The Last of the Logans E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 349

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    For the first time in the long history of the Chisholms of Logan, headship of the family was to pass out of the direct line, and the proud Logan title belong to a young man who had been born and had lived all his life in Australia. Johnny Chisholm, last of the Logans, was a boundary rider on an Australian sheep station until he returned to the Highland home of his ancestors. It was, perhaps, to be expected that he found no welcome awaiting him when he came to claim his inheritance. There were, however, two women waiting for him: Elizabeth Anson, who had once refused to marry him, and his cousin Fiona, who from the start had bitterly resented his coming. Would either of them change her attitude?

Leseprobe

Last of the Logans

Last of the Logans

© Vivian Stuart, 1957

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-474-3

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

____

For my sister and brother-in-law Esmee and Johnny Ward . . . and the Australian garage mechanic who gave me the idea for this novel.

CHAPTER ONE

A HEAT haze shimmered over the paddocks, hiding all but the corrugated iron roofs of the distant station buildings and casting a tenuous, deceptive pall across the olive green of the sheep pastures. Even the low, jagged line of the Macgill Range appeared less harsh and arid than it usually did at this time of day, for the haze softened its rocky contours, so that they merged into the backcloth of blue, cloudless sky.

Johnny Chisholm, returning from his ten-day inspection of the boundary fence, reined in his leggy bay horse under the shade of a clump of gumtrees and, eyes narrowed against the strong Australian sunlight, studied the line of wire in his immediate vicinity. There was a small break in the netting and he dismounted, reaching up into his saddle-pack for pliers and the roll of wire he carried, his movements leisurely.

He was a tall, slim young man, with a mop of unruly fair hair, dressed in denims and a patched and faded blue shirt which, rolled up to the elbows, displayed to full advantage his tanned, muscular arms. As he worked with the deft skill of long practice, he reflected cynically that Elizabeth Anson had told him, only a fortnight ago, that he was the best-looking man she had ever met in her life. His lips tightened. She had said this when he had proposed to her. She had let him take her into his eager, hungry arms, let him rain his clumsy, passionate, adoring kisses on her soft mouth, and then she had laughed at him.

“Marry you, Johnny?” The derisive note in her voice, heard again in memory, still rankled. “Marry you? Oh, don’t be absurd, darling! You know as well as I do that it wouldn’t be possible.”

He had known, of course, he had always known in his heart that a girl like Elizabeth Anson, who was rich and lovely and a visitor, was not for him. Yet he had dreamed and she had encouraged his dreams, made him forget that they were the kind that could never be realized. She had flirted with him outrageously, and he—Johnny shrugged angrily — he had made a fool of himself. He had asked her to be his wife. His big hands clenched as the pliers fell from them. He let them lie where they had fallen, took a tin of tobacco from the pocket of his jeans and rolled himself a cigarette, his fingers not quite steady. The cigarette going, he pushed back his shabby bush hat and went to lean against the fence post, staring moodily down at the tips of his dusty working boots. He didn’t see them, it was Elizabeth’s face he saw — her small, exquisite face with its pink and white English complexion, her lips parted in a smile in which there was both challenge and mockery. . . . Elizabeth’s face, as he had seen it when he bade her goodbye the morning after his foolish proposal.

She would be gone when he returned to the station: her visit over, she would be on her way back to the Old Country where she belonged and he didn’t, and the chances were that he would never set eyes on her again. In a way it would be a relief not to have to see her again, but . . . he would miss her, as achingly, he had missed her every waking minute of the past ten days.

His was a lonely job, Johnny reflected. It was odd that he had never considered it so until he had met Elizabeth. He’d always liked and taken a pride in it before. But now it gave him too much time to think, and he realized that it was monotonous and largely uneventful: the long days in the saddle as he made his solitary round of the property, the interminable nights when he camped by himself, with only his horse and his small camp-fire for company. The hours which once had been filled by his dreams and had never seemed too long until Elizabeth had laughed at him and made him see himself for what he was. What had she said to him, in that brittle, mocking voice in which a hint of laughter still lingered?

