Chapter XV: Settling Down

Having, in pursuance of a partially concerted plan of existence, thus held out the olive branch to her brother, Isla found the rest easy.

Next morning the breakfast-table was unclouded, and Sir Tom departed to London, more comfortable in his mind about his kinsfolk than at any moment since he had arrived in the Glen.

"I'm glad that you have come to some sort of understanding with your brother, my dear," he said, as Isla helped him on with his big travelling-coat in the hall, while Rosmead's horses were waiting at the door. "Just one thing more. Malcolm can't loaf about here longer than is necessary. Your duty now, having been so faithfully ended where your dear father is concerned, is to put a bit of your own smeddum into your brother. What I'd like--what we'd all like--is to get him back to his regiment. It's the only honourable way out of a big difficulty."

Isla busied herself with smoothing the creases in the back of the coat and made no answer at all.

"What about his Colonel--Martindale, isn't it? Your aunt is intimate with his sister, Lady Chester. We can get at him in that way, though I still think that a straight application from Malcolm couldn't possibly fail of its purpose. Eh--what?"

"Don't do anything, Uncle Tom," pleaded Isla, "please, don't. There are reasons--other reasons--why it would be better not, and Malcolm is quite determined. Anyone can see that."

"Well, well. It doesn't seem the right thing, but I don't want to be officious, and you at least have shown yourself capable of managing your own affairs up to now. Take Malcolm in hand now. The best of us need the mothering that a good woman can give. But I hope, my dear, that my next visit to Achree will be a happier one--namely, to give you away perhaps to some gallant bridegroom. Eh--what?"

He smiled his big, enveloping smile as he lifted her chin in his hand and kissed her face.

"That isn't likely to happen. But thank you all the same, dear Uncle Tom," said Isla gratefully.

"And, if we really are to be buried in the sand dunes over there and have to subsist on anaemic omelettes and the everlasting poulet roti, mind you come to us. And Barras in the winter is a very good place. It had a Riviera temperature up to March this year. In November, thank God, we'll make tracks for Barras again."

Again Isla thanked him, and, Malcolm appearing on the scene, she said no more. But she was sensible of relief as she saw them drive away. So long as Uncle Tom remained at Achree anything might happen. His big, kindly, blundering feet would stray into all sorts of forbidden paths.

She spent the morning in the house, going slowly and with a sort of lingering tenderness over every bit of it. The smart servants of the Rosmeads had managed to efface themselves in a very wonderful way, and the magnificent simplicity of the funeral of Mackinnon had left its deep impression on their minds.

Isla thanked each one of them individually in that way of hers that could draw out all that was best in a human being. She offered nothing, because she had naught to give, and would not mock them with pretence. Malcolm, less delicately conscientious, scattered silver among them--the silver that had come out of Isla's hoard in the bureau at Creagh.

Malcolm returned to announce that he had engaged Jamie Forbes to come up from the hotel to drive them to Creagh at three o'clock of the afternoon.

"I want to go to Darrach first, Malcolm, to see Elspeth Maclure. Everything is ready to lift, and I shall get up by tea-time."

"But how will you get up?"

"Walk, of course--that is nothing."

"But I can make Jamie wait till you are ready. He can stop here till four, by which time surely you could be done with that wind-bag, Elspeth Maclure."

"No, I shall stop to tea with her and come when I'm ready, Malcolm. I've neglected her of late, and I have lots of things to tell her."

Malcolm gave his shoulders a shrug.

"I've never understood your fondness for Elspeth Maclure, Isla. Her tongue is a yard long and none too kindly. She was as nearly as possible impertinent to me one day when I stopped at Darrach."

Isla looked unbelieving and wholly unconvinced.

"I can't conceive of Elspeth being impertinent. You must have said something to offend her."

"I gave her the truth about Donald and the croft, if you like. Darrach is a bit of the best land on Achree, and if it were joined to Tully and let to a responsible and capable man it would bring in a good rent. Maclure's lazy, and greedy besides. I'd like to chuck him from Darrach, and I mean to tell Cattanach that when I go up to Glasgow to-morrow."

Isla said nothing, though she thought much. The Maclures had been in Darrach in direct descent for four generations, and Donald naturally regarded the place as his own. To turn him out and join up the crofts into bigger holdings would revolutionize the whole life of the glens and take the bread out of many mouths.

