Two days later Aunt Horatia Montagu-Jackson and Mrs. Barrington arrived just in time for lunch, without any warning whatsoever. They drove up in an old-fashioned chauffeur-driven Daimler. Aunt Horry was wearing tweeds and a hat rather like a Tyrolean hat, with a feather stuck in it. She was small but agile, with grey hair and a pair of bright blue eyes that beamed from under the Tyrolean hat, and an incongruous note was added to her appearance by a great many diamonds, in the shape of brooches, bracelets and earrings, that adorned her diminutive person.
She advanced upon her nephew when he arrived to greet her in the hall and embraced him with obvious fervour, kissing him heartily on both cheeks.
“You look,” she told him, “extraordinarily well, and I’m delighted to see you.”
“And you,” he told her, ”don’t look even half a day older!”
“My dear, I’m being treated by a wonderful Italian doctor who’s performed miracles—simply miracles!— for my rheumatism, and in fact I just haven’t got it any more!” She looked around her as if searching for someone, and then exclaimed quickly: “But where’s the young woman? My new niece-to-be! I must see her —I must see her at once, because I’ve been simply dying to know what she looks like!”
As Karen emerged from the shadows of the hall she felt rather than saw the keen blue eyes fasten upon her, and then Aunt Horatia darted forward and caught her by her slender shoulders and looked at her so hard that the girl’s blush rose uncontrollably.
“H’m!” the elderly lady exclaimed, at the end of her inspection, and then “h’m!” again. She sent an oddly quizzical sideways glance at her nephew, lightly patted Karen’s cheek, and then released her. And then they all turned as footsteps sounded at the end of the hall near the open front door, and Fiona Barrington appeared, moving gracefully towards them, with her arms full of flowers and parcels she had stopped to collect from inside the car. It was a habit of Mrs. Montagu-Jackson’s—her husband had been Montagu Jackson, who made a fortune out of baby powder and other nursery toilet requisites many years before he died, and after his death she had decided to give herself a double-barrelled name by including his Christian name —to bring with her, on her visits to her nephew, large quantities of useful provender, such as eggs from her own farm, and vegetables cultivated by her gardener, being firmly of the opinion that they were always most acceptable to a bachelor. So behind Mrs. Barrington came the chauffeur who maintained the Daimler at such a shining pitch of perfection, bearing the heavier articles which the slight figure of the widow could hardly be expected to carry.
Karen, who realised that she had been waiting with something not nearly so stimulating as curiosity for this moment, knew that all her worst fears were instantly realised when she took her first look at Fiona Barrington.
To begin with, the coat she was wearing was so obviously mink that Karen’s heart dropped like a plummet when she remembered her own cheap tweed. And she was wearing a little mink cap, too, specially designed to call attention to corn-silk hair. Not fair hair, like Karen’s own, but a deep, shining, lustrous gold.
Her eyes were golden, too—golden as quartz or topaz—and they were smiling in an enchanting way under the mink cap. She couldn’t have been much older than Karen herself, in spite of her widowhood, but she had all the sophistication and the poise in the world, and as she shook hands with Karen the latter caught the first faint breath of the delicate perfume she brought with her, like something belonging exclusively to Paris in the springtime.
“And this is the little fiancée?” she said, and just as Aunt Horatia had done she shot a sudden, sideways glance at Iain’s face that had the merest suspicion of something both quizzical and amused in it.
Mackenzie’s face remained cool and slightly aloof— an expression that had appeared in it the instant he had ceased greeting his aunt. But Karen did not dare to look at him, and she only knew that she herself had failed to create an impression that could quite truthfully be described as favourable—or, at any rate, she had been something of a surprise to both these women visitors. Although she was wearing her best tweed skirt, and a jumper that was neat and unspectacular, she had all the colourlessness of an invalid about her—or one who was only just ceasing to be an invalid—and it was plain at a glance that she lacked both confidence and poise, and moreover that she was almost desperately shy and aware of how badly she fitted in just then.
She wanted to escape with Mrs. Burns when the housekeeper appeared to receive instructions about extra places at the luncheon table; and she would have been happy to have been simply Prout, whose only task was to hand round drinks in the drawingroom before they all went in to the meal. But she was the prospective mistress of the house, or so they all fondly believed, and she could not merely sit tongue-tied and afraid that if she did open her lips she might say something unwise and foolish that would glaringly proclaim her to be acting a part.
It was not so bad while lunch was in progress, for the service of the meal caused enough diversions, and Mrs. Burns was agitated because she had not known beforehand that the visitors were preparing to descend upon them. She infected Prout with some of her own agitation as a result of supervising her too closely whenever they were in the dining-room together, until, in order to pour oil on the troubled waters, Aunt Horatia declared when they were nearing the coffee stage that the lunch was far more perfect than anything she ever enjoyed in her own house, and Mrs. Burns at least was happy again.
Iain, too, while they were still seated at the long table in the dining-room, was careful to give Karen all the support he could, and dangerous topics like how long he and Karen had been engaged to be married, exactly where they met, and when they were proposing to get married, were skilfully side-tracked by him in favour of his aunt’s rheumatism, and the wonderful cure for which the Italian doctor was responsible.
