Red Rowan Berry, page 10
In Luss, Janet's departure had caused a train of events of which she was perfectly ignorant. Kirsty's letter, angrily demanding that he deal appropriately with the runaway and send her back to fulfil her obligations, John Laidlaw had torn up without showing to Janet and ignored. His letter to the laird removing the conditions of the sale of Glenfoot had been more productive. The factor had lost no time in coming up to the farm with the news that the laird had changed his mind. Mr Laidlaw could have the lease of Braeside renewed if he wished but they were to vacate Glenfoot immediately. At this bombshell Jock's jaw dropped and he stared dumbly and unbelievingly. Kirsty was far from dumb. She stormed at the factor who endured her abuse for a few minutes and then produced a paper.
" ... he can't do this," bellowed Kirsty, "we were told we were to have this place! Here we are and here we'll stay. We'll have the law on you ... "
"There was," said the factor calmly, "nothing on paper ... "
"But the laird said ... " shrilled Kirsty.
"What he said then has nothing to do with your lease," said the factor. "You're in ahead of the term and the conditions laid down for the sale of Glenfoot have been withdrawn. Nothing was signed."
"What's a bit of paper?" said Kirsty scornfully, "we were told we were to have the place. I've got the letter."
"The letter was from your father-in-law," explained the factor. "It is not a legal document. Now, the laird doesn't wish to be hard on you and he asked me to offer you this … ”
He tapped the paper.
" ... a nineteen-year lease of Braeside."
Kirsty thought of another aspect of the situation.
"What about our Donald?"
The factor shrugged.
"The conditions have been withdrawn," he repeated.
"You mean he's not to get it?"
"He can have it if you don't want it," said the factor calmly, "perhaps you have some other place in your eye?"
At this point Jock found his voice.
"But we shook hands," he declared plaintively.
The factor looked woodenly at them.
"There was nothing on paper."
After this visit there had been a return procession of farm-carts and stock to Braeside with Kirsty once more wearing her (rather battered) Sunday hat and cursing Janet every inch of the way. On the following day when the postie appeared he interrupted a stormy scene between Donald and his sister on the score of who was going to pay for the new pair of horses. Lachie's eyes gleamed at this choice item to retail during the rest of his round.
"Aye, mistress," he said, putting two letters on the kitchen table, "so you're back in the old place. I was inby Glenfoot and the new folk ... "
Kirsty and Donald ceased their argument and gave him their full attention.
"What new folk?" they asked in unison.
"A lad from Stirling way," explained Lachie, "gentry. A friend of the laird's son. Full of wild schemes for the place like an egg with meat. Old mistress Elspeth will be birling in her grave I wouldn't wonder. Good day to you."
He left an angry and (for once) silent trio in the kitchen. One of the little boys, scared by this unaccustomed absence of noise, began to cry. Kirsty clouted him with fervour and then picked up the two letters. The first she thrust at Jock but at the second she stared with a kind of concentration of spite.
"If yon damned uppity bitch .of a sister of yours expects me to traipse miles to post on letters from her fancy-man, she's wrong."
Jock held out his hand.
"I'll need to go down to the pier, the day," he told her, I'll take it."
"I'll see you in Hell first," Kirsty snapped, and flung the letter on the back of the fire.
"There!" she said triumphantly and wiped her hands on her grimy apron. "That'll lean her, the bitch."
The excursion 'down the water' was unexpectedly successful. It was a mellow golden day such as comes occasionally in October. The first part of the tour from the Broomielaw to Bowling was discovered by Mrs Lampeter to be 'interesting'. It was certainly not beautiful and both she and his lordship were taken aback by the stench which arose as the paddles began to chum up the inky water and they listened with their handkerchiefs pressed hard to their noses as Laidlaw pointed out various items of interest. They saw Messrs Tod and McGregor at the Kelvin's mouth with the skeleton of an Inman transatlantic liner on the stocks and a new steam-cruiser for the Royal Navy nearly completed at Napier's yard opposite. Hannah stood a-tip-toe to see the sheds and buildings which clustered round the hull of the big freighter which Fox, Mc Ian, Son and Laidlaw were close to launching.
