Red Rowans Part 15

"I have always heard she was very beautiful," replied Marjory, slowly; "but, of course, I did not know----"

He burst into a hard laugh. "That I fell in love with her! Really, Miss Carmichael, you are most disconcertingly cool!"

"I was going to say," she put in, unmoved, "that I did not know she was the sort of person----"

"I would fall in love with? Indeed! Perhaps, as you appear to have formed some sort of estimate as to the qualities likely to attract me, you might give me a hint or two. It might help me in the selection of a wife." He hardly knew what he was saying, for his temper had got the better of him; indeed, he did not care for the moment what he said, save that it should be something that would put an end to this confidence of hers. But he had reckoned without her absolute unconsciousness; what is more, without her fearlessness and high spirit.

"I said nothing about a wife," she replied quietly. "Why should I? You were talking of love, and I knew that you had made up your mind to marry for money."

"So I have; what then?"

"Nothing, except this--that since you can set love aside so easily, I fail to see what effect the memory of a past one could have on your present life--that is all."

He looked at her in the growing darkness, wishing that he could see her face more clearly; wishing still more keenly that he could see straight into her mind and satisfy himself that this calm indifference was simply cold-bloodedness. But what if it was something more? If here, at last, he had found that of which most men dream at times; the refuge from themselves. And when he spoke again his voice had changed its tone, though the bitterness remained in the words.

"You make no allowance, then, for the power of a sentiment, especially when it is morbid and unhealthy. And yet such things mean more to most of us than right or wrong; because they are more human."

There was a pause; then she turned to him with a smile, which he felt, more than saw.

"I am afraid I don't understand what you mean."

"Perhaps it is as well you do not," he replied; and changed the subject.

But from that day their mutual att.i.tude towards each other altered, perhaps unconsciously. To tell the truth, the remembrance of the St.

Christopher rose up between her and Paul in his less admirable impersonations. All the more so, perhaps, because of his strange, impulsive confidence regarding his love for the boy's mother. He must have been quite a boy himself at the time, she thought; no older than she was now, and boys were so much younger than girls for their age.

She felt vaguely sorry for that young Paul and his fruitless love; for Marjory, like most girls who have been much in contact with the poor, accepted the facts of life calmly, looking at them straight in the face, and calling them by their names fairly, ere she pa.s.sed them by.

And so no doubt of that past to which Paul had alluded so frankly ever crossed her mind. She felt, almost unconsciously, that he would not have spoken about it to her had there been any cause for such suspicion. So the only effect of his attempt to shock her was to bring into stronger relief her confidence in his gentlemanly instincts. And Paul, seeing this, metaphorically took off his shoes before the holy ground which she prepared for him, even while he fretted against the necessity imposed upon him by that better part of his nature, which, in environments like these, would have its say. And then, even as he discussed the matter with himself cynically, telling himself at one and the same time that she was not human enough to see, and that it would be cowardly to open her eyes, there would come with a rush a fierce resentment at all reason. This was holiday time, and it would soon be over for him. A week or two more and Gleneira would be full of London ways and London talk; it would be time enough then to remember the world, the flesh, and the devil.

CHAPTER IX.

There was some excuse for his refusal to face a struggle, for in the sunshiny days which followed, Nature herself held high holiday, and the most prosaic might well have found it impossible to avoid falling in with her gracious mood. The heather-flush was beginning to creep over the curves of moor, the rowan berries ripened under the sun's kiss, the juicy _guienne_ cherries purpled the children's mouths, and the oat fields hid their poverty in a cloak of golden marigold. Down in the shady nooks the stately foxgloves still lingered, while on the sunniest spots the bracken was gathering the sun-gold into its delicate tracery against the coming gloom of winter. Such times come rarely; times when it is possible to forget the world of toil and trouble, of sin, sorrow, and shame, which lies beyond the circle of the everlasting hills; times when one is content to let life slip past, without counting its pulse-beat; times when one seems to enter in spirit with that divine rest, because the whole world seems good in our eyes.

Paul, dulled as he was by world-tarnish, felt the charm; Marjory, fresh from her sober youth, yielded to it gladly. Will Cameron, with the hay safe housed and harvest secure in the future, said the weather was too good for farming, and gave himself a holiday, and even Mr.

