Gilian The Dreamer Part 24

"It was Young Islay I meant," said her father. "A smart fellow; he's home on leave from his corps, and he promises to come some day this week to see the girl whose father has some reason to be grateful to him."

She flushed all at once, overtaken by feelings she could not have described--feelings of grat.i.tude for the old rescue, of curiosity, pleasure, and a sudden shyness. Following it came a sudden recollection of the old glamour that was about the ensign--such another, no doubt, as Young Islay--who had given her the first taste of gallantry as he pa.s.sed with the troops in a day of sunshine. She looked out at the window to conceal her eyes, and behold! the glen was not so melancholy as it was a little ago. She wished she had put on another gown that afternoon, the rustling one of double tabinet that her Edinburgh friends considered too imposing for her years, but that she herself felt a singular complacence in no matter what her company might be.

"A smart fellow," repeated her father musingly, flicking some dust from his shoes, un.o.bserving of her abstraction. "I wish Sandy took a lesson or two from him in application."

"Ah!" she cried, "you're partial just because----"

And she hesitated.

--"Just because he saved my la.s.sie's life," continued Turner, and seized by an uncommon impulse he put an arm round her and bent to kiss her not unwilling lips. He paused at the threshold, and drew back with a half-shamed laugh.

"Tuts!" said he. "You smit me with silly lowland customs. Fancy your old Highland daddie kissing you! If it had been the young gentleman we speak of----"

A loud rap came to the knocker of the front door, and Nan's hands went flying to her hair in soft inquiries; back to her face came its colour.

It was Young Islay. He came into the room with two strides from the stair-head and a very genteel obeisance to the lady, a conceit of fashion altogether foreign to glens, but that sent her back in one dart of fancy to the parlour of Edinburgh, back to the warm town, back to places of gaiety, and youth, and enterprise, back to soft manners, the lip gossiping at the ear, shoes gliding upon waxen floors, music, dance, and mirth. Her heart throbbed as to a revelation, and she could have taken him in her arms for the sake of that brave life he indicated.

His eyes met hers whenever he entered, and he could not draw them away till hers, wavering before him, showed him he was daring. He turned and shook hands with the General, and muttered some commonplace, then back again he came to that pleasant face so like and yet so unlike the face he had known when a boy.

"You'll hardly know each other," said the father, amused at this common interest. "Isn't she a most elderly person to be the daughter of so young and capable a man?"

Young Islay ranged his mind for a proper compliment, but for once he was dumb; in all the oft-repeated phrases of his gallant experiences there was no sentiment to do justice to a moment like this. "I am delighted to meet you again," he said slowly, his mind confused with a sense of the inadequacy of the thing and the inexplicable feelings that crowded into him in the presence of a girl who, three years ago, would have no more disturbed him than would his sister. She was the first to recover from the awkwardness of the moment.

"I was just wishing I had on another gown," she said more frankly than she felt, but bound to give utterance to the last clear thought in her mind. "I had an idea we might have callers."

"You could have none that became you better," said the lad boldly, feasting upon her charms of lip and eye. And now he was the soldier--free, bold, a.s.sured.

"What? In the way of visitors," laughed her father, and she flushed again.

"I spoke of the gown," said Young Islay (and he had not yet seen it, it might have been red or blue for all he could tell). "I spoke of the gown; if it depends on that for you to charm your company, you should wear no other."

"A touch of the garrison, but honest enough to be said before the father!" thought General Turner.

Nan laughed. She courtesied with an affected manner taught in Edinburgh schools.

"Sir," she said, "you are a soldier, and of course the gown at the moment in front of you is always the finest in the world. Don't tell me it is not so," she hastened to add, as he made to protest, "because I know my father and all the ways of his trade, and--and--and if you were not the soldier even in your pleasantries to ladies I would not think you the soldier at all."

The General smiled and nudged the young fellow jocosely. "There," said he, "did I not tell you she was a fiery one?"

"I hope you did not discuss me in that fashion," said Nan, pausing with annoyance as she moved aside a little, all her pride leaping to her face.

"Your father will have his joke," said Young Islay quickly. "He barely let me know you were here."

The General smiled again in admiration of the young fellow's astuteness, and Nan recovered.

They went to the parlour. Through the window came the songs of the reapers and the twitter of birds busy among the seeds at the barn-door.

Roses swinging on the porch threw a perfume into the room. Young Islay felt, for the first time in his life, a sense of placid happiness. And when Nan sang later--a newer, wider world, more years, more thoughts, more profound depths in her song--he was captive.

To his aid he summoned all his confidence; he talked like a prince (if they talk head-up, valiantly, serene and possessing); he moved about the room studiously unconscious and manly; he sat with grace and showed his hand, and all the time he claimed the girl for his. "You are mine, you are mine!" he said to himself over and over again, and by the flush on her neck as she sat at the harpsichord she might be hearing, through some magic sense, his bold unspoken thought.