“You’re all right here, Johnny. This is your country and you’re in your element. I don’t pretend that you don’t attract me — you do, more than anyone I’ve ever met. For one thing you’re the best-looking man I ever met in my life — you’re strong and virile and absolutely natural and unspoilt. You’re honest and you don’t pretend and I adore your arrogance and the gentle kindness that lies behind it. I’ve enjoyed knowing you — we’ve had fun together, haven’t we? You can’t deny that and I won’t attempt to. But——” She had spread her hands, Johnny remembered, in a gesture which hurt almost as much as her words had done, because of its finality and because of the look in her eyes that went with it. “Try to understand, Johnny. It’s utterly impossible. I don’t want to settle out here in the back of beyond. And if I did, I’d marry a man who could afford to give me the sort of life I’m used to — not a station hand, who’d expect me to live in a beastly little tin-roofed shack and cook his meals for him. As you would, wouldn’t you, Johnny? Why, darling, don’t you see — we’d run out of conversation before we’d been married a month! You’d bore me and I should hate you for it. . . .”

Savagely, Johnny flung his half-smoked cigarette from him, ground it out with his heel as, ever since he had started smoking, he had been taught to do. Bush fires were a nightmare to all Australians, and however bitter and angry he might be, he couldn’t risk a spark among these dry, close-growing gums. Elizabeth had been careless with her cigarettes, he thought, torturing himself: he’d told her till he was tired of telling her that it was dangerous to throw away the lighted butts as she did, but she had taken no notice.

“I’m English,” she had said, every time he reproached her. “I simply can’t remember, that’s all.”

So he had stopped telling her and, instead, had made a habit of taking her cigarette from her when it was smoked, himself putting it out. This had been only one of the hundred unobtrusive little services he had performed for her. He hadn’t much small talk, for he was so often alone that he had virtually lost the habit of making conversation with strangers, but he had taken pleasure in serving her. Perhaps he had been a fool in that too. Elizabeth had probably despised him for being her slave — he’d made violent love to her, displayed more of the arrogance she had told him she adored.

Well, it was too late now. She had gone. Back to the City, to a flash hotel, he imagined, to wait until her plane left, if it hadn’t left already. Within a few days — he wasn’t sure how many but knew it was under a week — she would be back in London. Johnny pushed his old bush hat still further on to the back of his head and sighed. He wondered what London was like and tried to recollect what Elizabeth had told him about it. And what he had read. Elizabeth’s London had been different from the London he had read about in books — she had spoken of parties, theatres, celebrities, had grumbled about the traffic and the expense of living there, but she had told him little else.

He bent and picked up the pliers. Better finish the job, it would have to be done sometime if he was going to get back to the station house before dark. But he wasn’t in a hurry to get back, to face the banter of the men. They’d known, of course, how he felt about Elizabeth, although he had tried to hide his feelings from everyone but Elizabeth herself.

Oh, stone the crows, why did he have to keep thinking about Elizabeth? London, now. He forced himself to think about London. It would be vast, a great, teeming anthill of a city: grey, he thought, on account of the climate, the rain and the fog, a city steeped in history and tradition, full of majesty and dignified buildings, rich in pageantry. The Queen riding in an open landau, surrounded by her escort of Household Cavalry with their burnished breastplates and waving plumes: the Foot Guards, brave in scarlet and gold: the famous Beefeaters at the Tower of London: the Lord Mayor in his robes: the Bank of England, the River Thames, London Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column . . .

His fingers busy with torn wire, Johnny tried to picture what it would be like. He would never see it, of course. This, as Elizabeth had told him, was his place — a Queensland sheep station in the back of beyond.

And yet — he laughed shortly to himself — his father had been born in the Old Country, in Scotland, and had come out to Australia as a child of three, with his grandfather, who had somehow disgraced his family and had been some sort of remittance man. Until he was killed at Gallipoli, in the First World War, at the age of fifty-two. . . .

Johnny had never seen his grandfather but had been told many tales about him. He had been quite a character, by all accounts, a gambler, renowned for his wit and his good looks, who had made a fortune at Kiandra and lost it again, finally marrying, as his second wife, the daughter of a wealthy station owner whose property he had inherited. John Alastair Roderick Chisholm, with a handle, because he had been the younger son of an Earl. Johnny himself had been named after him, though he had always been careful to suppress the fact that he had three Christian names. Just as careful as he had been to hide the Christmas card which came for him every year from the Old Country because it came from the Earl and Countess of Logan and was addressed affectionately to “John from his cousins Roderick and Catherine” and would almost certainly have been misunderstood by his fellow station hands.

