THE ARCH-PLOTTERS
Lady Betty Neil, the aunt of the Drummonds, who lived with them at
Garrion, was a Highland lady of the old school. She loved the Gaelic
and deplored its increasing disuse in the Glen, she had all the lore of
the North country at her finger-ends, and was, moreover, gifted with the
second-sight.
Certainly, when she received a peremptory telegram from her nephew on
the second day after his departure for London, she evinced neither
perturbation nor surprise.
"You go to London, Aunt Betty!" cried Kitty, open-mouthed. "What does
he mean? How dare he? Let me see the telegram."
Lady Betty, leaning on her ebony stick with her left hand, produced from
her reticule the crumpled piece of pink paper bearing the summons.
"I need you in London. Will meet you to-morrow night. Euston,
half-past six."
Kitty looked from the telegram to her aunt's face and back again in
sheer amaze. Never had Lady Betty looked more like "an ancestor," which
was Sadie Rosmead's name for her.
She was a picturesque old lady of great height and commanding mien, her
hair and eyes still as black as sloes, her face beautiful still, in
spite of its wrinkles--the face that had once been the toast of a
county. She was the Drummonds' nearest relative, their mother's sister,
in fact, and, though immensely wealthy, she had no fixed habitation of
her own, and she had agreed to live at Garrion, at any rate until Neil
brought home a wife.
That he had found one now she did not doubt, and she hoped that he had.
Isla Mackinnon was a woman after her own heart. Neil had confided to
her the nature of the business that had taken him to London, but he had
enjoined silence.
"Kitty can't hold her tongue, as you know, Aunt Betty. Besides, she's
too thick at Achree at present, and I don't want them to get wind of it.
This is a business that has to be done on the quiet."
"Aunt Betty, what took Neil to London?" quoth Kitty with a severe
expression on her piquant face. "You and he are keeping me in the dark.
It isn't fair."
"Neil has his reasons, my dear, and they are good ones, depend on it."
"But you can't go to London by yourself, auntie! The thing's
outrageous! It can't be contemplated for a moment. I must go with you
to take care of you."
"No, I'll take Lisbeth, and I must go and arrange matters with her now."
Lady Betty was now seventy-four, but she was as straight and supple as a
young birch tree. She carried a stick--not because she needed it, but
because it was her whim to do so and because it had been given to her by
an old sweetheart for a wager. She had never parted with it. It was
her faithful companion by day, and at night it stood in a handy corner
by her bed. Lady Betty had never married. But had any married wife a
life so full of romance? This is not Lady Betty's story, however.
She sniffed a love story afar off and rose to it with the keen scent of
a war-horse for the fray. There she would be in her element--keen,
shrewd, sympathetic, and full of common-sense. Neil had made no mistake
in sending that telegram. He knew the hour had come, and the woman.
Aunt Betty was as gay as a young girl over her preparations, which were
so elaborate that Kitty felt called upon to remonstrate.
"Mind your own business, my dear. I know mine. A lassie like you can
afford to rise and run. A woman like me must uphold the dignity of her
age and position. Neil has not said what he wants me for. I must be
prepared for any emergency."
Kitty was speechless, consumed with curiosity and inordinately jealous.
She travelled to Stirling, however, to put her aunt on the London train,
and on the way back drove to Achree to acquaint the inmates with the
astounding news of Lady Betty's departure for London, that gave her one
hour's rare enjoyment and partly consoled her for being left behind.
Lady Betty arrived at Euston as fresh and gay as when she had left
Garrion in the raw of the winter morning, driving down Balquhidder in a
blast of half-frozen rain.
And Neil was on the platform to greet her, overjoyed at sight of her
clever old face.
"You are a brick, Aunt Betty. But I knew you would come. How did you
get rid of Kitty?"
"Not easily, my lad. But I did manage it. Lisbeth is here. Where are
we going, and where can she ride? We want to talk together in the cab,
you and I."
"I have a brougham waiting. It's quite fair, and Lisbeth can go on the
box. We are going to Brown's Hotel."
Lady Betty nodded an approval. She was known at Brown's. In the old
days, when she had been a figure in London society, she had often spent
a season there.
"It's Isla Mackinnon, of course. Where is she?"
"She's with an old servant of Achree living in a place off the Edgeware
Road, from which you will fetch her to-morrow," said Neil quietly.
"And do what with her?"
"That's for you to say."
"Tell me about her.--everything you can or will. I must know how I
stand, and where. It's not for nothing that an old woman of
seventy-four rises and runs at a young man's bidding."
Neil nodded comprehendingly, and in his quickest and most graphic way he
put her in possession of the facts.
