Return to Spring (6 page)

“Now, if I were on my feet,” the farmer was saying, “there’d be no sick cows, Finberry!”

Ruth slipped out at the open door. Sometimes she could not bear to see her father sitting there, his body so useless, while his mind was still as alert and keen as ever.

It took her half an hour to gather the eggs, and the basket was fairly heavy when she lifted it at last to return to the farm. She walked quickly along the lane and, rounding a bend, came upon John Travayne leaning over the low gate which led into one of the fields. He did not seem to see her for a moment: his eyes were gazing out across the field and the moorland beyond in sombre contemplation of Carbay Hall.

Ruth laid her basket down on the grass and he turned immediately.

“Finished for the day?” he asked.

“Almost,” Ruth replied. “I’d forgotten about these eggs, though. Are the others back yet?”

“Not yet.” He paused, looking down at her. “You’re working very hard.”

Ruth looked into the field beyond the low gate. It had been opened up in the late autumn and prepared for a crop that had never been sown. She remembered the day before her father’s accident, when he had come stamping into the kitchen complaining because the big harrow had broken and he would be held up until the smith came from the village to put it right. The broken harrow was still in the field, lying uselessly on one side. It seemed to Ruth like a symbol of the farmer’s broken life. Her eyes dimmed a little as she looked at the rusty implement, and Travayne, seeing the expression in them, guessed her thoughts.

He said slowly:

“The local doctor has stopped visiting your father, I hear. I suppose that means he has done all he can for him?”

Ruth nodded.

“Yes, I’m afraid so ...”

There was a long pause, and then Travayne turned towards

her.

“Ruth—I happen to know a man in London who specialises in such things. He’s a very clever surgeon and a great friend of mine. If you don’t consider it interfering on my part, I’d like this friend to see your father some time.”

“Interfering!” Ruth’s eyes were alight with mingled hope and thankfulness. “Oh, if you would—if you really
would
ask your friend to examine him!”

He drew her hand gently within his. “Don’t bank too much on it, Ruth,” he said. “All I can promise you is that it would be another opinion—one of the finest authorities on the subject in England.”

A strange lump had risen in Ruth’s throat when she tried to thank him. He smiled down at her and lifted the basket of eggs.

“Shall we go back?” he said.

When they reached the farm there was a great stir in the paved yard. Three of the cars had returned from the trip to Melrose, but Valerie Grenton’s big white tourer was nowhere to be seen. The Finchleys were obviously disturbed.

“I know we shouldn’t have let her go off alone like that,” Mrs. Finchley was saying, “even though she
was
rather awkward about it.”

“Well, she was quite convinced she could find her way back,” Mrs. Wilton pointed out. “She strikes me as being extremely fond of her own way, and quite determined to get it. I think she would be a nicer young woman if she were thwarted more often!”

“What’s the matter?” Ruth asked anxiously.

George Finchley turned to her.

“It’s Miss Grenton,” he explained. “We decided to take your advice and come round by Otterburn, but she insisted on leaving us at Jedburgh and taking the shorter way back.”

The rest of the party were concerned, too, but some of their faces cleared when John Travayne stepped forward.

“We must organise a search-party immediately,” he said, and turned to Finchley. “Can you let me have your car, if you feel too tired to come along?” he asked.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Valerie Grenton folded her arms over the steering-wheel and glared through the windscreen at the bonnet of the offending car. She knew that it was more or less useless to get out and explore under that bonnet, for the engine of a car was new territory to Valerie. She had never strayed far from a main arterial road in all her driving life, and there had always been mechanics around when she had needed them.

“What has h-happened?”

Miss Amelia Strayte’s plain features were creased by a little frown of anxiety.

“I don’t know,” Valerie said, “but whatever it is, there’s no earthly reason why it should have happened here!”

Miss Strayte looked around her nervously. Yes, she admitted inwardly, it was a terrible and lonely place to be stranded—if indeed they were stranded! It was half an hour since they had passed through the last village, and the barren moorland stretched away before them as far as they could see, with the narrow ribbon of the road winding up and down until it was lost in the haze of distance. She looked through the windscreen at her companion.

Valerie had got out and heaved up the bonnet and was poking about fruitlessly inside. She emerged at last, her gloves, which she had not thought to remove, stained with oil, her face flushed with her growing exasperation.

“I can’t see a thing wrong!” she said. “Why it should have conked on that last hill, I’m darned if I know!” She looked about her. “Nice place to be stuck for the night, Amelia, isn’t it?” she observed.

Miss Strayte gave a little involuntary shiver.

“Surely,” she said, “there’s something we can do?”

Valerie got up with an impatient shrug of her slim shoulders and took a couple of restless paces up and down the road.

“There’s nothing we can do!” Her voice held a high- pitched note which brought a vague look of fear to her companion’s eyes. “We’re stuck here—stranded bung in the middle of no-man’s-land with no food and no shelter!”

She looked round rather furtively at the hills, which seemed to be crowding in upon them in the waning light of late afternoon. There was still the trace of snow on them, lying like some mantle of white fur along the summits, but the beauty of it was lost to Valerie. Born and bred in London, her acquaintance with hills had been a passing one. She had motored in Switzerland and the Tyrol, but the noisy company in the big car had taken the edge off any feeling she might have experienced among such aweinspiring majesty. Here, however, it was different. They were alone. The giant hills seemed to take on the semblance of monsters crouching in the gathering gloom—waiting, waiting! How near one can be to fear without actually realising it. Valerie began to work like one possessed, and Miss Strayte watched her dumbly. At the end of an hour she had probably done more damage with her spanner than she was aware of.