On the only occasion when he mentioned it — years ago, when he had been a kid at school — it had earned him the mocking nickname of “Dook” which had taken months and a dozen fights to live down and, eventually, to refute. Here he was just plain Johnny Chisholm, as his father had been before him, and, until Elizabeth Anson had come into his life, he had been content.

At the thought of his father, Johnny’s jaw jutted. The repair was finished and he straightened his back, called his horse to him and replaced his tools in the saddle-pack. But although he remounted, he did not immediately move on. He was aware of a growing reluctance to return to the station house, to the questions, the sly grins and the good-natured gibes that would inevitably greet him. Even the Gilliats’ unvoiced sympathy would hurt, and he wondered, sitting motionless in his saddle, whether perhaps he ought to pack in his job, move on somewhere else. But of course he couldn’t, not really, not when he came to think about it — the Gilliats had been too good to him, treating him more like a son than an employee, and Harry Gilliat, his boss, had taught him all he knew. Harry was a relation of his mother’s by marriage and since her death, four years ago, he’d had no one else he could call his family, for his father — following the family tradition — had volunteered for the A.I.F. a week after war had been declared and had been killed in North Africa.

His father had been a pretty fine man, Johnny reflected, with fierce and stubborn pride. Perhaps he hadn’t made the success of his life that he might have done, struggling with a small sheep property at a time when wool prices were at rock bottom, but he had been a fine man for all that and it was no use regretting the fact that he had let the property go for a song on his enlistment and that, on his death, there had been neither land nor money for his son to inherit. He had know that his duty was to his country and he had done it, without hesitation.

Johnny remembered him — not very clearly, for he had been only seven when his father had gone away — but he retained a mental picture of a big, fair-haired man with laughing blue eyes and a strangely wistful smile, who had clapped him on the head and played exciting games with him which they had both taken very seriously. His mother, he had known instinctively, had been deeply in love with his father and he had never fully recovered from her loss. She had been a quiet voiced, gentle person, delicate and pretty, and she had done her best for her only son, bringing him back to Queensland, where her own childhood had been spent and working — despite persistent illhealth — in her brother-in-law’s house in order to send Johnny to boarding school in Brisbane. At sixteen, he had come back to the station as a jackaroo and now, skilled and experienced, he was a boundary rider, with the prospect — still a trifle vague — of taking over as manager when Harry Gilliat retired. Apart from two years’ Army Service in Korea and Japan, which he had unexpectedly enjoyed, Johnny had been in Queensland all his life.

And here, he thought belligerently, he would remain. But Elizabeth’s parting words still stung him.

“You’ll never do anything with your life, Johnny,” she had said. “You’ll never get anywhere because you’ve no ambition and you can’t see beyond this place and won’t try. There’s a whole world outside, you know — a world I’m going back to. If you ever find the courage to enter it, let me know. . .

As if he would, Johnny told himself angrily. Go running after her like a little dog, just because she’d left him! But she had destroyed his peace, taken his heart with her, made a fool of him in front of his mates and the Gilliats. He had believed himself a man, but Elizabeth had questioned his manhood and even caused him to doubt it, to wonder and to question, to feel ashamed of the little he had achieved. Because he had loved her and they had been so happy together, it simply hadn’t occurred to him, in his blind stupidity and conceit, that it hadn’t meant to her what it had meant to him. It hadn’t entered his head, when he made it, that she would reject his proposal or laugh at the idea of marrying him.

His head came up. It was no use just standing here, wallowing in bitterness and self-pity. Sooner or later he would have to go back to the station — they would be expecting him and he had his job to do. Within the next day or so, shearing would start and they would all be too busy with that to remember about him. Elizabeth had gone: the thing was over and it was best forgotten.