But this was not the time to argue that question. Above all things, she must try to live at peace with Malcolm, and find some quiet, persuasive method of getting him to let well alone.

Isla was a curious mixture. Her temperament was active, her judgment quick and shrewd, but she was bound by the immemorial traditions of her race and ought to have been born in feudal times. She looked upon all the tenants of Achree as the children of the estate, having as good a right to the land as the Mackinnons themselves. The fact that they paid small, in some cases inadequate, rents for their holdings, thereby keeping the coffers of Achree sadly empty, altered nothing. She would rather have starved herself--and that cheerfully--than ask them for more. Besides, she knew the hunger of the land, the late and scanty harvests, the long winters, and the difficulty of wresting a living from the bare hill-sides and the swampy breadths that lay to the Loch-side.

She knew it to the uttermost. She had seen the blackened stocks sodden with November rains and touched with December snows to such an extent that the corn was hardly worth the trouble of carrying to the barn. She had felt the dank smell of the potatoes rotting with disease in the furrows when the autumn was wet, and she knew the poverty of the homes where she was ever a welcome, and never an intruding, guest.

Malcolm knew none of these things. He had no practical acquaintance with the long fight between man and nature in these high latitudes, and he had exaggerated ideas of the profits of farming. Already he was full of ill-considered and half-digested plans for the entire regeneration of Achree. Now that all was over, he was making all the haste he could to let bygones be bygones. He was going to begin afresh a new life, which, he promised himself, might be as interesting and far less strenuous than the old.

His father's death had altered the whole situation, and, from his point of view, had occurred at the psychological moment. Now, as Laird of Achree and head of his clan, he occupied a very different niche in the scheme of things.

Isla left Achree for the second time without any bitter pang. Nay, it pleased and comforted her to think that Peter Rosmead and his folk had it for a home. That thought somehow seemed to bring him nearer to her. In the months to come it would lessen the breadth and depth of that vast dividing sea. Yet how she would have been startled had her own thoughts been mirrored before her, who had never before taken such interest in a man!

She thought of him as she walked down the dry, crisp road to Darrach, and she wondered where he would be at that moment and whether the telegram she had dispatched to them at the St. Enoch's Hotel, announcing their departure to Creagh, would bring him back to Glenogle before he finally set out on his long journey. She did not admit even to herself her secret hope that he would, but it was of him she thought as she approached Elspeth's hospitable gate, of his deep and encompassing tenderness, his continuous thought for her, his earnest eyes looking into hers and assuring her of his devotion to her cause.

She lingered on these thoughts, fully conscious of their comforting sweetness and wholly unaware that they heralded the dawn of love.

She found Elspeth working at her baking board with a downcast face. The baby was asleep in the box-bed by the side of the fire-place, and the rest of the children were at school, even little Colin, aged three and a half, having been admitted to the infant room.

"There you are at last, Miss Isla--a sicht for sair een. I said to Donald this morning that if it should be that you didna come the day, then I must go and seek for ye either at Achree or at Creagh. Where should I have found you?"

"We are leaving Achree to-day, and it is at Creagh that you will find me, Elspeth," said Isla as she took the chair that Elspeth set for her by the well-scrubbed table.

"I've come for my tea, Elspeth, and these scones smell as they ought. If the butter is newly churned, too, then I am in luck, and I will forget all about the rich meats that the American cook has been setting before us at Achree."

"But it wass the right thing for you to be there, Miss Isla, and it was fery, fery good of the folk. From end to end of the Glen you'll hear nothing but praise of them for it."

"It was good," said Isla with quiet conviction.

"And they'll be stoppin' on, at least for a while, at Achree, I hope?"

"Yes, they will be stopping on indefinitely at Achree."

"The little one--her they call Miss Sadie--comes here a lot, Miss Isla, and she hass the pairns quite crazy about her. The other day--it wass the day before the Laird died--she wass here drilling them in the yard. It was the funniest thing you ever saw in your life--and her so sweet and winsome wi' them! There be some that are all for the other one, but she seems high and proud-like and hass little to say to the folk."

"She has had a lot of trouble, Elspeth. Yes--I would like my tea now, and you to sit down and drink it with me."

"Yes, Miss Isla. And so you're to be at Creagh, and Mr. Malcolm--I beg hiss pardon, the Laird--is to pe there, too, and to pe fery busy in all the glens."

The dry note in Elspeth's voice did not escape Isla's ear.

