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Louis began to lecture her on medicine; he really knew extraordinarily well what he had learnt: he was an excellent teacher of facts, but he had not one iota of deductive thought in his teaching and, like Andrew Lashcairn, was remarkably impatient if she did not understand or, understanding, ventured to express an opinion of her own about anything.
Ghosts and shadows crowded round her next day when she ran down to the beach to say good-bye to Wullie. On the gate of the farm was fixed a notice saying that Miss Lashcairn desired the villagers to come to the house next day if they wished a free joint of beef, as she had no further use for her cattle. "As the beast in question is old," went on the firm, precise writing, "the meat will be tough.
The worn-out heart that the Edinburgh doctor had graphically described as a frail glass bubble, in his attempt to make Andrew Lashcairn nurse his weakness, played cruel tricks with its owner. It choked him so that he could not lie down; it weakened him so that he could not stand up.
But first her father's temper came to her for a moment and she lost all responsibility. It was the first time the Lashcairn madness had seized her and it was not the raging Berserk fury of her father. She stood quite still, very white. Ole Fred thought she was waiting passively for his kiss.
In a press in her mother's room were clothes brought from the old grey house, the accumulation of days when fabrics were made as heirlooms. There were plaids and brocades and silks: there was lace from Valenciennes and linen from Cambrai, yellow with age. There were muslins that a Lashcairn had brought when he adventured to India with Clive. Rose often wept over them.
"I knew we'd have a doing with ye, Andrew," said Aunt Janet, bending stiffly in her satin frock. He could not hear. He looked at her and turned to Marcella again. "If ye " he began, and suddenly felt very heavy on the girl's supporting arm. The people crept away talking quietly then. It seemed right that Andrew Lashcairn had died in the midst of them all on All Souls' Night.
That night, after they slept, while Andrew Lashcairn lay awake in the witch-woman's arms, a great wind came in from the sea, sweeping before it the salt sand of the dunes, covering the village and the castle and the old feet of Ben Grief where sheep and cattle fed.
For a moment she looked just like Andrew Lashcairn, but before she had time to launch her indignation he was stammering and apologizing and looking so sorry that she decided to bury the hatchet. And he went on breathlessly, trying to reinstate himself. "You know, I hate the Germans. I happen to know a lot about them and the menace they are to Eng Britain," he said in a low, confidential voice.
She even felt a great, inarticulate pity for her father. For all his striding autocracy and high-handedness there was something naïve and childish about him that clutched at her heart. He was like Ben Grief, alone and bare when the winds tore. He was thorough, was Andrew Lashcairn. Finding the young student's "Riddle of the Universe" in the book-room one day he read it idly.
I wanted you Janet, for there has always been a Janet Lashcairn since the wild woman came to Lashnagar. But Rose would have you Marcella a foreign name to us," and he sighed heavily. "I hated you, Marcella, because I wanted a boy to win back everything we have lost. Lashcairn the Landless whose lands stretched once from Marcella, what am I saying?
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