Evening crept, lights came, the father went out to give some orders at the barn; they were left alone. The instrument that might have been a heavenly harp at once lost its dignity and relapsed to a tinkling wire, for Nan was silent, and there crowded into Young Islay's head all the pa.s.sion of his people. He rose and strode across the room; he put an arm round her waist and raised her, all astounded, from the chair.

She turned round and tried to draw back, looking startled at his eyes that were wide with fire.

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Need you ask it?" he said in a new voice, raising an arm round her shoulder. His fingers unexpectedly touched her warm skin beneath the kerchief-souffle. The feeling ran to his heart, and struck him there like an earthquake. Down went his head, more firm his hold upon the lady's waist; she might have been a flower to crush, but yet he must be rude and strong; he bent her back and kissed her. Her lips parted as if she would cry out against this outrage, and he felt her breath upon his cheek, an air, a perfume maddening. "Nan, Nan, you are mine, you are mine!" said he huskily, and he kissed her again.

Out in the fields, a corncrake raised its rasping vesper and a shepherd whistled on his dogs. The carts rumbled as they made for the sheds. The sound of the river far off in the shallows among the saugh-trees came on a little breeze, a murmur of the sad inevitable sea that ends all love and pa.s.sion, the old Sea beating black about the world.

In the room was an utter silence. She had drawn back for a moment stupefied, checking in her pride even the breathing of her struggle. He stood bent at the head a little, contrite, his hat, that he had lifted, in his hand. And they gazed at each other--people who had found themselves in some action horribly rude and shameful.

"I think you must have made a mistake, or have been drinking," she said at last, her breast now heaving stormily and her eyes ablaze with anger.

"I am not the dairy-maid."

"I could not help it," he answered lamely. "You--you--you made me do it.

I love you!" She drew back shocked.

He stepped forward again, manly, self-possessed again, and looked her hungrily in the eyes. "Do you hear that?" he said. "Do you hear that? I love you! I love you! There you look at me, and I'm inside like a fire.

What am I to do? I am Highland; I am Long Islay's grandson. I am a soldier. I am Highland, and if I want you I must have you."

She drew softly towards the door as if to escape, but heard her father's voice without, and it gave her a.s.surance. A pallor had come upon her cheek, only her lips were bright as if his kiss had seared them.

"You are Highland, you are Highland, are you?" she said, restraining her sobs. "Then where is the gentleman? Do you fancy I have been growing up in Maam all the years you were away among canteens for you to come home and insult me when you wished?"

He did not quail before her indignation, but he drew back with respect in every movement.

"Madame," he said, with a touch of the ballroom, "you may miscall me as you will; I deserve it all. I have been brutal; I have frightened you--that would not harm a hair of your head for a million pounds; I have disgraced the hospitality of your father's house. I may have ruined myself in your eyes, and to-morrow I'll writhe for it, but now--but now--I have but one plea: I love you! I'll say it, though you struck me dumb for ever."

She recovered a little, looked curiously at him, and "Is it not something of a liberty, even that?" she asked. "You bring the manners of the Inn to my father's house." The recollection of her helplessness in his grasp came to her again, and stained her face as it had been with wine.

He turned his hat in his hand, eyeing her dubiously but more calmly than before.

"There you have me," he said, with a large and helpless gesture, "I am not worth two of your most trivial words. I am a common rude soldier that has not, as it were, seen you till a moment ago, and when I was at your--at your lips, I should have been at your shoes."

She laughed disdainfully a little.

"Don't do that," said he, "you make me mad." Again the tumult of his pa.s.sion swept him down; he put a foot forward as if to approach her, but stopped short as by an immense inward effort. "Nan, Nan, Nan," he cried so loudly that a more watchful father would have heard it outside. "Nan, Nan, Nan, I must say it if I die for it: I love you! I never felt--I do not know--I cannot tell what ails me, but you are mine!" Then all at once again his mood and accent changed. "Mine! What can I give? What can I offer? Here's a poor ensign, and never a war with chances in it!"

He strode up and down the room, throwing his shadow, a feverish phantom, on the blind, and Nan looked at him as if he had been a man in a play.

Here was her first lover with a vengeance! They might be all like that; this madness, perhaps, was the common folly. She remembered that to him she owed her life, and she was overtaken by pity.

"Let us say no more about it," she said calmly. "You alarmed me very much, and I hope you will never do the like again. Let me think I myself was willing"--he started--"that it was some--some playful way of paying off the score I owe you."

"What score?" said he, astonished. "You saved my life," she answered, all resentment gone. "Did I?" said he. "It would be the last plea I would offer here and now. That was a boy's work, or luck as it might be; this is a man before you. I am not wanting grat.i.tude, but something far more ill to win. Look at me," he went on; "I am Highland, I'm a soldier, I'm a man. You may put me to the door (my mother in heaven would not blame you), but still you're mine."

He was very handsome as he stood upon the floor resolute, something of the savage and the dandy, a man compelling. Nan felt the tremor of an admiration, though the insult was yet burning on her countenance.