other people to take the same line, she met their interference without malice, for she was perfectly good-tempered. But her disregard of them being instinctive and complete, it was more effective than mountains of insult. At this moment the censuring eyes of several of the dwellers down the road were upon her as she heaved the pails on to the top of the pigsty fence with her strong red arms and tipped their gushing contents into the troughs.

Auntie Thompson was no beauty. She had a large, determined pink face and her tiny eyes looked out under fierce, sandy eyebrows set close on either side of her rather solemn-looking nose. Her hair was sandy too, and was brushed tidily from her parting and given a twist just over her ears before it was gathered into an old-fashioned, black chenille net at the back of her head. She was of moderate height and solid, with the bursting solidity of a pincushion. On every conceivable occasion she wore a grey wincey dress short enough to reveal her stout ankles. Her hair was beginning to grizzle, and now, as the sun struck on it, bits of it shone like spots of mica on a hillside. She had only two feminine weaknesses; one was a tender heart and the other was a consuming horror of bats.

Whilst she stood watching her pigs, a neighbour passed up the road and sent a cold glance in at her over the low wall, patched with stonecrop, which enclosed the garden. Auntie Thompson turned her head and nodded with an impersonal smile, as though in answer to a greeting; she did not notice that there was none to answer. Had she lived on a desert island, she might not have observed that there was no one else present.

Only one being stood out against the background of thrift, pigs, healthy work and placidity in which she revelled, and that was her nephew, Alec, whom she had brought up since his sixth year. Twenty years ago he had come to her as an orphan and he was with her still. The pair lived together in great peace by the roadside.

‘The Muir Road,’ as it was called, connected two important highways and ran across the piece of heathy land which had once been the muir of Pitairdrie, but which was now enclosed and cultivated and cribbed in between fences and dykes. It had not lost all its attractions, for stretches of fir-wood broke its levels; and, as it stood high, with the distant Grampians on its northern side, the back of Auntie Thompson’s cottage looked over a sloping piece of country across which the cloud-shadows sailed and flitted towards the purple of the hills.

Auntie Thompson turned from her swine and re-entered her house without looking up the road, or she would have seen Alec Soutar, who was stepping homeward with an expression of deep content on his face. No wonder he was contented; for on this Saturday afternoon he had seen the end of his long courting and was coming home with Isa’s consent fresh in his mind.

It had been uphill work. Isa was the only daughter of William MacAndrew, and as everybody was well aware, MacAndrew, who had, by reason of a timely legacy, transformed himself from a cottager into a small farmer, was a man full of vainglory and the husband of a wife who matched himself. They were not a popular pair; and though they lived far enough from Auntie Thompson to be surrounded by a different community, their fame had spread to the cottage. It was rumoured that they drove their four miles to Pitairdrie kirk every Sunday so that the world might see that they could afford to arrive there on wheels. There was a church so near MacAndrew’s farm that, when its door was open, a man could follow the sermon from the stackyard; but only chronic invalidism, or the fact of being overturned, can make it possible to ascend and descend from a vehicle within the same fifty yards. Isa had been to a boarding school in Aberdeen, and her dress and manners were the envy of every young lass who beheld her as she sat in her father’s high-backed pew with her silk parasol beside her. It had taken Alec Soutar a long time to make himself acceptable to her and a longer one to get her parents to give the reluctant consent that he was carrying home.

‘Pridefu’ folk,’ Auntie Thompson had said.

Alec, who worked on a farm half-way between his own home and that of his love, was very honest, rather stupid, and extremely good looking. He had Auntie Thompson’s sandy hair, but his head was set finely on his broad shoulders, and the outline of his bony face had some suggestion of power that made observant people look at him with interest as he stood on the half-made stack against the sky or sat on the dashboard of a cart behind the gigantic farm-horses. He loved his aunt sincerely and without the slightest suspicion of the real originality of her character, for he had no eye for her quaintnesses and would have been immensely surprised had he been told that he lived with a really remarkable person. But he needed no one to tell him of the gratitude he owed her; and mere gratitude will carry some people a long way.

He was too happy even to whistle as he swung along the road, for he grudged anything that might take his thoughts from Isa. She had walked along the field with him as far as the road and had only turned back there because she said that she could not risk being seen by strangers in her working-clothes. Alec did not quite understand her reasons, but he had a vague feeling that they must be right, though they were of so little profit to himself. Her ‘working-clothes’ struck him as being very different from those of Auntie Thompson – as indeed they were – but then Isa’s and Auntie Thompson’s definitions of work were hardly identical. He thought she looked beautiful in them and he told her so.