"It's an unco story," she said, folding her slender hands with an
unusual grip on the ebony stick. "It's not a story that Donald
Mackinnon would have liked to bear in connexion with his one ewe lamb.
I'm glad he's in Balquhidder," she said brusquely. "But the spunk of
the lassie! There's grit there Neil Drummond! She'll fight--ay, and
starve, but nobody shall know of it. That's the true spirit that has
made Scotland great! It's in the women yet, Neil, but it's scarce, very
scarce among the men."
Neil had no time for platitudes. His head was a whirl of plans.
"Does Isla know I'm coming?" asked the old lady then.
"Yes. She expects you to-morrow."
"Has she left herself in your hands, then, lad?" asked Lady Betty with a
curious straight glance under which Neil reddened.
"So far. She's run down, body and spirit, Aunt Betty. I want you to
realize that before you see her. She--she has lost grip. My God, to
see Isla Mackinnon like that! It makes me itch to get with my two hands
at Mackinnon's throat!"
"Leave him out of the count, Neil. His Maker will deal with him, I
dinna doubt," said the old lady quietly. "Then, she's to be turned over
to me to do with what I think fit."
"Yes, and what she will agree to."
"But this is a big thing, Neil. Does it mean that one day she will come
to Garrion?"
"Please God, it does mean that. But only a brute would think of himself
at such a time. She must first be made well in body and spirit, Auntie
Betty. I'll come in later."
"But if she's let you do all this she must like you, Neil. Isla
Mackinnon is not the woman to take favours of this kind from frem folk."
"Wait till you see her," he pleaded, and she said no more.
She ate an astonishingly big dinner, insisting on going down to the
restaurant, dressed in an elegant gown of rich black satin, with
priceless lace on the bodice and a diamond star glistening among its
filmy folds. Many looked in the direction of the handsome young man and
the still handsomer old lady and wondered who they were.
Aunt Betty slept like a tired child the whole night long and rose at
eight o'clock when Lisbeth brought her morning tea, every faculty alert
and braced for the day's work.
At half-past ten the brougham came again, and Neil drove with her to the
end of the Edgeware Road, where he got down, saying that he would meet
her at lunch at Brown's, whither she was to bring Isla if she could
persuade her to come.
Agnes Fraser herself joyfully opened the door to Lady Betty Neil. She
was graciously recognized, and her welfare was asked for before Isla's
name was even mentioned.
"Miss Isla is in her own room, my lady. Will you come up? A very dark
mornin', isn't it? I hope you are not very tired wi' your journey."
Lady Betty suitably replied, and, with the aid of the ebony stick, she
climbed to "The Pictur Gallery," where Isla was sitting over the fire,
very white and spent, but with a more restful look on her face than it
had worn for many a day.
She sprang up at the opening of the door.
"Lady Betty, Lady Betty! You came all this way to see me!" she cried
breathlessly, holding out both her hands.
"Wheesht, my dear--that's nothing. I loved your father well. I just
missed being your mother: and if I had been there would have been none
of this gallivanting. Where can I sit?"
Isla drew in the most comfortable chair she could find, and the old lady
sat down and assumed her most characteristic attitude, in which the
ebony stick played a prominent part.
"We're not going to talk about what's past, Isla, nor even about what's
to come. Our concern is with the present moment. Now I have plumed my
feathers and flown from Balquhidder, I've no mind to go back until the
sun begins to shine again. Will you go with me to-morrow to the south
of France? I've not been there for eleven years. We'll go to Monty, my
dear, and have a fling with the bravest of them. It stands to reason
that I can't go alone. Will ye go?"
Isla sat very still, and from the expression of her face her thoughts
could not have been gathered. Perhaps the old lady partly guessed them.
The gift of second-sight brings in its train a sort of sixth sense that
enables its possessor to be sure about things that other people only
wonder about.
"But I have no money, Lady Betty, and it is Kitty that you ought to
take."
"Kitty can come by and by. Besides, she has been so many times there
that she is not caring about going any more. As for the money, I have
plenty, and soon I shall not need it. We don't take it with us when we
lie down in Balquhidder, my dear. And to spend a little here and there
while we have it--why, that's a big pleasure, and it is one that you
ought not to deny an auld wife."
It was delicately done. Isla raised her swimming eyes and capitulated
in a moment. The prospect allured her beyond any power of hers to tell,
and no feeling of obligation to Lady Betty troubled her. One fine
nature responds to another. It was what Isla herself would have done in
similar circumstances--what, indeed, she had often done on a small scale
in the glens when she had the chance. The kinship of good deeds was
between them, and there is none closer.