"It's not a big yard ours," said Laidlaw, "but there's room to expand. Fox has no wish to, though. It's a pity with shipping shares going through the roof at the moment."
After Bowling the smell diminished arid the wind increased. The Carrick Castle began to roll slightly and Hannah begged for Laidlaw's arm to support her down to the cabin. Janet's offer to take her to the private Ladies' Saloon where she might lie down she declined with a meaning frown. Lord Staindrop had provided himself with a copy of ‘Tweed's Guide to the Clyde’ and contrived to entertain Janet and himself by identifying various landmarks such as Dumbuck and Dunglas and the wide basins which marked the end of the busy Forth and Clyde Canal in which he took a decided interest. Staindrop was particularly pleased to be able to pick out the monument to Henry Bell on the Dunglas Rock although he was uncertain why this gentleman should be remembered. Janet was able to enlighten him and to describe in detail the first steamship to ply in European waters because her father had once made a working model of the Comet which had plied in Inchtavannach Bay till Jock had broken it. In return for this information he read to her the spirited account of the storming of Dumbarton Rock in 1571. In such an amicable fashion they passed the time until Laidlaw came to summon them to an early luncheon which was laid in the cabin.
When they had eaten, the two young people, as Hannah coyly described them, returned to a seat on deck far enough forward to avoid the noise of the paddles and they admired the wild scenery of Loch Long and the entrance to Loch Goil. Staindrop, delving once more into Tweed's Guide, found a poem by Tannahill, the Paisley poet, to the Lass of Arranteenie. He read aloud to her, soulfully but excruciatingly, so that Janet was forced to look at her lap and, bite her lip and missed the ardent glance he cast at her as he read the lines,
The langsome way, the darksome day,
The mountain mist sae rainy,
Are naught to me when gaun to thee
Sweet lass o' Arranteenie.
The steamer chugged into the terminus at Lochgoilhead and the passengers were invited to disembark for a quarter of an hour. Hannah disclaimed any desire to do so and Laidlaw, who had had occasion to visit there before, said with feeling that he had no notion to 'be eaten alive with the midges.’ However, Staindrop undeterred by this gloomy prediction offered his arm to Janet and invited her watch the departure of those passengers who were booked through to St Catherine's in Loch Fyne.
"For it is the most singular conveyance I have seen in a long time," he said.
There were about a dozen well-laden people being herded into a capacious coach which made up in length what it lacked in breadth by an anxious agent armed with a vast silver watch and a waybill. Yoked to this vehicle were five shaggy Highland garrons who appeared like the somnolent and equally shaggy coach- man to be much less eager to start than the agent. Lord Staindrop was much entertained by this conveyance and watched it rumble up the road towards Hell's Glen, declaring himself uncommon glad to be going no farther. At this point the gentle soaking west coast rain began to fall and he very gallantly took Janet's umbrella and held it over her until they reached the shelter of the cabin. Janet recalled days spent in the fields with no more protection from that same rain than a folded grain sack and thought how her mother would laugh to see her hoyden daughter treated as if she were made of sugar icing. She was still smiling at the imagined comments when they entered the cabin and Hannah looked at John Laidlaw with raised eyebrows as if to say, 'I told you so'. Which, indeed, she had just done.
Laidlaw, on the voyage home, during which the clouds wrapped themselves round the hills and gusts of rain blattered against the cabin windows, considered his daughter and his guest and an idea came to him. By the time the scurrying waiters served them with tea and a generous supply of buttered toast and jam and buttered scones and currant cake it had taken definite shape in his mind.