‘Mrs. Thompson is very thrifty,’ she had observed, disengaging herself from his arms. (They were still in the field.)

‘Aye, is she,’ he replied heartily. ‘There’s no very mony like her.’

‘No, indeed,’ simpered Isa, with a sidelong look that he did not see; ‘but, Alec, we’ll no need to be a burden to her. I was thinking it would be better if we could go nearer to Aberdeen. There’s plenty of work to be got thereabout. And it’s no so far off but I could go back and see mama when I like,’ she added, in the genteel accent she had cultivated so carefully.

She pronounced ‘mama’ as though it rhymed with ‘awe.’

‘Oh, we’ll dae weel eneuch here,’ said he. ‘Ye’ll niver need tae gang far frae yer mither, ye see, Isa.’

‘No,’ said Isa faintly.

It was her future distance from Auntie Thompson that she was considering.

But Alec did not suspect that, any more than he suspected that this aunt supplied the reasons both for and against his marriage. The MacAndrew family were fully alive to the disgracefulness of Auntie Thompson, but they did not forget that she had solid savings and that Alec was her adopted son.

When he turned into the cottage garden his aunt had gone out again and was wheeling a heavy barrow of manure from the pigsty to the midden at the back of the house. It was Saturday, and she liked to have everything clean for the morrow. Alec followed her retreating figure.

‘Weel,’ he said plainly, ‘a’m tae get her.’

She sat down on a shaft of the empty barrow.

‘Ye’ll be fine an’ pleased,’ she said, looking up at him.

His own good fortune obliterated everything else from his mind. He did not ask what she thought about it and she gave no opinion. She looked neither glad nor sorry. At last she rose.

‘A dinna think vera muckle o’ MacAndrew,’ she observed as she took up the shafts of the barrow again.

They sat very silent over their supper that evening. Experience had made the young man so well aware of her support on every occasion that he needed no outward sign of it. He, himself, was not given to talking.

Next morning he awoke to the prospect of a day of happiness, and everything he saw seemed to reflect his own spirit as he went out bare-headed to contemplate the world in the light of his good fortune. The warm mist of the morning lay like a veil of faint lilac colour in shady places and the sun sent its shafts slanting across the wide fields that dipped and rose again in their long slope to the hills; the fir-woods stood as though painted on the atmosphere in blurs of smoky green with patches of copper-red gleaming through where the light caught their stems; the dew that had fallen on the sprawling nasturtiums rolled in beads on their leaves. Through the open door of the cottage the sound of Auntie Thompson’s preparations for breakfast made a cheerful clinking stir of cups and homeliness. Sunday, that day on which Isa revealed herself to an admiring world, was always the main point of Alec’s week, yet it was not often that he looked forward to the church hour with the excitement that he felt to-day. He glanced continually at the ‘wag-at-the-wa’ ’whose sober pendulum swung to and fro, scanning its matter of fact dial and thinking that its hands had never moved so slowly. For the whole length of the service he would be able to gaze upon Isa, as she sat, like a beautiful flower among vegetables, between her father and mother.

Pitairdrie kirk was a small, box-like building squatting at the roadside a mile and a half away, with its back to the line of the fir-woods and its iron gate set in a privet hedge. The latter gave access to a decent little gravel sweep on which the congregation would stand talking until the minister was reported to be in the vestry and the elders entered to take their places. Inside, the church had no great pretensions to beauty, and even the gallery which ran round three sides of it was innocent of the least grandeur; for the laird, who was the chief heritor, being an Episcopalian, his family did not ornament it by their presence; and the ‘breist o’ the laft,’ as the front gallery pew was called, was occupied by that portion of his tenants which dwelt on the Muir Road. In the very middle of it was the place sacred to Auntie Thompson and Alec sat at her right hand. It was a splendid point of vantage for the young man, who could look down and have an uninterrupted view of the MacAndrew family.

As time went on, Alec grew more restless. Never had he known his aunt so slow in her preparations; never had there seemed so many small jobs to be done before she was ready to lock up the hen-house and proceed to her toilette. There were not many concessions that she was prepared to make to Sunday, but at last she disappeared into her little room to make them. She divested herself of her apron and took from her box the Sunday bonnet that had served her faithfully for the last ten years. It had a high crown of rusty black net, and its trimmings, which consisted of a black feather, a band of jet and a purple rose, added to the height at which it towered over her shining face. Above the short wincey dress it looked amazing.

