The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins Page A

if anything of the kind was to happen here the responsibility would be mine. There’s Miss Sheila sometimes walks in the wood alone; and of course the mistress.’
    â€˜You hinted they’d already done something. What?’
    He stood up, with a smile at the clock, now at a minute to the hour.
    â€˜I saw that imbecile exposing himself,’ he said; ‘and worse.’ He described it briefly, enjoying her fascinated embarrassment. A lie, he saw, could cause as much distortion as the truth.
    â€˜Where was this?’ she asked.
    â€˜In the wood.’
    â€˜And nobody saw it but you?’
    â€˜There was a thrush, I think.’
    She would not smile. ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ she said, ‘and surprised too. He’s been in and out of Lendrick dozens of times and there’s never been the slightest hint of anything like that. I thought that sort of abnormality liked an audience.’
    â€˜Seed,’ he murmured, with quiet intense disgust; and then he smiled.
    The clock struck ten.
    â€˜It’s a minute or so fast,’ she said. ‘They’ve been kicked about that pair, from what I’ve heard. Nobody can say life’s been generous to them. A thing like this if it got about would destroy them completely. The wee one would be dragged off to jail or the asylum, and the big one would break his heart. There’s affection between them.’
    â€˜Likely enough, Effie. Even the murderer on the scaffold has a mother weeping for him.’
    She came close, panting.
    â€˜Don’t become embittered, John,’ she said.
    Lightly he put his hand on her head, and then snatched it away again.
    â€˜Will you help me to stay sweet, Effie?’ he murmured.
    She closed her eyes, as if not to see her own surrender; she nodded.
    â€˜Thanks, Effie,’ he said, but he did not, as she evidently expected, embrace her. He walked over to the door. ‘That’s a promise I’d better give you time to consider.’
    â€˜I’ve considered it, John, many a time.’
    For a moment, realising that her feeling for him was genuine, he saw another way, clear, like a sunlit ride in a thick wood.
    â€˜You’re in danger too, John,’ she whispered, ‘of being destroyed completely. I couldn’t stand by and watch that happen, if there was anything I could do to stop it.’
    â€˜I do need help, Effie,’ he said, and then, as he closed the door and set off respectfully through the large rich house, he thought, Did she think he could be saved by her offering him her fifty-year-old body in a dark room, with gasps of conscience mixed with any sounds of satisfaction?

CHAPTER FOUR
    Lady Runcie-Campbell was in the office at the front of the house writing letters. When he knocked, she bade him enter in her clear courteous musical voice.
    A stranger, hearing her, would have anticipated some kind of loveliness in so charming a speaker; he might not, however, have expected to find such outstanding beauty of face and form married to such earnestness of spirit; and he would assuredly have been both startled and impressed.
    Duror, who knew her well, had been afraid that in her presence he might be shamed or inspired into abandoning his scheme against the cone-gatherers. In spite of her clothes, expensive though simple, of her valuable adornments such as earrings, brooches, and rings, and of her sometimes almost mystical sense of responsibility as a representative of the ruling class, she had an ability to exalt people out of their humdrum selves. Indeed, Duror often associated religion not with the smell of pinewood pews or of damp Bibles, but rather with her perfume, so elusive to describe. Her father the judge had bequeathed to her a passion for justice, profound and intelligent; and a determination to see right done, even at the expense of rank or pride. Her husband Sir Colin was orthodox, instinctively preferring the way of a world that for many