Fox in his hey-day had been a man of ideas but it had been McIan, the shrewd old merchant, who had had the money. Young McIan had more notion of spending than making. Fox would soon be dead. Suppose he could persuade Staindrop to become a partner; the man was wealthy enough for it to be a minor part of his activities so that he would not be continually interfering in the work of the yard. Laidlaw and Staindrop had a good ring to it for a name. The man had the right connections in London and knew enough about business to understand the present need to expand. He thought about it and looked at his daughter and his guest poring over Tweed's Guide and peering into the mist to see could they pick out Argyle's Bowling' Green. When parts of it did loom through a gap in the rainclouds Staindrop remarked that it was no more like a bowling green than the Peak, Janet patiently explained the nature of Maccailein Mhor's grip on the country thereabout and the Highlander's liking for irony which had pitched on that sobriquet for the roughest, wildest and rockiest country, He appeared doubtful that such people as Highlanders could indulge in irony and doubted their ever having seen a bowling green. Janet changed the subject and pointed up to the head of Loch Long as they churned their way past the Dog Rock.
"It's only about two miles to Loch Lomond from Arrochar," she explained with a pang of homesickness at the thought of being so near her home. "Haakon the Viking king had his boats dragged over the pass there on tree trunks so that he could raid the loch."
It was a story which had fired her imagination as a child and she had often imagined the menacing square Viking sails on the loch and the fierce men looting and burning in the lands of Lennox. Staindrop listened with apparent interest but confided when she had finished the tale that history was a closed book to him.
"All those kings and dates and battles ... "he said, "I never could master them, and of course we were never taught Scotch history. All the same, had I had a teacher as charming as yourself, who knows what might have happened?"
Janet, quite correctly, took this to be an indication of ennui and ceased to volunteer information, somewhat to Hannah's relief. Hannah skilfully turned the talk to a more acceptable topic, Staindrop's own possessions, and the company was treated to a description of Staindrop House couched in the fashionable meiosis.
"You mustn't be imagining anything fine and grand like Chatsworth or Goodwood. Just a mere forty or fifty rooms, I give you my word."
Hannah skilfully kept him on the subject and they heard of the halls and the galleries and the drawing rooms. It was a little unfortunate that the parts of the house with which he was most familiar were the gunroom and the library, where the presence of a desk gave him an excuse to sleep in the deep armchairs. His memory of the place was not equal to his pride in it. He conducted arguments with himself as to whether the Chinese drawing room opened off the gallery or out of the green saloon which even Hannah found a trifle tedious.
"And is your estate extensive?" she enquired after one such. "I am sure it must be 'Very fine. Derbyshire is such a pretty county."
“A matter of some forty farms, I suppose," said his lordship.
"What kind?" asked Janet, her interest caught at last.
"I beg your pardon," said Staindrop.
"I meant are they hill farms or in the valleys?"
"Both, I imagine."
"Do you have a lot of arable?"
"I really couldn't say."
He looked a little shamefaced.
"You will be shocked to hear, Miss Laidlaw, that my agent attends to all that sort of thing. I scarcely know wheat from barley or one cow from another."
Before Janet could enlarge on this theme Hannah put another question.
"I have heard your gardens are uncommonly pretty," she said.
"Very true," he agreed. "My grandmother had them laid out by that fellow Brown. Miss Laidlaw will not be surprised to learn that we have a Scotch gardener."
"I expect he is a crotchety character," laughed Janet, "I never met a gardener that wasn't."
He agreed ruefully.
"I do hope, Miss Laidlaw, that I may look forward to the very great pleasure of showing you all these things some time in the very near future. It would make me very happy if you were to pay us a visit."
Janet, startled by this unexpected move did not reply at once and Hannah stepped smoothly into the gap.
"I am sure that is excessively civil of his lordship. Is it not Janet?"
"Yes," agreed Janet politely and considered her gloved hands. Suddenly the day's excursion had become menacing.