She had taken her corpulent umbrella from behind the door and was tying her bonnet-strings in a long-ended bow under her chin, when Alec, standing in the garden and cursing fate, saw a sight that made his blood run cold.

The pigsty door stood open and the two pigs, which had pushed through a hole in the hedge, were escaping at a surging canter into the field behind the cottage. In another moment Auntie Thompson would come out and summon her nephew to help in the chase. Alec knew pigs intimately and he foresaw that their capture might be a matter of half an hour. He stole one wary glance at the house, set his hand upon the low garden wall, and vaulting into the road, ran for quite a hundred yards before he fell into a brisk walk; for he dreaded to hear some sound of the chase borne on the warm breeze that followed him.

He had stepped guiltily along for a few minutes when he heard the sound of trotting hoofs behind him and turned to look back. His heart gave a bound when he realised that the MacAndrew family had reached the last stage of their four-mile drive and were overtaking him at the steady jog of the hairy farm pony whose duties extended over the Sabbath day.

He redoubled his pace, for he did not want to lose one fragment of Isa’s company. Pitairdrie kirk was not three-quarters of a mile ahead.

As the MacAndrew conveyance passed him his eyes met those of his promised bride and she smiled at him with a kind of reserved approval. The tiny seat on which she sat with her back to the pony was hidden by the frothy flounces of her blue Sunday gown, and the feather in her Leghorn hat curled downwards towards her shoulder. She managed to look graceful even in her cramped position. Opposite to their daughter, Mr. and Mrs. MacAndrew sat stiff and large; they could not enjoy very great ease of body because the ancient basket carriage was extremely low at the back and hung so near the ground that the boots of its occupants were a bare half foot from the ground. MacAndrew and Mrs. MacAndrew knew in their hearts how much discomfort they would be spared if they were but stepping the road like other people, but they would have perished where they sat sooner than admit it to each other. The reins in MacAndrew’s hands went up in a steep incline to the fork-like contrivance above Isa’s head before beginning their even steeper descent to the pony’s mouth on the other side of it. Neither husband nor wife had any idea of the oddity of their appearance. They were ‘carriage people,’ and that was enough. Their response to Alec’s greeting was tempered by the view they had just had of Auntie Thompson in her grey wincey and towering bonnet in full cry after the pigs.

The bell had not yet begun to ring when Alec entered the kirk gate and saw Isa standing a little apart by her mother upon the gravel; MacAndrew was in conversation with a knot of acquaintances by the vestry door. Quite by himself was a pale young man in a black coat, who looked rather out of place among the strictly countrified men of the congregation; he had a gold watchchain and he wore gloves. He was good-looking in a townish way and he seemed to be scanning his surroundings with some interest. It was evident that Isa’s curiosity was aroused by him.

‘I don’t know who that gentleman can be,’ she said to her lover, almost in the same breath in which she greeted him.

As she spoke she adjusted a ribbon she wore at her throat.

‘A’m no carin’ vera muckle wha he is,’ replied he. ‘It’s yersel’ a’m thinkin’ about, Isa.’

‘Everybody will hear you if you speak so loud.’

‘And what for no? A’m fine an’ pleased they should ken. Isa, will ye no walk back wi’ me aifter the kirk’s skailed?’

‘Maybe,’ said the girl.

‘Isa’ll be tae drive i’ the carriage,’ broke in Mrs. MacAndrew, who stood by watching her daughter like an overfed Providence.

Alec looked at her with a sudden misgiving. He had never thought much about a mother-in-law. His experience of elderly women began and ended with Auntie Thompson, whom he had so shamefully deserted in her need this morning.

The bell began to ring over their heads, and MacAndrew left his friends and joined his belongings.

‘D’ye see yon lad yonder?’ said he, nodding his head backwards over his shoulder towards the stranger.

Both his wife and his daughter closed in on him eagerly.

‘He’s just newly back frae Ameriky wi’ a braw bittie money; he’s no been hame since he was a bairn an’ syne he’s come back tae buy a fairm. He’s got fowk he’s seekin’ hereaboot, they tell me, but a dinna ken wha they’ll be. James Petrie couldna tell me, nor ony ither body.’

Mrs. MacAndrew’s eyes were running over the strange young man as though she were pricing every garment he wore.