"He iss not going back to the army, Donald says, but means to live on the place. And, oh, it will nefer pe the same again! He wass here wan day, and he said a lot of things that I'm not mindin' to say over again to you. But iss it true that he will take away most of the crofts and make big farms and let them to men from the west country and the Lowlands that haf money in their pockets and will pey what we canna?"

"My brother talks a good deal, but when he has been at home a little longer and gets to understand things better he will change his mind about a lot of them," said Isla, trying to comfort Elspeth.

"Look you, Miss Isla, if it should come that my man had to leave Darrach he will nefer lift up hiss head again. He was born in that bed, and his faither and his grandfaither pefore him, and he wants to dee in it, as they did. That is how Donald is feelin' about the place, Miss Isla, and it iss what the Laird will nefer understand. But I said that you would understand and would speak for us."

Isla was silent, for she could find no words.

"And Donald bein' a silent, quate man, things eat intil him, and he will pe wanderin' for efer and efer by hisself, thinkin' on nothing else. But how to pey more rent for the place is peyond him and me baith. We haf nefer a penny over--we just manage to live and to pey oor way. Mr. Malcolm, he talked a lot about breeding stock and such like, but where iss the money to come from to buy the stock at the beginnin'? They haf to be calves and lambs afore they grow to be bullocks and sheep. And that's how it iss wi' us here at Darrach, and we are feart for the day that will come."

She set the cups down on the table with a kind of mournful clatter and brought out the plate of oatcakes and the delicious scones and the cheese kebbuck and then the firm golden butter-pat from the little dairy.

"You will never leave Darrach while I live and can prevent it, Elspeth," said Isla.

And she meant what she said. As she walked up the road again and plunged into the bridle path that would bring her by the short cut to the Moor of Creagh she foresaw that her work was by no means done nor yet the fight ended. For if these were the lines Malcolm intended to pursue with Glenogle folks, then how could she live at peace with him? There was bound to be strife in the Lodge of Creagh.

She felt a little glow of home-like feeling when the small, ugly, square house, with its smoke curling up, straight and lazy, to the summer sky, came within range of her vision.

Margaret Maclaren, with temper considerably ruffled by certain happenings that day, was busy clearing up what she called a "clamjamphrey" in one of the upper rooms when she saw her mistress coming slantwise across the Moor. It was now five o'clock, and she immediately ran down to see whether the kettle was boiling, in case Miss Isla wanted tea.

Margaret had not been down the Glen at all during these last days and had not so much as seen the funeral of the Laird--in itself a serious omission. Then that day she had had a quarrel with Diarmid anent certain household arrangements which they had not been able to adjust to her satisfaction and which were waiting the judgment of Miss Isla.

Diarmid, a little puffed up perhaps with the attention he had received at Achree and the deference the American servants had paid him, had been a little high-handed with Margaret on his return. Hence the explosion on her part.

The truth was that both were too strong-minded and quick tempered, and that both wished to assert their authority, and it was hopeless to think that they would ever get on together at Achree, where most of the servants had been younger than Diarmid, who had lorded it over them all.

But Margaret held him again, as she expressed it, and they had been almost continuously at loggerheads since he had come to Creagh.

When Margaret saw him waiting at the door to receive his mistress she cast her head in the air and went by him with a small snort that spoke volumes. Isla just saw her disappear through the little doorway at the end of the short passage, and, in answer to Diarmid's anxious query whether she wanted any tea, she simply said "No," and asked where her brother was. But Diarmid could not tell her more than the brief fact that he had gone out after tea without saying where he was going.

Isla, with an odd sense of strangeness and detachment from the interior of the house, climbed the stairs and, as she reached the door of her own room, she heard a heavier foot behind her and beheld Margaret, who was of a substantial build, puffing on the uppermost steps of the stairs.

"Well, Margaret?" she said kindly. "We've come back you see, and have to begin again."

"Yes. Miss Isla. Please, can I speak to you for a minute or so? There's things in this house that must be sorted."

"Sorted" was a great word with Margaret. She sorted everything from the fire to the hens that she chased out of the little garden or the keeper's boys whom she hounded back to the Moor. Her temper was quick and her tongue not very reserved, but her heart was of gold towards the house she served.

"Why, surely. Come into my room. What's the matter with you? You look angry."