Johnny touched his heels to his horse and the bay moved obediently into a lope. He rode in the easy, loose-limbed style all Australian riders adopt, not moving in the saddle, his gaze on the fence and his body relaxed. Once more he encountered a break in the wire and stopped to repair it: a little further on, plaintive bleating led him to where a young Merino ram had become entangled by its horns and was held fast. He realized and looked it over, sent it running with a slap across its thickly covered rump, remembering, as he did so, that Elizabeth had once told him distastefully that she could not bear the smell of sheep.

The sun sank in a blaze of scarlet glory behind the faraway Macgills. He was only a mile or so from the first of the paddock gates now, his inspection all but completed, and it was cooler, if still completely airless. Wrinkling his nostrils, he inhaled the smell of smoke and wheeled sharply in order to investigate its source. Someone, he saw, had built a tiny cooking fire just clear of the trees to his right, and, as he approached it, a thin, boyish figure in jeans rose to its feet and hailed him excitedly.

“Hey, Johnny—Johnny, I’ve been waiting for you! Come on, the billy’s boiling and I’ve got some terrific news for you. Only it’s rather sad, in a way, and I’m afraid it’ll be a bit of a shock to you.”

Johnny smiled, recognizing the voice of his employer’s youngest daughter.

“Why, Pip,” he said, sliding out of the saddle beside her, “this is quite like old times, isn’t it — you waiting for me and the billy boiling? And I can do with a cupper — I’m as dry as Cooper’s Creek. But what’s the news, anyway?”

Philippa Gilliat shook her head at him. She was seventeen, a slim, long-limbed slip of a girl, recently released from boarding school and ecstatically pleased to be at home for good at last. She was a nice kid, Johnny thought, and it had been decent of her to come and meet him, as she had been wont to do as a child — almost as if she had sensed his reluctance to return and was seeking to make it easier for him. Unless — he stiffened. Could she have come to tell him that Elizabeth hadn’t gone, that she was still with the Gilliats? Because if she had . . . he felt the hot, embarrassed color creeping up into his cheeks.

“Pip,” he said urgently, “tell me! What is it, for Pete’s sake? Elizabeth’s not still here, is she?”

“Oh, no,” Pip returned, ““she’s gone.” Her voice was cold and Johnny realized, with astonishment, that Pip, who usually got on well with everyone, was glad that Elizabeth had gone.

“Didn’t you like her?” he asked, puzzled.

Again Pip shook her dark curls at him. “No,” she answered emphatically, “I didn’t. So there! But”—she dismissed Elizabeth with a curt gesture—”I have got some terrific news for you. It’s so terrific that I think you’d better sit down and drink your tea before I tell you — you’ll need it to prepare you for the shock.”

“I doubt that,” Johnny objected good-humoredly, but he tethered his horse beside hers and, returning to the fire, sat down and accepted a mug of strong, scalding tea from Pip’s blackened old billy. “Well?” he prompted indulgently, because he knew Pip’s innocent love of the dramatic. “What is this terrific news of yours, anyway?”

Pip faced him, knees drawn up and her arms clasped about her long, slim legs. Her eyes were dark and wideset and they met Johnny’s gravely. “I did warn you,” she began, “that it’d be a shock——”

“Yes, you warned me. Shall I try and guess what it is?”

“You’ll never guess. It’s too — too incredible.”

“Well, let me try. For a start, how did it come?”

“On the phone. From Brisbane. There was a call for you.”

“For me?” Johnny stared at her open-mouthed. Had Elizabeth relented after all? Had she tried to call him up, to tell him . . . he licked at dry lips, took a gulp of his tea and then asked cautiously: “Who was it rang me?”

“A solicitor.” Pip was enjoying the interest she had aroused. “Mr. Henry of Henry, Barton and Henry.”

“For crying out loud, Pip, you’ve made this up!”

“No.” She denied it vigorously, her dark eyes dancing in the firelight. Then her gravity returned and the light in her eyes flickered and died, like a candle flame extinguished in a sudden breeze. “It’s a tragedy, really — well, part of it is. I didn’t know any of them, of course, but all the same it was a pretty ghastly thing to happen.”

“Now, look, Pip,” Johny said patiently, “I don’t understand a word of this. None of it makes sense. Begin at the beginning, like a good kid, will you? A cove called Henry, who’s a solicitor, called me up from Brisbane. What did he say? And who took the call?”