‘Aye, aye,’ she murmured, twisting her mouth appreciatively, ‘a’ll no say but he looks weel aff.’

There was a general move into the kirk, and Mrs. MacAndrew pushed in and squeezed into her seat, which was on the ground floor at right angles to the pulpit. It gave a good view of ‘the breist o’ the laft,’ from end to end. Isa was swept from her lover, who made his way up to his own place. The strange young man went in after everybody else and stood looking round to see where he should go. A genial-looking old labourer beckoned him to a place at his side.

The minister was ushered up the pulpit steps by the beadle, and the ensuing psalm brought the minds of the congregation together. The stranger shared a book with his companion and contributed to the singing in a correct tenor which drew general attention to him once more. Isa observed him from under the brim of her Leghorn hat, noticing his trim hair and the gold tie-pin which made a bright spot in the sunshine that streamed from a window near him. She did not once look up at Alec, who sat in the gallery with his eyes riveted on her. Mrs. MacAndrew’s thoughts were flowing in the same direction as those of her daughter. She was wondering what farm the stranger might have in his mind; there was one to be sold shortly, not a mile from her own roof. If only he had returned a Sunday earlier! Still …

She lost herself in speculations during the prayer that followed, and was only roused from them by the opening of the kirk door and the tramp of heavy boots climbing the gallery stairs. Up they came, and step by step the head of Auntie Thompson rose in a succession of jerks and was revealed to the worshippers below. Her glistening face was scarlet, for she had been engaged in a grim chase before starting on her walk and the steep stairs were the culmination of the whole. She stood still, panting audibly, while Alec held open the door of their pew, her grey wincey shoulders heaving and the monstrous erection, with its nodding feather and purple rose, pushed to one side. Most of those who looked up and saw her grinned. Mrs. MacAndrew turned her head away.

When the temporary distraction was over, quiet fell on the kirk again and the service went on decorously. The sun shifted from the window near the stranger and the gleam of his tie-pin transferred itself to the spectacles that lay beside his neighbour; the sermon began and one or two settled themselves for covert sleep. The rustling of the Bible leaves which followed the giving out of the text was over when a tiny black shadow darted across the ceiling of the kirk and dived with incredible swiftness down to the floor, across to a corner below the gallery, out and up again, whisking past the sounding-board of the pulpit. Finally it flew up and disappeared into one of the gaping ventilators overhead. Only Alec and a few occupants of the side galleries noticed the awful change that had come over Auntie Thompson’s countenance.

She was looking at the ventilator that had swallowed the bat with an expression of concentrated dismay. Her red face had lost its colour and her eyes stared. Her breath came in gasps. Alec, who knew her weakness, stared at the ventilator too, for he did not know what might happen if the creature should come out. For one moment she seemed petrified, and he was too slow at grasping an emergency to whisper to her the suggestion that she should leave the kirk. Some girls in the gallery who were watching the situation stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths as they looked at Auntie Thompson. The minister, who, though exactly opposite and on the gallery level, was short-sighted, preached on undisturbed.

The bat shot out of the ventilator again like a flash of black lightning, and this time circled round the upper part of the building. Sometimes its circles were narrow and sometimes wide; once the angular wings almost brushed Alec’s face; the wind of them lifted a stray lock of his hair, and Auntie Thompson leaned back with a convulsive noise, like a sob, in her throat. It was loud enough to attract the people below and many looked round. MacAndrew, who was asleep, awoke. His wife and Isa were looking up at Auntie Thompson like a couple of cats watching a nest of young birds.

The bat gave one of those faint, fretful chirrups peculiar to its kind and shot straight at the spot where the purple rose bloomed over Auntie Thompson’s agonised face. As an armed man draws his revolver in defence of his life, she snatched her umbrella and put it up.

A smothered giggle burst from the gallery. Downstairs, the congregation, with a few exceptions, gazed up in horrified surprise; but the young stranger’s friendly neighbour, having put on his spectacles, sat wearing a delighted grin that displayed his one remaining front tooth. The minister paused in his sermon; he did not know what had happened, but he could see clearly enough that the rigid image in the middle of the gallery which weekly experience told him was Auntie Thompson had changed its shape, and that a dark blur enveloped the spot where a face had been. He went on manfully, raising his voice.

