The Last of the Kintyres by Catherine Airlie Read Free Book Online

along the moss-grown drive. “I mean, Hew Kintyre won’t want us to stay here. We’re not exactly his responsibility, are we?”
    “No,” Elizabeth agreed with regret in her voice. “I wish we could have stayed, Tony, in happier circumstances. It’s a lovely old place.”
    “You have to admit it is a bit of a backwater, though,” he argued. “There might be compensations, of course,” he went on thoughtfully. “The set-up at the Castle, for instance. Caroline Hayler looked a gay enough type, and that car of hers was really something! She must have livened Dromore up considerably since she came to live here.”
    “She always lived in the glen,” Elizabeth told him with a peculiar sense of reluctance. “She married, and came back to buy the Castle after her husband’s death in Canada.”
    He was completely taken by surprise.
    “I had no idea she was a widow,” he mused. “She couldn’t have been married for very long. She’s not much older than you are, is she?”
    Elizabeth smiled.
    “No, I don’t think so. But a wise old lady of twenty-two is much too old for you!”
    “You underrate me!” he grinned, linking his arm companionably through hers in the old, endearing way which made her forget all his superficial faults. Handled the right way, she thought, Tony would get over his wilfulness in time.
    That first walk down to the shore with the sound of the sea in her ears and the scent of pines in her nostrils was a wonderful experience to Elizabeth, and in the days which followed, as the old house filled gradually with friends and relations from all parts of Scotland she felt glad that Hew Kintyre had asked her to stay.
    He needed her help. There was no doubt about that as each guest brought his or her own little problem to the quiet house, and curiously enough, Caroline Hayler did not return to offer hers. She telephoned Hew twice, but Elizabeth heard him refusing any assistance, courteously but firmly.
    On the day of the funeral people began to gather from near and far. Hew had been up from early morning, after spending most of the day before at Whitefar l and, which Tony had described to Elizabeth as “a bleak sort of place right up in the hills”. He met people and made them welcome with a distant look in his eyes which reminded Elizabeth of that first evening when she had come slowly down the staircase to surprise him at the window, but now most of the bitterness had gone. He seemed to have accepted the inevitability of the situation and had taken the laird’s place with an unconscious dignity which added to his stature if not to his approachability. It was as if he had shut himself into the old citadel of reserve with a difference. He was now the laird, their host in spite of himself, and until they freed him from the invidious position he would meet them with the necessary courtesy and restraint.
    I can’t really be angry any more, Elizabeth told herself, because I see now how difficult it must be for him.
    When the cortege was ready to leave he came towards her.
    “What do you want to do?” he asked. “Would you rather wait behind at the house?”
    In that moment she saw him so utterly alone in his grief, even among so many friends, that she said impulsively:
    “I’d like to come, Hew, if you don’t mind. Tony ought to go too,” she added. “He was Sir Ronald’s ward.”
    He looked down at her with a hint of surprise in his eyes.
    “Thank you,” he said briefly. “You will have to walk with me. It will be expected by the tenants. They know that Tony was made my father’s ward. We go strai ght to the island through the estate,” he added briefly.
    That long walk, with the lament on the pipes echoing back into the very heart of the hills, was to imprint itself on Elizabeth’s mind and remain there as one of her most vivid memories. She had never heard the Highland bagpipe played in its natural setting, and the wild and melancholy notes pierced straight into her heart. The whole