“Dad took it, since you weren’t there. But——”

“Did he send you to fetch me?”

“No. He doesn’t know I’ve come. But he’ll guess, I expect.” She hesitated.

“Go on,” Johnny bade her. He started to roll a cigarette, no longer believing her. She was playing a trick on him, he decided, and added, grinning at her: “I suppose my rich uncle died and left me a fortune?”

Pip looked startled. “Well, yes, he did, as a matter of fact. A fortune and a title. You’re — you’re an Earl, Johnny. The Earl of Logan. You——”

“What?” exploded Johnny. He leapt to his feet, reddening furiously, and the grazing horses raised their heads, alarmed by the sudden, unexpected movement. “Look, Pip, if this is your idea of a joke it isn’t mine. I haven’t got a rich uncle——”

“No. But you’ve got a cousin and he was the Earl of Logan. The solicitor said so. And anyway I knew — your mother told Dad years ago.”

“I see.” Johnny’s mouth set grimly. “And suppose I have? Suppose he has died, that doesn’t make me his heir — he’s got two sons.”

Pip nodded and now he saw the glint of tears in her eyes. “He had, yes. But the younger one was a soldier and he was killed in Cyprus a fortnight ago. His name was Hamish Chisholm. Your cousin and the other son, Alastair, flew to Cyprus for his funeral. On their way back to England the plane crashed and they were both killed. So that only leaves you. You’re the only male heir.”

Johnny was silent, shocked to the depths of his being. He hadn’t known his Scottish cousins, but, as Pip had said, it was ghastly thing to happen — stark and terrible tragedy for the house of Logan. He knew now that Pip was telling him the truth, her sincerity was obvious from her tearfilled eyes. Besides, she knew the names of his dead cousins and there was no way that she could have found these out, except the way she had described, from the Brisbane solicitor. Pip, admittedly, liked to play tricks on him, but this wasn’t the sort of trick she would ever have played, she was too kind-hearted and had too much sense. But if it was true, then . . . he took a deep, painful breath and dropped to his knees beside her.

“Pip” he said in a low, shaken voice, “what did he want — Henry, I mean, the solicitor? Does he want to see me?”

She inclined her head. “Yes. He said you’d have to go to Scotland. There’s a castle, an estate, a lot of money. They—they belong to you now.”

“Do they?” All the color drained from Johnny’s face. “Yes, I suppose they do. But what would I do with them? I wouldn’t want to live over there. This is my home, this is where I belong. I’d be — I’d be out of place in a Scottish castle. I can’t be an Earl. Look at me, Pip—how could I?”

Pip looked at him, gravely at first, and then a little smile curved her lips. “You’re all right, Johnny,” she told him with shy pride. “Of course you are. You’re a fine person, the best there is. We all think the world of you, Dad and Mum and me and the others. Whatever anyone else says.”

He knew she meant Elizabeth and two bright spots of color burned in his cheeks again. Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to marry him because he was only a station hand in the back of beyond, but now, without warning, everything had changed. He wasn’t just a station hand now, he was — Johnny swallowed hard — he was the Earl of Logan, heir to a great Highland estate and an old and honored name. If he went to the Old Country now, Elizabeth wouldn’t scorn him. He could meet her on equal terms.

He stood up, suddenly impatient. “Let’s go, Pip.”

She rose with him and together they doused the still smouldering ashes of the fire. It was quite dark now and stars gleamed in the night sky. Familiar stars, stars which had looked down at him many times as he lay rolled in his blanket at the end of his lonely patrol. Johnny’s gaze went to the Southern Cross. He wouldn’t see the Southern Cross in the Old Country, but he knew, in that moment, that he had to go. Not only because of Elizabeth but for his own sake and because it was his duty. There was his cousin Catherine who was now so tragically bereaved and who might need him. And her daughter, who was a year or so younger than himself — Fiona. He knew nothing about them save their names, but they were his family, he must go to them because he was the last of the Logans and his place wasn’t here any longer, it was with them.

Pip was unusually quiet as they jogged through the paddocks side by side. Johnny glanced at her once, but in the dim light it was impossible to make out more than the outline of her face.

She broke the silence at last. “Johnny——” Her voice was tremulous and Johnny turned in surprise, realizing suddenly that she was crying.

