Part 9 (1/2)
”You'll need to take this letter to Carlossie, Marcella. Jean is too busy to-day. And ask about the postage to Australia. I believe it's only a penny.”
”Who do we know in Australia?” asked Marcella.
”Your mother's brother Philip. I've written to tell him you'll be coming to him. He wrote when your mother died saying he would have you, but your father refused then. I've told him you'll be coming shortly, so we'll need to cable when we've looked up the boats and everything.”
Marcella stared at her aunt in dead silence. She did not in the least resent this way of disposing of her. She was used to it--she would have disposed of herself in just the same high-handed fas.h.i.+on if it had occurred to her. But she was stricken silent with inarticulate joy at the prospect of going away--especially of going across the sea just as far as possible without getting over the edge of the world.
”But do you think he'll have me?” she said tremulously when she could speak again.
”He'll need to,” said her aunt calmly.
”Anyway, if he doesn't someone else will,” said Marcella casually. To her hitherto the world had meant Lashnagar, Pitleathy and Carlossie.
She had never been as far as Edinburgh. She had lived in a world of friends--a world that knew her, barefoot and hungry as she was, for the last of the Lashcairns, a world that had open doors for her everywhere.
And Aunt Janet knew about as much of life outside the wall that held her own smouldering personality as Marcella knew.
It was only years afterwards that Marcella wondered where her aunt got the money to buy her the clothes that came from Edinburgh--not many of them, but things severely plain and severely expensive. She knew that the man from Christy's came again--she knew that two great oak chests, one from the landing and one from her mother's room, went away. Later she missed the old weapons that used to be in the armoury at the old grey house and that had lain in her father's bedroom where he could see them ever since they came to the farm--great-swords and dirks and battle-axes--that had rung out a clear message of defiance on many a battlefield. But she did not a.s.sociate their going with her own until she was out in mid-ocean, and then she felt sickened to think what it must have cost Aunt Janet to part from them.
In the midst of her preparations Jean told her one day that she was going away soon.
”Going away?” she cried. ”Then what will Aunt Janet do? Why, Jean, I never thought you'd leave her,” she added reproachfully.
”Ye're leavin' her yersel',” said Jean grimly. ”But I'm not gaun of ma ain acc.o.o.nt. The mistress hersel' was tellun me she'll not be needin' me ony mair.”
”Well! but what's she going to do, then?” said Marcella, arrested in her careful tidying of her father's old books on the shelves. ”I'm going straight away to ask her.”
But her aunt simply told her that it was no concern of hers, but that she was going to live very quietly now.
”But who'll look after you? Who'll do the work? What will you live on?”
”I am not accustomed to being cross-questioned,” said Aunt Janet in a definite way that forbade questions. But Marcella lay awake worrying very late during her last few nights at the farm, picturing her aunt all alone, without Jean, without her, without even the beasts, for a butcher from Carlossie had come and slaughtered the last old tottery cow, Hoodie.
”What is she going to do?” the girl asked herself again and again as she tossed on her hard bed that night. She tried to imagine Aunt Janet bringing in wood for the fire, breaking the ice of the well in winter, cleaning and cooking as Jean did, and her imagination simply would not stretch so far. Then she saw the nights when she would sit in the big book-room with the ghosts walking about the draughty pa.s.sages, up and down through the green baize door, looking for their swords and dirks, the beds and tables and chairs that had been sold while the rats scuttered about the wainscoting. And she got a terrible vision of her aunt looking round furtively as her hand went behind the curtain to a paper bag of cheap sweets.
”Oh, I can't leave her!” she cried. ”Poor Aunt Janet!”
But even as her lips told her she could not go, her feet tingled like the swallows' wings in September and knew that, whoever suffered for it, she would have to go.
Ghosts and shadows crowded round her next day when she ran down to the beach to say good-bye to Wullie. On the gate of the farm was fixed a notice saying that Miss Lashcairn desired the villagers to come to the house next day if they wished a free joint of beef, as she had no further use for her cattle. ”As the beast in question is old,” went on the firm, precise writing, ”the meat will be tough. But probably it is quite worth consideration by those with large families.”
Marcella was crying as she banged open the door of Wullie's hut.
”I thought ye'd be coming, Marcella,” he said, looking at her with mournful brown eyes that recalled Hoodie's. ”Jock's wife's made ye a seed cake to eat the day, and anither tae pack in yer grip. She says if ye'll pit it intill a bit tin an' fasten it doon tight it'll maybe keep till ye're at Australia. But I'm thenkin' she doesna rightly ken whaur Australia is on the map.”
”Oh, Wullie,” cried Marcella, flinging herself down on the ground beside him. ”I feel as if I can't bear it all. Hoodie killed, and going to be eaten, Jean going to Perth to live, and Aunt Janet all alone in the old farm, living with the rats.”
”Ye're awa' yersel', Marcella, mind,” said Wullie gravely.
”Wullie, I wish I could explain. I don't want to go, really, but if I don't I'm so afraid I'll get frozen up and dead. Oh, and acid drops,”
she added frantically.