Gradually a rather desperate silence had fallen between those women, so utterly divided in nature and position, yet bound together by their unfortunate plight. Valerie was cold and not a little hungry for the first time in her life, but the sick feeling within her was not solely from want of food. She was afraid— mortally afraid of the leering hills and the fleeting shadows of dusk which crept down upon the moor, bringing a dank white mist with them. The approaching darkness had intimidated her; she had ceased to rage and storm about Northumberland in general and Conningscliff in particular. Her lips were trembling a little, and this spoiled darling of society was beginning to wonder why she had been born.

A star pricked out in the greying sky and seemed to rest for a moment on the hill-top just above them. Valerie watched it, oblivious to its beauty. The handkerchief in her hands was being torn to ribbons.

“Amelia,” she said at last, “it’s damn stupid of you not to smoke!” She lit her fifth cigarette from the end of the last one, her fingers trembling as she strove to hold the ends together. “It keeps your nerves from fraying altogether.”

“I don’t think it would do me much good,” poor Miss Strayte said. “I’m sure it would only make me sick.” She lapsed into silence. Valerie turned to her at last, as if she could bear the silence between them no longer.

“Why don’t you say something, Amelia? Why don’t you even ask why I was so cussed when they told me not to come this way?” She puffed a cloud of smoke against the windscreen, watching it curl round and upwards. “Why did I come? Huh! Because I wanted to get back and spy! Because I wanted to see what John Travayne was doing in my absence—if he was running around after the farmer’s daughter! What did it matter, anyway! What does anything matter? Why should I care a toss for a man who prefers the company of a sick cow?” She laughed aloud. “Huh! That’s good, Amelia! Playing second fiddle to a cow! What would all her elegant friends say if they heard that about Valerie Grenton?”

“You’re excited. All strung up. You know you haven’t been very well.’

“I’ve never felt better in my life!” Valerie flung the remains of her half-smoked cigarette into the road. “How far can you walk, Amelia?” she demanded.

“A mile or two,” Miss Strayte said hesitatingly. “It depends how far it is to the nearest house.

“Suppose there isn’t a house?”

The proposition seemed to unnerve Valerie again and she felt for her cigarette-case once more. Then, far across the moor, twin lights rose out of the haze and came steadily, purposefully, towards them. They both saw them in the same instant.

“Oh,” Amelia Strayte gasped, “help at last!”

Valerie did not reply. She was trembling from head to foot and her eyes closed suddenly. She relaxed against the cushions of the disabled car and gave vent to a storm of hysterical weeping.

Amelia Strayte sat looking helplessly at her. She had seen Valerie in an excess of temper before, but never quite like this. The oncoming car was almost upon them now. Desperately Miss Strayte tried to pull her companion round.

“We must stop this car and ask for assistance, you know.”

Valerie raised her head.

“Heavens knows who they might be,” she said childishly. “Bandits probably—!”

Her eyes were unnaturally bright, straining through the gloom towards the car which was pulling up beside them. She could not see beyond the yellow circle of the headlights, and she waited, every muscle tensed, for the occupants to alight. Amelia Strayte was visibly agitated, and when John Travayne stepped into the circle of yellow light she stumbled out of the car towards him with thankfulness in every line of her face. Before she could speak, however, Valerie was past her and, with a little hysterical cry, had flung her arms round Travayne.

“Oh—oh!” Valerie gasped. “You’ve saved us! You’ve saved our lives!'

Travayne looked quickly from one to the other and then back at the stranded car, and he seemed to take in the situation at a glance. He had a hysterical woman on his hands, and his experience with hysterical people in the past had known only one remedy. He unclasped Valerie’s clinging fingers and, taking her firmly by the shoulders, shook her forcibly.

As if a cloak had fallen from her, the wild sobbing subsided, her lips ceased to tremble and she was herself again, a little bit resentful, wholly relieved.

“Pull yourself together,” Travayne commanded, not unkindly. “You’re all right now.”

George Finchley had come from his car with a brandy flask in his hand, and he held some out to Valerie and Miss Strayte in turn. Amelia, who was cold and fatigued, drank liberally.

“I’ll have a look at your car,” John offered, striding off towards the stranded tourer to see if he could locate the source of the trouble.

He found it easily, and was back with the others in less than ten minutes.

“What was the trouble?” Finchley asked.

“A choked jet,” he explained. “We can drive her back now, I should imagine. There’s nothing else wrong, as far as I can see.” Valerie, who had recovered some of her former selfpossession by now, crossed to the white tourer. She opened the door and got into the driver’s seat.

“Do you think you should attempt to drive back?” George Finchley said kindly. “Perhaps you’d be better coming along with me and Mr. Travayne can bring your car.”

Valerie moved along the seat and said to John, with a little pitiful gesture of entreaty:

“Please drive back for me. I think Mr. Finchley is right, I’m too shaken to take control of the wheel.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“Don’t think me a dreadful nuisance!” Valerie implored. “I feel that I simply can’t drive. It was all rather a shock ...”

Travayne got in without a word and switched on the engine. “Amelia can ride back with Mr. Finchley,” Valerie said, but George Finchley was already helping Miss Strayte into the back seat of the repaired tourer.

“Miss Strayte will be quite comfortable there,” he said firmly. He turned to Travayne. “ I’ll back my car to that bay we passed just along the road. I can turn there, and I’ll speed ahead to the farm with the good news.”

“Thanks!” Travayne said. “I wish you would.”

Ruth was standing anxiously in the porch when the first car drove up the cinder track to the farm. When she saw that it only contained George Finchley her heart contracted with a strange fear. Finchley, however, assured her immediately.

“Everything’s all right,” he called out before he had brought the car to a standstill. “They’re following on behind.”

The other guests were crowding into the porch, anxious to know what had happened, and as George Finchley began to explain, the second car swung round the corner and drove up the cinder track.