But once back in the drawing-room after lunch, Karen knew that the real attack was coming. Mrs. Montagu-Jackson managed to install herself in a chair close to Karen’s, while Mrs. Barrington occupied a corner of a Chesterfield and successfully persuaded her host to desert his post in the middle of the rug before the fireplace and talk to her about his recent travels abroad.
Out of the corner of her eye Karen could see that he gravitated somewhat unwillingly to the side of the lovely widow—for anyone more deserving of the appellation “lovely” Karen had never seen—and Mrs. Barrington produced a long turquoise holder from her handbag and allowed him to light the cigarette she placed in it. Then Aunt Horatia began to talk to Karen in a friendly, sociable manner, and her opening gambit was very much to the point.
“And now, my dear," she said, as if she was going to suggest getting to know one another, “you can tell me the truth about yourself and Iain!”
Karen looked at her, faintly horrified, but Aunt Horatia was lying back in her chair and smiling comfortably.
“Go on, you silly child, and don’t be afraid of me! I’m not easily shocked, I can assure you.”
And so, in view of the fact that it was plainly not much use dissembling, Karen told her the truth—all the truth that is, apart from the actual falsity of her engagement, which, because she had given her promise to Iain, she did not disclose to his aunt. And at the end of her simple recital Mrs. Montagu-Jackson nodded her head, as if it was all much as she had expected, and observed:
“Well, that’s all quite understandable but it was quixotic of you both to become engaged—at least, it was quixotic of Iain, but I haven’t quite made up my mind about you yet.”
Karen felt a tiny, cold feeling stealing about her heart, as if something she had been hugging to herself recently as precious was likely to be snatched away from her altogether. She looked at the elder lady with vaguely troubled eyes.
“You—you haven’t made up your mind about—me?”
“No, my dear.” The old eyes were gentle, and the voice had a sympathetic note in it. “You appear to have had quite a lot to put up with in the way of illness, and I’d say at this moment you are far from strong, and Iain can be terribly kind when he feels like it—I know that! But you can’t marry a man because he’s kind, or because he offers you a home.”
“N-no,” Karen agreed, and wished that this visitation from Iain’s relative had been postponed until she was feeling just a little stronger than she was at present, and therefore more capable of putting up some sort of camouflage.
“On the other hand, if you’re really sure——” There was a pause, and Aunt Horatia glanced for a moment at her nephew’s face as he sat beside his glamorous ex-fiancée on the Chesterfield—”you could do much, much worse for yourself!”
Karen said nothing, and Aunt Horry dived into her handbag for her cigarette-case, from which she extracted a fat and faintly greyish-looking cigarette.
“I have these made especially for me,” she explained, “and they’d be much too strong for a young girl like you—a mixture of Egyptian and Turkish tobaccos— so I’m not going to offer you one.”
She surrounded herself with a blue haze of smoke which smelled strongly of the interior of some exotic eastern quarter, and at the same time she thoughtfully studied Karen.
“I’m going to make a suggestion,” she said. “I’ve explained that I’m not easily shocked, and neither am I, but I don’t think it’s quite right for a young thing like you to be living here alone with a bachelor of nearly thirty-five, even though you are thinking of getting married!” Her glance at the girl stated plainly that she doubted that, and she continued: “In my house you can be a guest for as long as you like, and no one can say a thing about you—and Iain can come and see you as often as he wants to! So I suggest you pack up your things, or get Mrs. Burns to pack them up for you, and come back with Fiona and me this afternoon!”
At first Karen was not quite certain that the older woman was entirely serious, but when she realised that she was, and, moreover, that in spite of the kindliness and the gentleness in her expression there was some extra quality which would be difficult to combat if, and when, her mind was made up about something, a feeling of almost profound dismay descended upon her. She felt exactly as if the suggestion had been made that she desert a proven and safe harbour for all the unknown dangers of the high seas, and she stammered:
“G-go back with you?”
“Yes, my dear, I think it’s a splendid idea!” Having given birth to the idea Mrs. Montagu-Jackson beamed at her again. “I’ve a young man coming to stay with me next week—my godson, Aubrey Ainsworth, who is beginning to make a name for himself as one of these futuristic painters, or whatever they call themselves—and with Fiona, who has promised to stay with me more or less indefinitely, we shall be quite a jolly party. I simply love having people to stay with me, and what you badly need, my child, is a change. You’ve been cooped up here long enough, and however devoted you are to Iain it will be good for both of you to have a breather from one another for a short while at least.”
She looked across at her nephew and instantly claimed his attention by announcing that she had formed what she was convinced was an excellent plan. When he had heard what the plan was he, like Karen, looked a little taken aback. Then one of his dark eyebrows ascended half humorously.