At dinner in the Grand Hotel that night Janet sat mumchance. The florid plush splendours of the hotel oppressed her and the food set before them was rich without being appetising. She had the sense of being nudged and edged in a direction she did not wish to go. A picture flashed into her mind of a ewe being separated from the flock by the dogs and she smiled at the homely memory. As she looked up she found Staindrop's rather protuberant eyes fixed on her and he smiled back as if he had been waiting for some such gesture from her. Hannah, who had disguised her irritation with Janet's silence under a flow of bright common places, noted this exchange and gave a private sigh of relief. Laidlaw waited impatiently till the end of the meal when Janet and Hannah retired to the private sitting room and then broached his idea of a partnership over the port. He explained the circumstances:
"I cannot feel Mr Fox would object," he ended. "He kens fine that young McIan is so much lumber."
Staindrop listened in silence but by the time they rejoined the women to drink tea he had promised to consider the matter.
Consider it he did: in the train rattling south he weighed up the advantages of such a scheme. He required ships and would require in the future when his collieries expanded: coal was valuable only when it could be delivered to those who wanted to use it. A partnership of this nature would, at the least, ensure speedy delivery and a good price. And there was the girl; his thoughts lingered appreciatively over Janet. No family, of course, but perfectly ladylike and not a chatterbox. She was certainly a most attractive notion.
CHAPTER 6
IT WAS THE circumstances of his return to Derbyshire which- hardened an attractive notion into a resolve. His younger brother came, as in duty bound, to pay his respects to the head of the family and to announce, as he had done annually for ten years past, the arrival of yet another infant Prickett.
"A boy," he rejoiced smugly over a glass of madeira, "a fine healthy boy. Must be a great comfort to you, Philip, to know the succession is so perfectly secure. In the circumstances ... "
He glanced about him at the pompous palladian plasterwork of the great saloon with a proprietorial air which nettled his brother almost beyond bearing.
The following day Lord Staindrop gave certain orders to a brass-founder and within a very few days a handsome tablet appeared in the unrelentingly Gothic chapel of Staindrop House. The late Lord Staindrop had undergone a conversion to a form of the Christian faith which found its expression mainly in stone. The decorous and unobtrusive apartment provided for private worship by the original architect of the seat dwindled to an oratory dominated by a painting of the 'Wedding at Cana' from the studio of an academician more renowned for acreage of canvas covered than for artistic eminence. It was also liberally provided with hassocks by the late Lady Staindrop whose own devotions took the form of polychromatic Berlin woolwork. Outside the gates of the park a new chapel had been built on which was lavished all the arts of the stone-carver, the glass-stainer, the wood-carver, the tapestry-weaver, the brass-founder and the silversmith in order to provide a setting fit for the devotions of a fourth baron. It was, perhaps, a pity that the first service he attended in it was his own funeral. As his heir, Philip, fifth Lord Staindrop, did not share his parents' religious fervours, the Gothic glories were enjoyed only by a few of the house-servants, such villagers as did not attend a red-brick Bethel at the other end of the parish and the incumbent who emerged from an obsession with archaeological matters once a week for an hour to conduct a service for them.
The Reverend Mr Jolly, summoned to attend at the installation of the tablet peered about him at the Gothic intricacies of the chapel as if he expected them to be quite different on a weekday and withdrew· his mind reluctantly from a monograph he was composing for a learned journal on the Prediluvial Deposits of Derbyshire. The plaque on the wall before him read;
Sacred to the memory of
Anna Bellamy-Crabtree
late lamented wife
of
Philip Prickett
fifth Lord Staindrop
LOST AT SEA
1876
"Till the sea shall give up its dead ... "
"Mmmm... " he commented, "quite, quite. Quite. Brass I see, and Gothic lettering. Perfectly in keeping. Excellent taste ... in excellent taste. Just one small matter my Lord ... I cannot recall ... “
Lord Staindrop looked at him without enthusiasm.
I cannot for the life of me recall ... when your good lady died ... did I conduct the service? It has quite slipped my memory."
“She was lost at sea," reproved his Lordship's bailiff.
I see ...of course. Foolish beyond permission. Tut! Of course ... I will have great pleasure in dedicating this on Sunday."
Tomorrow, rejoined his patron. "On Sunday I shall be in Scotland."