Then the bat, in one of its wide sweeps, struck against the open umbrella. Auntie Thompson sprang up, and holding it slanting before her face, made stiffly, blindly, for the door. Her nephew opened it, and she passed out and disappeared from the public eye. Her heavy tread descended the stairs, and the tension which bound the assembly, as the plod of her boots marked each step of her descent, was only broken by the slam of the kirk door as she drew it to behind her. The sweat broke out on Alec’s forehead.

At last the congregation got back its composure. The old man shut his mouth and the young suppressed their mirth. The faces of the MacAndrew family were set like stone; their sense of the outrage committed radiated from every feature and laid its chilly shadow on poor Alec across the whole space of the kirk.

When the last paraphrase was sung he hurried downstairs. Not a look had Isa given him. She hurried out with her father and mother, and by the time the young man had reached the gate MacAndrew had grasped the reins from the boy in charge of the pony and the carriage with its load was starting homewards. The girl turned away her head, so that he saw nothing but the outline of her cheek and the drooping feather as they drove away. Mr. and Mrs. MacAndrew looked steadily at the horizon in front of them. Alec’s heart was hot with grief and wrath as he watched the absurd conveyance grow smaller and smaller in the distance.

He did not wait to speak to anyone. His pride was bitterly hurt and his sense of injury was forcing him to action of some kind; he was not clever, but his instinct told him that matters could not stay as they were. They must either go forward or back. It was lucky for him that the insolence of his future family-in-law was so marked that it helped him to act and to forget the ache in his heart in healthy anger. A mean-minded man might have blamed Auntie Thompson for her innocent share in the catastrophe, but Alec had no meanness in him.

He went past his own door without turning in, and on, up the Muir Road, until at the end of the four miles MacAndrew’s little farm, with its varnished gate and perky laurel bushes, came into sight. The house was like a child’s drawing in a copy-book; it had one window on either side of the door and three above. He approached boldly and knocked with his fist instead of pulling out the brass handle. He was not accustomed to bell-handles. Isa and Mrs. MacAndrew were watching him from behind a blind.

‘The impidence o’ him!’ exclaimed the latter, ‘aifter this mornin’—!’

‘If it was not for Mrs. Thompson, I’d like him well enough,’ sighed Isa, whose resolution was beginning to be a little affected by the sight of her lover.

‘He’ll need tae be done wi’ yon auld limmer afore he can hae vera muckle tae say tae us,’ rejoined her mother. ‘Isa, ye’ll no—’

But she was cut short by the servant, who opened the door and thrust Alec forward.

‘Robina-Ann, a seat for Mr. Soutar,’ said Mrs. MacAndrew, determined to put all possible distance between herself and the visitor by her knowledge of worldly customs.

The maid was bewildered. The room was full of chairs. There was a whole ‘suite’ of them in walnut.

‘Wull a be tae hurl yer ain chair in-by frae the kitchen?’ she inquired loudly.

Confusion smote the party, only missing Alec, who took no notice of any chair, but stood in the middle of the room.

Robina-Ann retreated before the eye of her mistress. The latter turned upon the young man. She meant to avenge the discomfiture dealt her by her servant on somebody.

But he forestalled her.

‘Isa, what way would ye no speak tae me at the kirk? What ails ye at me?’

‘A’ll tell ye just now!’ exclaimed Mrs. MacAndrew, her gentility forsaking her. ‘A’ll warrant ye it’ll no tak’ me lang! A’m seekin’ tae ken what-like impidence brings ye here aifter the affront that Mrs. Thompson put upon the hale congregation!’

‘A’ve come tae see Isa,’ said Alec, the angry blood rising to his face.

‘Weel, yonder’s Isa!’ cried Mrs. MacAndrew, pointing a finger that shook with rage, ‘but ye’ll no get vera muckle guid o’ Isa! A’m no tae let a lassie o’mine waste hersel’ on a plough-laddie – a fushionless loon that maybe hasna twa coats till his back – a lad a’d be fair ashamed o’—’

‘O mamawe—!’ began Isa.

‘I’ll mamawe ye!’ shouted Mrs. MacAndrew, gathering rage from the sound of her own voice, ‘hey! gang awa’ oot o’ this, you that’s got nae richt tae speak till a lassie like mine! Gang awa’ back tae yer auld besom ο’ an aunt that’s nae mair nor a disgrace tae the parish!’

He stood looking at the coarse-grained, furious creature, astonished. Then he turned to Isa, prim and aloof, in her flounces.

‘Isa—’

Mrs. MacAndrew opened her mouth again, but Alec stepped towards her. His eyes were so fierce that she drew back.