An immense satisfaction shone in the old lady's eyes at this
unexpectedly easy capture of the fort. They positively glowed with her
inward triumph, and, without so much as alluding to the odd
circumstances that had brought them together, she proceeded to expatiate
on what they would do when they got away to the sunshine. This was the
crowning touch of the wisdom that comes from the second-sight.
Isla was sick to death of herself and of the sordid problems of her
life. What she wanted was to get away from everything that would remind
her of them, and, above all, from the people that would talk about them.
"I have no smart clothes for the Riviera, Lady Betty. But take me as
your maid."
"Lisbeth is here," was the grim answer. "I can get a maid for the
hiring, but companions and friends have to be won. I suppose you have
things to cover you, and, if I mind rightly, the shops at Nice were not
that bad, though they put it on for the English. But you and me will
get the better of them. Come then, my dear, and we'll go back to
Brown's to lunch and talk about all our plans."
Then an odd shyness seemed to come over the girl.
"Neil will be there, Lady Betty?"
"Yes, I suppose that he will."
"Then, will you excuse me? I--I haven't got over things yet. Did he
tell you how he found me?"
"In a general way he did, but Neil has not his sister's gift of the gab.
You have to fill in with him. Of this you may be sure, Isla--that Neil
Drummond will not tell to me, or to anybody a thing that would vex or
humble you. He has set you up there!" she added with a slight upward
inflection of her eyebrows as well as of her voice. "So come, and
remember that you and I are not women with a past, but only with a
future."
Cackling at her own joke, she carried off Isla, who met Neil in the
luncheon-room of the restaurant in a way which commanded Lady Betty's
highest admiration. Isla Mackinnon was no fool. She was neither
hysterical nor emotional. Lady Betty knew that in what the girl had
done her reason had fully justified her, though her method perhaps had
been at fault. She guessed that in the sunny days to come she would
hear the full story, or at least enough of it to enable her to fill in
all the gaps.
Neil's manner was also admirable, and they appeared just like a happy
little family party, of which the old lady was the life and soul.
That evening after dinner, over the fire in Lady Betty's sitting-room,
she indicated to her nephew his course of action.
"It will not be a good thing for you to come with us just now, Neil. We
can make the journey by ourselves and get settled. Then I'll write."
Disappointment immediately wrote itself large upon his face. He had
already wired to Garrion for another trunk to be sent and he had looked
forward to being the director of the little travelling party to the
south.
"I am understanding Isla better than you, my dear, and just at the
present moment the sight of you humiliates her just a wee bit. She
canna forget how you found her and the weakness she thought she
betrayed. She has to get over that, and she will do it all the quicker
if you are not on the spot."
"But, hang it all, Aunt Betty, to go back to Garrion--and Christmas
without you, too! I won't do it!"
"I didn't lay down the law as to times and seasons. What is at the back
of my mind is that you will bring Kitty to Nice, or to Monte Carlo, or
to wherever we have settled ourselves, and spend Christmas with us.
Then folk will not have any talk about us, because I, of course, can do
as I like and nobody dare say a word."
Neil's face brightened as he consulted his pocket-diary.
"This is the fifth, so we shall come inside of three weeks."
"You will come when I bid ye--not a moment sooner or later," she said
severely. "Don't forget how you hauled the old wife from the Garrion
fastnesses to the gay world again. Now she must have her revenge."
When Neil did not answer she leaned forward on the ebony stick, and her
eyes grew soft and luminous.
"Listen, lad. Ye may trust your Aunt Betty. She is not without
knowledge of a woman's heart. If Isla is to be won it will take time
and some skill. Her heart is asleep, but if I can waken it it shall be
done. Do you think I am to be idle in these three weeks? I think ye
may safely leave her in my hands. I will be true to your cause, for I
would dearly like to see her in the house of Garrion for all our sakes
as well as for her own."
It was Neil's turn to capitulate, which he did with all the grace he
could muster.
Next day at two o'clock of the afternoon he saw his aunt and Isla off by
the boat-train at Charing Cross, and thereafter he got ready for his own
return at night to Scotland. There was nothing to keep him in London
now, and he had left certain loose ends of his affairs at home which
would be none the worse of his handling.
At the station Isla had broken down, trying to thank him with a faint,
wavering smile on her pathetic lips.
"Don't, Isla, for God's sake, don't! It's down on my knees I'd go to
serve you, and besides, we made the pact--didn't we?--that day long ago
when we went to Glasgow together and lunched at St. Enoch's. I've lived
on the memory of that day all these months. Don't grudge me what I've
been able to do now. Besides, it's nothing but what Highland folk are
doing for one another every day."
