Lucy Balfour set down her heavy pails of brambles and straightened her slim back. Surely she had gathered enough to make jam for the whole winter.
The hillside fell away beneath her feet to the blue waters of the loch and the gray town of Marysburgh. Rising through the still, golden autumn air, she could hear the faint strains of the German band playing in the park. A steamer moved out from the pier, trailing its long column of smoke behind it as its paddles churned up the still waters and sent the reflections of town and mountains scattering and sparkling.
The air was heavy with the smell of damp leaves, pine, and woodsmoke. Larks trilled high above and wasps droned in the bushes, and all the while the rumpty-tiddly, jolly sound of the band far away made Lucy long to be with her friends, showing off their best dresses and casting sidelong glances at the boys as they paraded up and down over the smooth grass between the rhododendron bushes.
No matter what her friends planned to do with their Saturdays, Lucy’s mother—almost perversely it appeared to Lucy—seemed to arrange something else. The whole of the precious Saturday morning had been taken up with housework and she had been looking forward to a free afternoon now that her French lessons with Miss Johnstone were finished. But Mrs. Balfour had folded her work-worn red hands, wrinkled from the washing-up soda, and told Lucy that the brambles had to be picked for jam. “It would be better,” she had remarked, “if you saw as little of those common girls as possible from now on.”
A small frown creased Lucy’s brow. She naturally could not question her mother’s authority. But, common! Such snobbery had been unheard of before. Mrs. Balfour worked as a housemaid at Castle Inver and her father was an odd man. They were not even upper servants!
Lucy remembered that the change in her mother had begun when she, Lucy, was fourteen and fully prepared to leave school. Her mother’s face had taken on a closed, secretive look as she stated that Lucy must complete a further two years and take French lessons from Miss Johnstone, a retired schoolteacher.
Most of her friends were already working or engaged to be married. Quite a number went to Castle Inver to be trained as servants, for the Earl and Countess of Marysburgh kept a large staff. Her parents, she knew, could hardly afford such luxuries as French lessons and it was not like either of them to spend an ill-advised penny.
With a sigh, she noticed a huge bush of glossy black brambles farther down the slope, and picked up her pails. She had been thoroughly schooled never to question her elders and betters. But at least I can wonder about it, thought Lucy rebelliously as she pulled on a pair of washleather gloves and made her way nimbly down the slope.
She had to wear gloves for even the slightest task. After washing up she had to rub her hands with lemon, then cover them in cold cream, and sit for half an hour with them encased in white cotton gloves. But would her parents tell her why she must never, ever get her hands work-roughened? “Keep a civil tongue in your head. We know what’s best for you, lassie,” was all the reply she could expect.
The day was exceptionally hot for a Scottish autumn. After a horrendous summer of storms and squalls and pouring rain, the clouds had suddenly lifted, rushing up and beyond the high mountains like so many bad fairies trailing their wispy black robes as they fled the christening party. A perfect Indian summer had been left behind with long, idyllic sunny days and blue, smoky evenings where the lights from the houses in the town twinkled in the dusk and sent their reflections to fall, sparkling, in the loch, to rival the blazing stars above.
Lucy had always imagined that she would go into service as a housemaid like her mother and had tried to get her mother to talk about life in the castle. But Mrs. Balfour would only fold her lips repressively and say, “I do my work well and I do my Christian duty and that’s all a body can expect.” Mrs. Balfour was full of such repressive phrases, some of them verging on idiocy. One evening while Lucy had been poring over her French readers, she had raised her head and exclaimed, “Oh, I would love to visit Paris,” to which Mrs. Balfour had sniffed and remarked, “I havenae been to Paris and my airms are aye the same length.”
Lucy had turned this phrase over and over in her mind. What had going to Paris got to do with the length of one’s arms? But Mrs. Balfour had obviously believed this to be a masterly piece of rhetoric so she had declined to question her about it.
In the novels that Lucy loved to read, the heroines were always sinking to the floor and laying their heads on their mothers’ laps—their blond curls spilling over in the lamplight in artistic disarray—and pouring out their girlish confidences. Lucy grinned as she thought of the effect this would have on her mother if she did the same. Mrs. Balfour would probably administer a strong dose of syrup of figs to purge the nonsense out of her.
