John Splendid Part 42

"What! for so common a display of it?" she asked, rallying, yet with some sobriety in her tone.

"Not a bit," I answered; "that--that--that I might act the part of a lover with some credit to myself, and kiss the one girl I know in that capacity."

"Would she let you?" she asked, removing herself by a finger-length from my side, yet not apparently enough to show she thought herself the one in question.

"That, madame, is what troubles me," I confessed in anguish, for her words had burst the bubble of my courage.

"Of course you cannot tell till you try," she said, demurely, looking straight before her, no smile on the corners of her lips, that somehow maddened by their look of pliancy.

"You know whom I mean," I said, pursuing my plea, whose rustic simplicity let no man mock at, remembering the gawky errors of his own experience.

"There's Bell, the minister's niece, and there's Kilblaan's daughter, and----"

"Oh, my dear! my dear!" I cried, stopping and putting my hand daringly on her shoulder. "You know it is not any of these; you must know I mean yourself. Here am I, a man travelled, no longer a youth, though still with the flush of it, no longer with a humility to let me doubt myself worthy of your best thoughts; I have let slip a score of chances on this same path, and even now I cannot muster up the spirit to brave your possible anger."

She laughed a very pleasant soothing laugh and released her shoulder.

"At least you give me plenty of warning," she said.

"I am going to kiss you now," I said, with great firmness.

She walked a little faster, panting as I could hear, and I blamed myself that I had alarmed her.

"At least," I added, "I'll do it when we get to Bealloch-an-uarain well."

She hummed a s.n.a.t.c.h of Gaelic song we have upon that notable well, a song that is all an invitation to drink the waters while you are young and drink you may, and I suddenly ventured to embrace her with an arm.

She drew up with stern lips and back from my embrace, and Elrigmore was again in torment.

"You are to blame yourself," I said, huskily; "you let me think I might.

And now I see you are angry."

"Am I?" she said, smiling again. "I think you said the well, did you not!"

"And may I?" eagerly I asked, devouring her with my eyes.

"You may--at the well," she answered, and then she laughed softly.

Again my spirits bounded.

"But I was not thinking of going there to-night," she added, and the howlet in the bush beside me hooted at my ignominy.

I walked in a perspiration of vexation and alarm. It was plain that here was no desire for my caress, that the girl was but probing the depth of my presumption, and I gave up all thought of pushing my intention to performance. Our conversation turned to more common channels, and I had hoped my companion had lost the crude impression of my wooing as we pa.s.sed the path that led from the hunting-road to the Bealloch-an-uarain.

"Oh!" she cried here, "I wished for some ivy; I thought to pluck it farther back, and your nonsense made me quite forget."

"Cannot we return for it?" I said, well enough pleased at the chance of prolonging our walk.

"No; it is too late," she answered abruptly. "Is there nowhere else here where we could get it?"

"I do not think so," I said, stupidly. Then I remembered that it grew in the richest profusion on the face of the grotto we call Bealloch-an-uarain. "Except at the well," I added.

"Of course it is so; now I remember," said she; "there is plenty of it there. Let us haste and get it" And she led the way up the path, I following with a heart that surged and beat.

When our countryside is changed, when the forest of Creag Dubh, where roam the deer, is levelled with the turf, and the foot of the pa.s.senger wears round the castle of Argile, I hope, I pray, that grotto on the brae will still lift up its face among the fern and ivy. Nowadays when the mood comes on me, and I must be the old man chafing against the decay of youth's spirit, and the recollection overpowers of other times and other faces than those so kent and tolerant about me, I put my plaid on my shoulders and walk to Bealloch-an-uarain well. My children's children must be with me elsewhere on my saunters; here I must walk alone. I am young again when looking on that magic fountain, still the same as when its murmur sounded in my lover's ears. Here are yet the stalwart trees, the tall companions, that nodded on our shy confessions; the ivy hangs in sheeny spray upon the wall. Time, that ranges, has here no freedom, but stands, shackled by links of love and memory to the rocks we sat on. I sit now there and muse, and beside me is a shadow that never ages, with a pale face averted, looking through leafless boughs at the glimpse of star and moon. I see the bosom heave; I see the eyes flash full, then soften half-shut on some inward vision. For I am never there at Bealloch-an-uarain, summer or spring, but the season, in my thought, is that of my wife's first kiss, and it is always a pleasant evening and the birds are calling in the dusk.