Lady Betty, observing the emotional moment, frowned upon him warningly
from the background, and he tried to restrain himself. When the train
fairly moved out Isla leaned out of the window to wave to him, and when
she drew back to her seat her eyes were still wet.
"I've a job with that laddie, Isla. He's very thrawn. I'm often
thinking I'll wash my hands of him and Kate. What with his dour temper
and her tongue, my life is not as peaceful as a woman of my years has
the right to expect."
"Neil--a dour temper, Lady Betty!" cried Isla spiritedly. "This is the
first I have heard of it, and I don't believe it now!"
"It's there, my dear. And forby, in some things he hasna the sense of a
paitrick on the moor. I'm tired of them both, I tell ye, and glad to
get away."
Oh, the wily old plotter! Isla would have argued the point with her and
was only restrained from doing so by her sense of decency. But this was
the line of diplomacy Lady Betty started on--belittling Neil up to a
certain point and voicing her relief at being rid of his company until
Isla waxed furious and championed him both by spoken word and in her
secret thoughts all the way south.
Lady Betty, a real diplomatist in her way, took care, however, not to
overact her part. She would throw in at intervals a judicious word
which had the odd effect in casting a full glare of sunshine on all that
was best of Neil and so giving unexpected glimpses of his fine young
manhood. Then, after a time, she left the subject in order that her
words might filter down to the bed-rock of Isla's heart.
Very grey and dour seemed Balquhidder and the Garrion hills when
Drummond drove up in the snell winter morning, meeting a bitter wind
that seemed to skin his face.
"All right at home, Hamish?" he asked the groom, and, being answered in
the affirmative, he spoke no further word until they turned in at the
Garrion gate.
"Miss Kitty is at Achree, sir. They came and fetched her away the day
you left," observed Hamish stolidly.
"Why didn't you tell me that at the station?" inquired Neil rather
hotly, to which question the man answered never a word.
"I took the telegram over last nicht, sir, and she will come back
to-day," he said after a moment in the same stolid fashion, wondering
what had happened in London to shorten his master's usually placid
temper.
Kitty arrived in the Achree motor, alone, about luncheon-time.
"I want to hear all about Isla, Neil," she cried. "I thought I should
find her here. What have you done with her and Aunt Betty?"
"They have gone to the South of France."
"Oh!" said Kitty, and her piquant face fell. "I don't call that fair of
Aunt Betty. She might have taken me."
"If you're a good girl and don't talk too much between now and
Christmas," said Neil provokingly, "I'll take you myself to be there in
time for Christmas."
Kitty danced in ecstasy.
"Oh, I shall be glad. It's going to be a frightfully dismal Christmas
here this year, and nobody is going to do any entertaining. The
Rosmeads are all down in the mouth because their brother can't get away
for Christmas, and now it may be Easter, or even later, before they see
him. Bridge-building seems to be a very unsatisfactory business, though
you make so much money at it. Peter Rosmead has to work like a navvy.
He goes down into caissons--and things in diver's clothes to the bottom
of the river. That's where the difficulty is. Things are always
happening--silting, and queer things like that. Then the work has to be
done all over again. He seems annoyed about it, but he'll keep on at it.
He hasn't got that square jaw for nothing," cried Kitty breathlessly.
"Well, tell me all about Isla Mackinnon. What has she been doing all
this time?"
"Nothing particular. There isn't any romance or tragedy--or anything.
She was simply living with an old servant of Achree and getting very
sick of it. She would have come home soon, anyway."
"Did she seem glad to see you?"
"Isla doesn't say much at any time. But, yes--I think she was glad.
Have you seen anything of Mackinnon at Achree, Kitty?"
"Why, yes. I've seen him every day. He spends the most of his time
there, and I think it's going to be a match between him and Vivien."
The colour rose a little in Drummond's cheeks.
"I should have thought that she would have had enough of matrimony after
her experience," he observed drily.
"I should have thought so, too, Neil. And at first I was angry at
Malcolm, thinking he was only after her money. But now anybody can see
that he cares. I wonder how long it will be before we hear the news,
and what Isla will say."
Drummond had got fresh food for reflection. Knowing what he did of
Malcolm Mackinnon, he wondered just how much or how little the Rosmeads
guessed. It was a certain fact that had they known the whole truth
about Malcolm Mackinnon he never would have been permitted so much
intimacy at Achree.
But the thought uppermost in Neil's mind was an unholy joy that
caissons, and silt, and other queer things, as Kitty put it, were
keeping Peter Rosmead safely out of the way at the bottom of the
Delaware River. He would not have minded much though he had never come
up again.