A sudden breeze whipped up the loch from the far away Atlantic, ruffling the blue water and carrying the dancing music of the band to Lucy’s ears. “Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?” Lucy straightened up, her eyes dreamy as she imagined the Gaiety Girls strutting across the stage to the music, and she raised her clear voice in the penultimate line, “If I must love someone, then why not you?”
“Why not, indeed?” said a lazy voice behind her, and she spun around.
A man stood at the top of the slope looking down at her. He was very tall, over six feet, with a lean, muscular build. His thin, high-nosed face was topped with a thick thatch of straw-blond hair and his eyes under their heavy lids were very blue and mocking. He was wearing jodhpurs and a hacking jacket, both well worn. But even unsophisticated Lucy realized from the unstudied arrogance of his manner that she was seeing one of the mysterious aristocracy for the first time.
Although Castle Inver was just outside the town, Lucy had never seen either the earl or the countess. They spent a great part of the year in London or abroad and the entrance to the castle was many miles away from the town, leading as it did from the main Glasgow road. Although the town of Marysburgh was protestant to a man, the earl and countess were Roman Catholic and had their own chapel in the castle grounds, so there was no possibility of them visiting the town church.
Lucy watched the man walking with languid athletic ease down the slope toward her and was relieved to see that he was quite old. Young men made her feel shy. She judged him to be at least thirty-five, and to seventeen-year-old Lucy, that was positively middle-aged.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a light, pleasant voice.
Lucy reflected with some irritation that older people always seemed to ask the most unnecessary questions, but she bobbed a curtsy and answered, politely, that she was picking brambles for jam. “How jolly,” he remarked lazily, sitting down on an outcrop of rock near the bush and crossing one muscular leg over the other. He drew out a gold cigarette case, snapped it open so that the pale gold flashed in the sunlight, selected a cigarette, and then settled back to enjoy a peaceful smoke, his blue eyes gazing tranquilly over the scenery spread out below them.
Lucy realized that her mouth was hanging open and shut it and then stood irresolutely wondering if she should wait until she was dismissed.
One blue eye slid around to survey her. “Don’t let me keep you from your work,” said the stranger carelessly and then resumed his study of the landscape.
Lucy felt strangely piqued. “I have finished,” she said defiantly, leaning forward to pick up the heavy pails.
The sun shone on her long, glossy black hair, making it seem to dance with purple lights. Lucy straightened up and turned and looked straight at the stranger for the first time.
He saw before him a classic Celtic beauty: hair like midnight, clear light-green eyes—green as fairy grass and ringed with heavy black lashes—in a small elfin face. Her skin was so white and fine that it looked translucent. He said suddenly, “In the highlands, in the country places,/ Where the old plain men have rosy faces,/ And the young fair maidens/ Quiet eyes.”
“That’s pretty,” said Lucy. “Who wrote it?”
“One of your countrymen,” he replied lightly. “Robert Louis Stevenson.”
Lucy felt her nervousness receding. “Are you a foreigner?”
He laughed. “I suppose I am considered one in this neck of the woods. I’m English.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Lucy, blushing. “It’s just—well—it’s just that I thought English people like you would have haw-hawy sort of voices.”
“Some of us do,” he said, grinning. “I know the sort of thing you mean. ‘Thet cawr parked in the gawrawge is meyine.’ “
Lucy giggled. “Something like that.”
He got lazily to his feet. “Let me help you with your pails. Do you live in the town?”
She nodded without replying. He bent and picked up the brimming pails and moved up the slope to where his hunter was tethered to a rowan tree. He neatly looped the reins over his arm and headed slowly down the hill toward Marysburgh, seeming unconcerned whether the girl followed him or not.
The sun was beginning to set behind the mountains, sending long red shafts burning across the loch and flaming over the autumn colors of the countryside. He stopped at a bend in the narrow winding road to wait for her. He was smiling at her as she came toward him and Lucy did not realize that she was looking at a picture that she was never, ever going to forget: the tall blond man standing at the bend of the road as a mischievous wind whipped down the mountain sending the scarlet and gold leaves whirling up around him and making his glossy horse stamp and whinny; the scarlet berries bending down the rowan trees with their weight; the purple of the heather blazing from mountainside to mountainside in the fiery dying rays of the sun; and the evening smells of pine and heather and crushed fruit mingling with the tarry, fishy West Highland smells rising from the sea loch below.