He reached out a hand to take hers. She was a sweet kid, he thought, as precious to him as a sister, and he wondered why she was crying. “Look,” he admonished gently, “you mustn’t grieve for my cousins.”

“I . . . wasn’t. I’m awfully sorry for them, of course, but that wasn’t why I was crying.” She freed her hand, drew it, childishly, across her eyes. “Johnny, you’ll go, won’t you?”

“To Logan? Yes, Pip. I must. But I’ll be back. I won’t go for ever.”

“Won’t you?” She sounded incredulous.

“No,” he said firmly, “of course I won’t. You’ll see.”

“I’ll miss you,” Pip whispered miserably. “I’ve only just started to realize how—how much. At first I was pleased for your sake — that you’d be rich, I mean, and— oh, and everything. But now——” She broke off and he felt her eyes on his face, searching it. “Well?” he asked. “Now?”

“I wish you hadn’t to go.”

“I told you—it won’t be forever. Anyway, you can come to Scotland and visit me. Your dad promised he’d stand you a trip over, didn’t he? Long before this happened.”

“Yes,” she agreed but without conviction. They reached the last of the paddock gates and Johnny went forward to open it. The light from the station buildings blazed at them out of the darkness, bright and welcoming.

“Will you — will you marry Elizabeth now?” Pip questioned suddenly. Johnny spun round in his saddle, letting the gate go. He didn’t answer her at once but sat motionless, his brows coming together in a pensive frown.

“If she’ll have me, Pip,” he said at last. “But she refused me once, you know.”

“She won’t now,” Pip returned flatly. She thrust past him, bent forward to grasp the catch on the gate and her voice was muffled as she added: “She’s not right for you shouldering know. She’s hurt you once and she won’t hesitate to do it again.”

“Now look, Pip———” Johnny began, on his dignity, but Pip interrupted him. “You don’t know her, Johnny. She’s different with men. She put on an act with you but she didn’t bother with me. And she’s hard. As—as hard as nails.”

“You oughtn’t to talk like that, Pip.” Johnny was angry but he controlled his temper with an almost visible effort. “You don’t know anything about it, you’re only a kid.”

“Am I?” Pip had got the gate open. She slipped through it, held it against her knee so that it was between them. “I’m seventeen. And” — she caught her breath on a sob — “if this hadn’t happened and you’d stayed here, you’d probably have married me in the end. So there!” The last two words were uttered with childish defiance, and when she had said them she put heels to her horse and was off at a canter, recklessly ignoring the station wagon which rounded one of the buildings and had to skid to avoid her.

Johnny stared after her helplessly, recognizing the truth of her assertion in spite of himself. Because it was true— if he’d stayed here, he might easily have married Pip Gilliat . . . in the end. He didn’t meet many girls and Pip was nearest to him in age, he had known her for most of her life and he was fond of her. In a year or so, when she had filled out and matured, she would be an attractive girl, a wife any man could be proud of, but . . . he wouldn’t be here for a year or so. He was going away. His heart sank and then lifted again. He had the world at his feet, a whole vast new world . . . Elizabeth’s world. And she had doubted that he had the courage to enter it.

Johnny squared his shoulders. Well, he would show her, he would show them all, even Pip.

He bent and jerked open the gate. Harry Gilliat got out of the station wagon and came towards him, a big, broad-shouldered, smiling man, his hand outheld.

“Well, Johnny, congratulations, boy! I reckon Pip forestalled me with the news, didn’t she?”

Johnny dismounted. He took the outstretched hand and wrung it hard. “Yes,” he said, “she told me.”

“Come on in, then,” Harry Gilliat bade him. “I expect you’ll want to be on your way to Brisbane in the morning. I’ll run you in to the railhead first thing.” He put an arm about the younger man’s shoulders. “Mother and the girls have seen to your packing, everything’s ready and the solicitor promised he’d see about an air passage for you on the first available plane, so you haven’t a thing to worry about.”

“No,” Johnny conceded uncertainly, “I suppose not.”

“You haven’t.” There was pride in Harry Gillat’s voice, pride and a deep affection. “You’ll do all right, don’t worry. This couldn’t have happened to a better man, you know — I’d stake my oath on it. And on you.”

