Watchman’s Stone
This is one of those books I’m embarrassed that I like: Watchman’s Stone, by Rona Randall. It’s one of three books I haven’t read since junior high but have felt a whim to revisit lately. This one cost me a WHOLE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS to get through interlibrary loan! But I have to confess I enjoyed it as much this time as I did in 7th grade, mumble-mumble years ago.
Why? Apparently I have a taste for books about attractive, wealthy men with Gothic estates, mysterious pasts, and former wives. There’s Jane Eyre. There’s The Red Castle Women (my next inter-library loan nostalgia trip). And there’s this one.
It centers around Elizabeth MacArthur, a beautiful and strong-minded Scottish heiress in the 1820’s. Elizabeth is set to inherit her father’s prosperous weaving mill when a handsome widower living in a nearby castle produces designs of ancient clan tartans believed to be lost, convinces her father that they’re authentic, and marries Elizabeth just as the mills begin production.
As a 7th grader I think I must have thought Elizabeth was admirable. Now what I notice is that although she’s supposedly gifted with mysterious powers of intuition, she overlooks the piles of evidence that the man she’s married is a creep. By the end of the novel, adultery, murder, theft, and pathological dishonesty are all laid at his door. But in the end it all turns out well for Elizabeth, who marries another handsome Scotchman.
As a mystery, it’s a real page-turner that unfolds the evidence well and keeps its reader guessing. The descriptions of the castle, the references to Scottish history, and other parts of a wealthy person’s lifestyle in early 19th-century Scotland interest me in the same way The Remains of the Day interests me – it’s appealing to imagine living amidst all that splendour and elegance. And the heroine, though I comprehend her gullibility better on this reading than I did in 7th grade, does keep her wits about her and figure it all out without losing her poise. In fact, I can appreciate her more now, seeing that love does require a measure of faith for all of us. In the end I’d rather follow her example and err on the side of wholeheartedness, rather than defensive suspicion – especially if I get to end up living in a castle!