‘Haud yer whisht, woman,’ he said hoarsely, ‘dinna get in my road. Isa, what are ye tae say? Ye wasna this way, yesterday.’

The girl looked rather frightened, and the corners of her small mouth drooped. She liked Alec, but she liked other things better. She was weak, but she was obstinate, and she had never overcome the feeling that she was throwing herself away. Before her mind’s eye rose the vision of the stranger in church.

‘What’s wrang wi’ me that wasna wrang yesterday?’ he demanded.

Isa’s vision, the vision with the trim hair, a gold tie-pin and a prospective farm, was making her feel rather guilty. It was so real to her that she felt she must hide it.

‘It’s – it’s Mrs. Thompson,’ faltered she.

‘What?’

‘Ye’ll need to have no more to do with Mrs. Thompson if you’re to marry me,’ said she, plucking up courage.

An angry exclamation broke from him.

‘Awa’ ye gang!’ cried Mrs. MacAndrew.

‘Isa,’ said Alec, ‘d’ye mean that ye’re seeking tae gar me turn ma back on m’ Auntie Thompson?’

‘Aye,’ said the girl, nodding stubbornly.

He turned and went. On the threshold he looked back.

‘Ye can bide whaur ye are,’ said he. ‘A’m no wantin’ ye.’

NOT MANY DAYS afterwards Isa walked down the Muir Road with a little packet in her hand. The hairy pony was at work on the farm, or she would have had herself driven in the basket carriage. But although she was on foot, she wore her best hat with the drooping feather and her blue flounced dress.

She had two excellent reasons for this extravagance. She was going to the very door of the white cottage, and she was anxious that Auntie Thompson’s neighbours should have a good chance of observing how superior she was to Alec; also, she hoped that some happy stroke of fortune might throw her against the interesting stranger. She had heard nothing about him since the last eventful Sunday, when he and Auntie Thompson respectively had produced so much effect. Though she and her mother would have maintained with their last breaths that it was the woman who had brought about the change in Isa’s situation, each knew in her secret heart that it was the man. As she stepped along the girl told herself that he must surely be somewhere in the neighbourhood. Why had he come to Pitairdrie kirk if he had no connection with Pitairdrie parish?

The parcel she carried contained some little presents her lover had given her – a silk handkerchief, some strings of beads, a pair of earrings.

She could not forgive him for his last words to her; her vanity smarted and she longed to repay him for them. There was something of her mother in her, for all her elegant looks and refined aspirations. The pair had agreed that the returning of the gifts by her own hand would be an effective means of showing how little the parting from Alec troubled her. If he should come to the door she would hand him the packet with a few scornful words, and if Auntie Thompson came, she would know how to crush her by her manners and appearance. She had never spoken to Auntie Thompson.

She turned into the little garden path. The tangle of nasturtiums by the kitchen window prevented her from seeing the two people who were observing her approach from the hearth at which they sat. She knocked at the door.

Words almost forsook her a moment later when it was opened by the stranger, the object of all her day-dreams and speculations. This time he was not dressed for Sunday. But he had lost little by the change.

She was absolutely bewildered. He made no offer to admit her; he did not even ask her business. She gathered her wits as quickly as she could and addressed him, smiling and gracious. Her heart was beating.

‘Does Mrs. Thompson live here?’ she inquired, snatching, by the unnecessary question, at the chance of conversation.

‘Yes.’

He had a strange accent.

‘Perhaps you will kindly give this to Mr. Soutar?’

She held out the little packet.

‘Thanks.’

He took it and shut the door in her face. The blood rushed to her cheeks. He had looked at her as though she were a puddle to be avoided in the road. There was nothing to do but to walk away with what dignity she could command.

Just as she went through the little gate an elderly woman passed. She was presumably a neighbour, for she had come from a house close by.

She overtook her in a few paces.

‘What is the name of the gentleman who lives there?’ she asked her, pointing back to the nasturtium-covered walls.

‘Alec Soutar,’ said the woman.

‘I don’t mean him,’ said Isa, whose wits were coming back. ‘I mean the gentleman I was speaking to.’

‘Have ye no heard? Yon man’s newly come frae Ameriky wi’ a fortune. He’s seekin’ a wife, they tell me,’ added the other, with a twinkle in her eye.

‘But who is he? What is his name?’

‘Dod, that’s just Mistress Thompson’s ither nephew, John MacQueen, that gaed awa’ when he was a sma’ laddie,’ said the woman.