Johnny took comfort from his words. They walked together to the station wagon and then a crowd of men came tumbling out of the bunkhouse, to fling themselves upon him and wring his hand. They hoisted him on to their shoulders and carried him in triumph back to the house . . .

CHAPTER TWO

FIONA CHISHOLM was sitting in the drawing-room at Logan Castle, with the television switched on, when Dr. Cameron was shown in. She looked up with a brief smile of welcome and motioned the visitor to a seat beside her.

“Am I disturbing you?” The young doctor hesitated.

“No, of course you’re not.” Her smile widened. “I’m waiting for In Town Tonight to come on. The new head of the family is being interviewed, I believe.” Her smile abruptly faded and David Cameron thought: She’s taking it hard, poor girl. But who can blame her? Her father and both her brothers killed within a week and now a complete stranger — an uncouth Australian cousin — arriving out of the blue to take everything she and her mother ought to have had. She must be going through hell. He wished, quite desperately, that he could help her, but couldn’t find anything to say.

Fiona faced him. She was a beautiful girl, with her long dark hair and candid, smoke-grey eyes — the image of her mother, who had been a famous beauty. They were both typical of the Chisholm women, tall and proud and dignified. Involuntarily, Dr. Cameron glanced up at the portrait-lined walls and sighed. He wondered what the new Earl would be like, and Fiona said, uncannily, as if she had read his thought: “Stay and see him, won’t you? It shouldn’t be long now, the News is nearly finished.”

He sat down. “Your mother seems a little better this evening,” he volunteered diffidently, and was rewarded by the return of her smile.

“Yes, I thought she was, David. You’ve been awfully good to her — to both of us.”

A tinge of color crept up beneath the smooth tan of David Cameron’s cheeks. “I wish there was more I could do.”

“You’ve done what you could. There isn’t a cure for a broken heart, is there? I don’t suppose there ever will be.”

“No.” His eyes searched her face anxiously. He knew that, beneath her apparent calm, she was unbearably tense and strung up, near to the limit of her endurance. Everything had fallen on to her shoulders — the funeral arrangements, the memorial service, the cables to Australia and the protracted legal wrangling — for her mother had collapsed when the news had been brought to her and still lay in that strange limbo to which the heartbroken escape and from which he had so far failed to bring her back. Perhaps, for Lady Logan’s sake, it was better so, but the strain on Fiona was appalling.

The News was followed by the weather forecast: the bright screen flickered in front of David Cameron’s eyes but he wasn’t consciously aware of it. When the Sports Round-up began, Fiona leaned forward and turned down the sound.

“You don’t mind?” she asked politely.

He shook his head. “Is there anything I can do for you, Fiona? Anything at all? You know I’d give my right hand to help you if I could.”

“Yes, I know.” Her voice was gentle. “But you’ve given me sleeping pills, haven’t you? And your shoulder to weep on. You’ve been a wonderful friend to me, David.”

“I wish I could be more than a friend.”

“You can’t, my dear.” Her expression hardened. “I shall have to marry money now. We haven’t a penny, you know, Mummy and I. I don’t mind for myself a bit. It’s different for her, she’s always been used to living here, having everything she wanted — and Daddy’s adoration. It’s going to be a terrible blow to her, on top of everything else, when we have to leave Logan.”

“Leave Logan?” David stared at her in shocked astonishment. “But surely you don’t have to leave? This Australian won’t turn you out——”

“No, I don’t suppose he will. But we shall have to go, all the same. It doesn’t belong to us any more — everything is entailed, you see, in the good, old-fashioned Scottish way. The heir gets it all. He’ll want his own people here, not us.”

“But he’s young. And he’s not married.”