"I hope it's a righteous anger, Miss Isla. All I want to ken iss--What are the duties of Diarmid an' what are mine in this hoose?"

"Dear me, Margaret, what a fuss! Whatever do you mean? Your duties are just what they have always been. I've never been asked the question before. How has it arisen now?"

"It's that Diarmid. He thinks himsel' as fine as the Laird himsel'. Just come here a minute, Miss Isla, will you?"

Isla followed her wonderingly across the narrow landing to the door of the room in which her father had slept in his lifetime. It was the best room in the house, and Margaret, in no doubt that the new Laird would occupy it on his return, had swept and garnished it. But he had refused point-blank, and all his things lay scattered now upon the floor and on the bed, and the drawers were open, giving the room a most untidy aspect.

"Here haf I toiled an' slaved to get the place ready, an' then Maister Malcolm, he will not sleep in it, he says."

"Well, Mr. Malcolm must please himself, Margaret," said Isla rather quickly. "It does not in the least concern you."

"I'm not sayin' that it does. But what I do want to know, Miss Isla, iss if I'm to wait on him as well as to do the cookin' an' look after the whole house. I brought down all Maister Malcolm's things from the attic an' put them in the drawers; an' all the General's things are in the big kists up the stairs. Then, when Maister Malcolm came in he fell into the most fearful rage an' swore like anything an' turned the drawers out on the floor an' roared to me to put them all back up the stairs again. An' what I want to know iss whether it iss my duty or Diarmid's to do that. I haf nefer been in a hoose where the man-servant did not wait upon the master; forby, I haf not time, and, unless you pid me, I will not lift the things up the stairs again. It is Diarmid that should pe doin' it."

"Surely Diarmid will do it. Where is he? Tell him to come up."

"In a minute, Miss Isla. But what I do want to know iss how it iss to be in Creagh now? For if Diarmid iss to stop, then I canna. I'm not fit to stand his impidence."

The idea of Diarmid's impudence so tickled Isla that she burst out laughing, which did not please Margaret.

"If it's me you're laughin' at, Miss Isla," she began in a highly-offended tone----

Then Isla turned about on her with a quick glance of disapproval.

"Is that a way, Margaret Maclaren, to speak to me this day of all days? If you and Diarmid cannot live peaceably together, then you had better both go. You are a silly woman. What does it matter who puts away Mr. Malcolm's things? Go away to your kitchen, and I'll do it myself. You ought to be ashamed of yourself at your age, behaving like a great baby."

Margaret did not take the rebuke in very good part. Old and faithful, she was likewise privileged; and undoubtedly all the Mackinnon servants had been more or less spoiled.

"It's the swearin', Miss Isla. I haf not been used to it, an' I will not stand it--not even from Maister Malcolm, an' Diarmid laughin' in the back, like, when I wass ordered to put away the things. Please to tell me who iss to wait on the Laird--iss it to be me or iss it to be Diarmid?"

"And, supposing it should be you, eh, Margaret?" asked Isla, and the smile did not leave her lips. "Go away down and see what there is in the larder, for we shall need something to eat a little later. And then come up and help me to clear this room. If Mr. Malcolm does not want it I'll take it myself, for it would be a shame to let it stand empty."

Margaret, a little ashamed perhaps and glad of the offered opportunity to recover herself, went out of the room.

The smile still lingering on her lips, Isla began to look over the things which had been brought down from the attic room. The squabble between Margaret and Diarmid was quite a timely diversion, for it had taken the edge off what might otherwise have been a painful moment, and she thought how like children the two were in their slight knowledge of real care.

Pondering thus, she pulled open the upper drawers of the tallboys that stood between the windows, and she saw that they were full of small stuff belonging to Malcolm--papers and photographs and books and toilet articles mingled in inextricable confusion.

Margaret had certainly carried the things down, but she had not made the smallest attempt at putting them in order. Isla took out an armful and carried them to the bed, thinking that when Margaret returned the simplest way would be to get her to bring a couple of trays, on which the small things could be laid, ready for carrying up the attic stair.

As she let a little heap fall loosely on the white coverlet a bundle of photographs fell apart, and one looked up at her with an insolent, half-defiant stare. She grew hot all over and then cold, recognizing in the bold, handsome face that of the woman whom she had seen Malcolm with in the street off the Edgeware Road. He had said she was a friend of George Larmer's; if so, why was her photograph here among Malcolm's most treasured possessions?