Then abruptly the sunlight was gone and they walked silently and amicably together toward the town. Lucy only began to wonder about the identity of her companion when they reached the outskirts of the town and she noticed several people stopping to stare at them.
“I live just here … Glebe Road,” said Lucy shyly, pointing to a tiny terraced house with a pocket-handkerchief garden. She felt suddenly ashamed of her modest home and then ashamed of herself for feeling that way. But the strict code of Scottish hospitality must be observed.
“Would you care to step into the house for some refreshment?” she said.
He shook his head. “I must get back to Castle Inver in time to change for dinner. What is your name?”
“Lucy, sir. Lucy Balfour.”
“Well, Lucy, thank you for a pleasant interlude. My name is Harvey, Andrew Harvey.” He put the pails down beside her and swung himself up onto his horse, raised his hand in a kind of mock salute, and galloped off down the road. She stood for some minutes staring after him.
Smells of fish and chips and hot dripping were emanating from the house and she suddenly realized she was hungry. She walked around the path to the back of the house and pushed open the kitchen door. The front door was only opened once a week on Sundays. On all other days, the kitchen door had to be used so as to leave the front step gleaming white under its pristine coat of pipe clay. To her surprise, her parents were seated on either side of the kitchen table with the whiskey bottle between them.
Lucy thought for the hundredth time how alike her parents looked. Lucy had been born when both were in their forties. Both had snow-white hair and wrinkled rosy faces, small twinkling eyes, and rather severe mouths. Both were thin and wiry and not given to speaking much on any subject whatsoever. But that night there was an almost festive air about them.
“Pull up a chair, Lucy, and have a dram,” said Mrs. Balfour, pouring out a generous measure of whiskey. “We’ve got great news for you.”
Lucy sat down and waited. To cry “What is it?” or to show any other sign of excitement would have been firmly repressed. She knew it must be something extraordinary for her parents to produce the carefully hoarded bottle of whiskey.
“Now drink that down like a good girl,” said Mrs. Balfour. “I went to see my lady this afternoon.” My lady was Mary, Countess of Marysburgh. “Her daughter, Lady Angela, is returning from her finishing school in Switzerland on Monday and you, Lucy Balfour, are to be Lady Angela’s personal maid!”
Lucy blinked in surprise. “Are you sure—Ma?” she faltered. “Are you sure she didn’t mean housemaid?”
“No,” said Mrs. Balfour, enjoying her triumph to the fullest. “Lady’s maid. That’s what you’ll be. That’s what I’ve dreamed of for you. It’s a tremendous honor.”
“Will I be able to live at home like you and Dad?” asked Lucy. Mr. and Mrs. Balfour were unusual in that they preferred to retain their independence by living “out.”
Mrs. Balfour shook her head. “No, lassie. You’ll bide up at the castle with the upper servants and you won’t even have to wear a uniform. Plain, simple clothes, mind you, but your own clothes. Now let’s go up to your room and I’ll show you what I’ve bought you.”
Lucy drained her glass and followed her mother’s small figure up the narrow uncarpeted stairs. Lying on her bed was one simple print dress for morning wear and a plain dark one to be worn in the afternoons and evenings. There were also two bolts of cloth, one of print and the other of dark wool. “You’ll need to get busy with your needle and make a few other dresses to the same pattern,” said her mother. “Now, what do you say? Wasn’t it worth paying Miss Johnstone sixpence for each of those French lessons?”
Lucy hugged her mother close with a rare demonstration of affection, for such weaknesses were not often encouraged in the Balfour household. “Oh, Ma, thank you for everything,” she cried. “Now I’ll be able to work hard and pay you back for all your trouble.”
“That you will, lassie,” said Mrs. Balfour, producing her trump card. “You’ll be earning £25 a year. Think of that!”
Lucy could hardly sleep that night for excitement. She would never dream of asking anything more out of life. No other girl in Marysburgh had ever risen to such heights, since most of the upper women servants at the castle came from England or France—a source of much bitterness and jealousy to the townspeople.
The picture of Andrew Harvey standing at the bend of the road came into her mind only to flee before the exciting thoughts of her new job. Men would probably have no place in her life … no place at all.