“I know.” Fiona’s lovely mouth tightened in distaste. “But already one of his girl friends has tracked him down. A Miss Elizabeth Anson. She has installed herself in the village, at the Logan Arms, and keeps ringing up to find out if he’s arrived. I’ve had to disappoint her — he was due here this evening, but” — she gestured to the television set — “that held him up. The Press have splashed his name and his romantic story all over their front pages and now the B.B.C. are having their whack. He telephoned to say that he would be coming on the night train. Oh, David!” Suddenly her voice broke and her eyes were bright with tears. “Hamish was killed by Cypriot terrorists — they shot him in the back and the papers printed pictures of him lying there. And then Daddy and Alastair died in a burning aeroplane and I couldn’t open a single newspaper without seeing ghastly pictures of the wreckage — the pitiful, horrible wreckage that I see in nightmares when I try to sleep. And now . . . all this. I should think everyone in the country knows the name of Logan now. It’s—it’s like trying to go on living a normal life under a huge, glaring spotlight that’s never turned off. I thought they’d stopped, that they’d lost interest in us, but now it’s all been resurrected again because he has arrived at last. We had photographers here yesterday, taking pictures of the Castle . . . his inheritance. I hate him, David, without even knowing him. I know I oughtn’t to, that it’s not reasonable to hate a person you’ve never set eyes on, but I can’t be reasonable. He’s got what Alastair should have had and I hate him for that.”

“You couldn’t really hate anyone,” David insisted. He took her hand, fondled it gently. It was ice-cold and it trembled in his. Fiona looked up at him. Her eyes, behind the film of tears, were as cold as the hand he held.

“I can. I’m a Chisholm and a Highlander. They both know how to hate.”

David lowered his gaze. He saw the picture of the sports commentator fade from the television screen, to be succeeded by the medley that served as introduction to In Town Tonight. “Shall I turn this off?” he asked. “If you feel like that about your Australian cousin, seeing him might upset you.” He didn’t take her passionate outburst seriously, aware of the strain under which, for weeks, she had been laboring, but his trained physician”s instinct warned him that she was near breaking point. He wished that she would let herself go and find some relief in tears: she was so young, so tragically young and lovely that his heart went out to her. “Fiona,” he pleaded, “darling, you mustn’t be bitter. Honestly you mustn’t, it won’t do any good.”

He drew her to him and, for a moment, felt her relax against him, tasting the salty bitterness of her tears as his lips touched her cheek.

“Sweet, you aren’t alone, you know. You’ve got me. I love you, I——”

With swift revulsion of feeling, Fiona jerked herself free of his encircling arms. “Don’t, David” — her voice was harsh with pain—”please don’t. I can’t love you, I won’t——” She leaned in front of him, her fingers fumbling unsteadily with the controls of the television set. “I want to see him,” she said. “And it won’t upset me — heavens, why should it? I’ve got to meet him in the flesh tomorrow, he’s coming here, don’t you understand? This place is his now, not ours. He has a right here and I shall have to make him welcome.”

The announcer’s voice cut her short. The sound of it was so loud that it wakened echoes in the queit room. David adjusted the control. They waited, in silence, whilst a young Spanish guitarist was interviewed. He played and sang, but, although they didn’t speak, neither of them consciously heard him. He bowed himself off, to be followed by a middle-aged couple who had been medical missionaries in New Guinea.

David found his attention wandering from the screen to Fiona, and the blank, dead look on her face filled him with anxious disquiet. She sat very still, gazing fixedly at the screen, and from the walls of the lofty-ceilinged room her ancestors looked down on her. It was as if the whole turbulent history of the Chisholms of Logan was written in their proud, bleak faces, the young physician thought.

He knew their history well enough: it was impossible to live and work in this district without hearing it in song and legend. The great Castle which towered over the glen had been a Chisholm stronghold since the twelfth century, when Red Roderick had come with his fierce, marauding clansmen and laid its first crude foundations, which later Chisholms had added to as the years went by. And which, David thought grimly, they had defended to their last breath, against King and commoner alike. Chisholms had fought in the Fifteen and the Forty-five, had beggared themselves for the sake of their Bonnie Prince Charles and followed him into exile: they had carried on a bitter and relentless feud against the Campbells and the redcoats of King George and had not been subdued until granted a pardon and an earldom, together with a promise of independence which amounted, virtually, to victory.

Afterwards, they had served King and country with valour and distinction throughout succeeding generations. They had all been soldiers, many of them well known. A Chisholm of Logan had fought at Waterloo, another at Sebastopol, a third under Gordon of Khartoum: their names occupied much of the space on the village memorial which commemorated the last two world wars.