I plucked my lady's ivy with a cruel wrench, as one would pluck a sweet delusion from his heart, and her fingers were so warm and soft as I gave her the leaves! Then I turned to go.

"It is time we were home," I said, anxious now to be alone with my vexation.

"In a moment," she said, plucking more ivy for herself; and then she said, "Let us sit a little; I am wearied."

My courage came anew. "Fool!" I called myself. "You may never have the chance again." I sat down by her side, and talked no love but told a story.

It is a story we have in the sheilings among the hills, the tale of "The Sea Fairy of French Foreland"; but I changed it as I went on, and made the lover a soldier.

I made him wander, and wandering think of home and a girl beside the sea. I made him confront wild enemies and battle with storms, I set him tossing upon oceans and standing in the streets of leaguered towns, or at grey heartless mornings upon lonely plains with solitude around, and yet, in all, his heart was with the girl beside the sea.

She listened and flushed. My hero's dangers lit her eyes like lanthorns, my pa.s.sions seemed to find an echo in her sighs.

Then I pitied my hero, the wandering soldier, so much alone, so eager, and unforgetting, till I felt the tears in my eyes as I imaged his hopeless longing.

She checked her sighs, she said my name in the softest whisper, laid her head upon my shoulder and wept. And then at last I met her quivering lips.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.--FAREWELL.

On the morrow, John Splendid came riding up the street on his way to the foreign wars. He had attired himself most sprucely; he rode a good horse, and he gave it every chance to show its quality. Old women cried to him from their windows and close-mouths. "Oh! _laochain,_" they said, "yours be the luck of the seventh son!" He answered gaily, with the harmless flatteries that came so readily to his lips always, they seemed the very bosom's revelation. "Oh! women!" said he, "I'll be thinking of your handsome sons, and the happy days we spent together, and wishing myself soberly home with them when I am far away."

But not the old women alone waited on his going; shy girls courtesied or applauded at the corners. For them his horse caracoled on Stonefield's causeway, his shoulders straightened, and his bonnet rose. "There you are!" said he, "still the temptation and the despair of a decent bachelor's life. I'll marry every one of you that has not a man when I come home."

"And when may that be?" cried a little, bold, lair one, with a laughing look at him from under the blowing locks that escaped the snood on her hair.

"When may it be?" he repeated. "Say 'Come home, Barbreck,' in every one of your evening prayers, and heaven, for the sake of so sweet a face, may send me home the sooner with my fortune."

Master Gordon, pa.s.sing, heard the speech. "Do your own praying, Barbreck------"

"John," said my hero. "John, this time, to you."

"John be it," said the cleric, smiling warmly. "I like you, truly, and I wish you well."

M'Iver stooped and took the proffered hand. "Master Gordon," he said, "I would sooner be liked and loved than only admired; that's, perhaps, the secret of my life."

It was not the fishing season, but the street thronged with fishers from Kenmore and Cairndhu and Kilcatrine and the bays of lower Cowal. Their tall figures jostled in the causeway, their white teeth gleamed in their friendliness, and they met this companion of numerous days and nights, this gentleman of good-humour and even temper, with cries as in a schoolboy's playground. They cl.u.s.tered round the horse and seized upon the trappings. Then John Splendid's play-acting came to its conclusion, as it was ever bound to do when his innermost man was touched. He forgot the carriage of his shoulders; indifferent to the disposition of his reins, he reached and wrung a hundred hands, crying back memory for memory, jest for jest, and always the hope for future meetings.

"O scamps! scamps!" said he, "fishing the silly prey of ditches when you might be with me upon the ocean and capturing the towns. I'll never drink a gla.s.s of Rhenish, but I'll mind of you and sorrow for your sour ales and bitter _aqua!_"

"Will it be long?" said they--true Gaels, ever anxious to know the lease of pleasure or of grief.