“Is that really necessary?” he asked. “I mean, don’t you think Mrs. Burns—to say nothing of Annie, and Prout, and George, who also live in the house—can provide adequate chaperonage for Karen? Or are you afraid she’s being neglected? I can assure you she’s looking very, very much better now than she did when she first came here—”
“My dear boy, none of that enters into it,” his aunt assured him, waving the remains of her specially blended cigarette in the air. “I’m not old-fashioned, as you know, and I’d trust Mrs. Burns to look after even the most guileless young creature who entered your house. But Karen’s had a bad bout of illness and been confined to one place for far too long, with no companionship save your own, and I feel that if she’s going to get really well and strong again something will have to be done about it. I can look after her just as well as you can, you know, and Fiona can lend a hand. In fact, we shall just love having her.”
“Of course we will," Fiona put in swiftly, in a soft and slightly husky voice, which Karen had already decided was one of the most attractive things about her. Another attractive thing was the way her golden eyes melted whenever she was just about to break into a smile, and the almost tender curve of her full scarlet lips when the smile touched them was something, almost, to watch for. It made of the smile a thing of indescribable charm, with the power to bestow something in the nature of a caress. “It will be really nice.”
Iain turned to her, an ironical gleam in his eyes.
“You think so?” he asked.
“I do,” she assured him. “And I agree with your aunt that it is a little dull here for Karen at the present stage of her convalescence, but unlike your aunt I am a little bit old-fashioned, and I do feel that in Karen’s best interests, even if you’re proposing to get married very soon, it will be as well if she doesn’t remain here under your roof more or less indefinitely—until you get married, that is!”
He regarded her with an odd curve to his lips.
“And the fact that she has already been here a month shocks you rather badly, does it?” he enquired in the driest of tones.
“Not at all, darling,” she answered soothingly— she even placed one of her white hands lightly, caressingly, on his arm—”but it has probably shocked Mrs. Burns, if one were in a position to find out the truth! And now that you’re no longer cut off by weather conditions, and we are only too willing to carry Karen away with us, I don’t really think you ought to oppose your aunt’s suggestion.”
“I haven’t said I’m going to oppose it,” he answered, a little shortly. “But it’s rather limited notice, and I don’t know that Karen ought to go out again today. It’s not as fine as it was yesterday——”
“Darling” Fiona laughed softly, beside him, “a journey of three or four miles, and no more, in a closed and heated car? Isn’t your concern a little excessive, and aren’t you afraid that you won’t see as much of her as you have done? Which simply means that we shall expect you to visit us very often, and that will be nice for all of us,"
“Very nice,” Aunt Horatia agreed.
He looked across at Karen with an expression she had never seen on his face before. She felt that behind it lay a feeling of annoyance, mixed with the conviction that he was temporarily cornered, and that he also saw something humorous in the cornering.
“Well, what has Karen got to say?” he asked. “Are you growing very bored with my undiluted society, Karen? And do you feel that your reputation will be saved if you leave Craigie for the time being?”
Karen knew very well what she wanted to say, but she was very much afraid of saying it—not only because of his aunt and his ex-fiancée, but because of him, too. If she looked across at him in an openly pleading fashion, and said that she didn’t want to leave him, what kind of construction would he place on such a confession as that?
“I—I——” she was beginning, when Aunt Horry came to her rescue.
“Don’t be silly, Iain,” she said. “Naturally Karen wouldn’t tell you if she was bored with you, and as she knows she’s coming back here before very long as mistress of the place she’s not likely to break her heart because of a few weeks’ absence. And that reminds me—have you made any plans yet about the wedding? Because if you haven’t I’m quite sure the most sensible idea would be to let Karen be married from my house. It’s so long since anyone got married from Auchenwiel that it will do the place good, and there’s nothing that really appeals to me more than all the fuss and preparation for a wedding.”
Iain continued to smile faintly as his eyes met Karen’s, but the eyes themselves were inscrutable, and he made a shrugging movement with his shoulders.
“I can see that whatever my opinion happens to be on this question of moving Karen it isn’t very important,” he observed, “but you needn’t start wedding preparations yet, Aunt, because Karen and I haven’t even fixed a date for taking one another for better or worse. And I hope that you’ll leave us to make that decision ourselves, at least.”
He stood up and wandered to the window, looking out at the greyness of the afternoon.
“Don’t think I’m inhospitable,” he said, “but if you’re going to take Karen you’d better leave fairly soon, otherwise you’ll be in for some more bad weather. I’ll ring for Mrs. Burns,” and he pressed the bell for his housekeeper with a somewhat grim expression clinging about his mouth.
Karen did not dare to look at him again. She went meekly up to her room and helped Mrs. Burns with her simple packing, and when it was finished the housekeeper looked at her with a faintly regretful expression in her eyes.
“I’ll be glad to see you back again, Miss,” she stated with obvious truthfulness, “only when you come back again you’ll be Madam, won’t you? ‘‘ She smiled hearteningly. “You’ll like Mrs. Montagu-Jackson. She talks a lot, and she’s a bit obstinate, but she thinks the world of Mr. Iain, and she must like you, too, or she wouldn’t have asked you to stay with her. And perhaps after all she’s wise,” she added, in a kind of reflective way which, however, passed Karen by altogether, for she was feeling too strangely miserable inside at the thought of leaving the quiet sanctuary of this room which for five weeks now had been hers.