“There’s plenty of time.” She gave me a tight-lipped, primly coquettish smile. “That is one thing about Come Lucky; there is always plenty of time. Bight now Jean’s in her room — reading, I expect. She’s very well educated, I’m always telling her education is all very well, but what’s the use of it here in Come Lucky... Just put your coat over there, Mr. Wetheral... Sarah, Mr. Wetheral has come to see Jean.”
The other old lady darted me another quick glance and then got up. “I’ll go and fetch her, Ruth.”
I gazed round the room. It was fantastic. I was in a little copy of a Victorian drawing room. An upright piano stood against the wall, the chairs had cross-stitch seats and the backs of the armchairs were covered with lace antimacassars. There was even an aspidistra.
The whole place, including the occupants with their overrefined speech, was a little period piece in the Canadian wilds.
“Now, Mr. Wetheral, will you sit over there?... And you, Pauline, you come and sit by me.” She had placed me so that she could sit and watch me. “So you are Mr. Campbell’s grandson.”
“Yes,” I said.
She raised her lorgnette and stared at me. “You don’t look very strong, Mr. Wetheral. Have you been ill?”
“I’m convalescing.”
“Oh, and your doctors have said the high mountain air will do you good.” She nodded as though agreeing with their verdict. “I’m so glad to hear that you are not allowing this little backwater of ours to become an industrial center again. Do you know, Mr. Wetheral, they even had the Japanese working up here during the war when they were building the dam? I am sure if you were to permit them to complete it, they would now have Chinese labor. It is quite terrible to think what might happen. I am so glad, Mr. Wetheral, you are not a mercenary man. Everybody here—”
“I’m surprised my grandfather agreed to the building of a dam,” I said.
“Oh, it wasn’t Mr. Campbell. It was Peter Trevedian. It’s on his property, you know. I’m sure Luke wouldn’t have done it, not when it meant making a lake of Mr. Campbell’s property.” She gave a little sigh. “But Luke is dead, and I’m afraid Peter is a much harder man.” She leaned forward and tapped me playfully on the arm with her lorgnette. “But you are a civilized person, Mr. Wetheral; I can see that. You will stand between us and the factories and things they are planning.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall and then Jean Lucas entered the room. “Mr. Wetheral?” She held out her hand. “I’ve been expecting you for some time.”
Her manner was direct, her grip firm. She had the assurance of good breeding. In her well-cut tweed suit she brought a breath of the English countryside into the room. I stared down at her, wondering what on earth she was doing buried up here in this God-forsaken town. Her eyes met mine — gray, intelligent eyes.
“You knew I’d come?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. “I knew your war record. I didn’t think you’d let him down.”
The room seemed suddenly silent. I could hear the ticking of the clock in its glass case. Nobody seemed to be there but the two of us. I didn’t say anything more. I stood there, staring down at her face, and as I stared at her I suddenly felt I had to know her.
“We’ll go into my room, shall we?” she said.
I was dimly aware of Miss Ruth Garret’s disapproval. Then I was in a room with a log fire blazing on the hearth and bookshelves crowding the walls. Paper-white narcissuses bloomed in the light of the oil lamp and filled the room with their scent, and on the table beside them was a large photograph of an elderly man in army uniform.
“My father,” she said, and by the tone of her voice I knew he was dead. A big brown collie lay like a hearth rug before the fire. He thumped his tail and eyed me without stirring. “That’s Moses,” she said. “He belonged to your grandfather. He found him as a pup in the leaver swamps the other side of the lake. Hence the name.” She glanced at me quickly and then bent to pat the dog. “What do you think of my two old ladies?”
“Are they relatives of yours?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then why do you live up here?”
“That’s my business.” Her voice had suddenly become frozen. “There are some cigarettes in the box beside you. Will you pass me one, please?”
“Try an English one for a change,” I said, producing a packet from my pocket. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have tried to—”
“There’s no need to apologize.” Her eyes met mine over the flame of my lighter. “It’s just that I know it’s odd and I’m sensitive about it. I imagine you think it was odd of me to live up in the Kingdom with your grandfather during the summer months?”
“Now that I’ve seen you, yes.”
She gave a quick little laugh. “What were you expecting? Something out of Dickens?”
“Perhaps.”
She turned away and poked at the fire. “I believe there are still people in the town who are convinced I’m Stuart’s illegitimate daughter.” She looked up suddenly and smiled. “We call this decrepit bundle of shacks a town, by the way. Would you care for a drink? I’ve got some Scotch here. Only don’t tell my two old dears or I’d get thrown out onto the streets. Naturally, they don’t approve of liquor — at least Ruth doesn’t.”
We sat for a while over our drinks without saying anything. It wasn’t an uneasy silence, though. It seemed natural at the time, as though we both needed a moment to sort out our impressions of each other. At length she looked across at me with a faintly inquiring expression. The firelight was glowing on her right cheek and I realized with surprise that she looked quite pretty.
“What did you do after the war?” She smiled. “That’s a very rude question, but, you see, Stuart was very anxious to know what had happened to you.” She hesitated and then said, “After your mother died, he lost touch with home. It was only when I came out here —” She looked away into the fire. “I wrote the War Office. They reported that you’d been a captain in the RAC out in the Middle East. They couldn’t discover what had happened to you after you were invalided out.”
“You were very fond of him, weren’t you?” I asked.
She nodded. “Enough to hear his voice again in yours. You’ve something of his manner, too, though not his build.” She suddenly looked across at me. “Why did you never write to him or come out and see him? Were you ashamed of him — because he had been to prison?”
“I... I just didn’t think about him,” I said. “I met him only once. That was all. When I was ten years old.”
“When he’d just come out of prison.”
“Yes.”
“And so you decided you’d forget all about him. Because he’d done five years for... for something he didn’t do.” She looked at me sadly. “It never occurred to you that he might have been wrongly convicted?”
“No, it never occurred to me.”
She sighed. “It’s strange, because you meant a lot to him. You were his only relative. He was an old man when he died — old and tired. Oh, he kept up a front when Johnny and other people brought visitors. But deep down he was tired. He’d lost heart and he needed help.”
“Then why didn’t he write to me?”
“Pride, I guess.” She stared at me, frowning slightly. “Would you have come if he’d written to you, if you’d known he was innocent?”
“I... I don’t know,” I said.
“But you came when you heard he was dead. Why? Because you thought there might be oil here?”
The trace of bitterness in her voice brought me to my feet. “Why I came is my own business!” I said harshly. “If you want to know, my plan was to live up there!”
“Live there.” She stared at me. “All the year round?”
“Yes.”