Gillespie, free from inspection anxieties, and rejoicing in the Bishop's praise, fell back for a while on college sermons, and studied future ones in stones and running brooks. Only Mrs. Cameron, despising the heat, bustled from kitchen to store-room, from store-room to dairy, indignant over the irregular meals, and the still more irregular milk. It was enough, she said, to turn that of human kindness sour to have charge of five Ayrshires and two Jerseys in such weather, with an English cook coming, or a Frenchman maybe--the laird was equal to that iniquity--who would use crocks on crocks of powdered b.u.t.ter. She knew them! graceless, G.o.dless creatures, and Will, instead of wandering like a tinkler about the place, should be at the markets buying pigs, to eat up the sinful waste of good victuals which would begin ere long at the Big House. It was very well of William to smile, and for the laird to say he didn't mind; but what would Lady George say to the cook? And how did William expect to supply the Big House as it should be supplied, when every crofter body was asking one and eightpence a pound for b.u.t.ter she wouldn't look at? And it all trysted, every pound of it, to the English folk over at the Forest, who were coming down like a flight of locusts, devouring the land with pipers and bad whiskey, and a set of idle, pasty-faced, meat-eating English maids, ruining the country side with bad examples! There would have to be a judgment, nothing less, when Sheenach--barefooted Sheenach from the blackest hut on the property--Marjory would mind it, seeing that she held it to be a disgrace to a Christian landholder--set her up for new-fangled notions indeed!--had actually spoken to her, Mrs. Cameron, about beer-money! The kitchen girl over at the Forest, forsooth, got it, and three shillings a week for washings. Heard one ever the like! a barefoot la.s.s that had not spent three shillings on washings since she was born, and would have to look to it for white robes in the future. And Mistress Mackenzie at the ferry house saying calmly that her prices would be doubled from the 10th August.

"It is too true, mother," Will would say consolingly. "I'd like to see the Commission have its way, and destroy the Forests altogether, if only to teach the people what it would mean. But there! parcel post is only twopence a pound, and we can get b.u.t.ter from Devonshire. They pay high rents there, you know, so they can afford to sell produce cheaper." But even this paradox would not soothe the old lady's ire, and the three idlers would escape from the b.u.t.ter-problem into the wilderness of beauty beyond the fat pastures which fed the dairy; in so doing, no doubt, following the example of the offending English folk, who do not care to trouble their holiday with thoughts of the dishonesty and greed they foster and encourage.

Many a tramp had these three over hill and dale. Sometimes climbing the boulder-strewn heights whence sea and land showed like a map; more often lingering by the river lazily, as it made its way through the gra.s.sy uplands in a series of foamy leaps and oily pauses. For here the sea-trout were to be beguiled by patience; if not by that, then by the red-tailed fly which Will used with the consummate skill of the real pot-fisher. Paul, on the other hand, beset by lingering prejudice, would lounge on the bank intermittently, offering the rod to Marjory in order to bring him luck; while she, engaged in collecting a perfect herbarium, would deprecate her own past skill in the Long Pool.

"And the admirable underhand cast was a chance also?" he retorted drily. "Really, Miss Carmichael, my modesty is catching."

Marjory laughed. "Oh, no! I learnt that from Will. I never could make out whither he went on Sundays, till one day I came upon him in that little strip of pasture in the middle of the larch plantation, flicking at dandelions with his ten-foot rod. Then he confessed that it was his usual occupation of a Sabbath afternoon, because it was so deadly dull with nothing to do at home. So after that I flicked, too.

We used to do it against each other for hours, didn't we, Will?"

"Ten for a dandie, twenty for a daisy, fifty for a b.u.mble-bee,"

murmured Will from under his tilted hat, as he lay on the gra.s.s.

"An instance of the deceit which the irrational worship of the Sabbath is apt to produce," remarked the Reverend James Gillespie, whose conscience invariably a.s.sailed him when he had not made a professional remark for some time.

"It is so refreshing to hear you accuse Miss Carmichael," said Paul, gravely. "Deceit is a mortal sin, isn't it, Mr. Gillespie?"

The Reverend James hesitated. He looked sorely out of place amid the wilderness in his black garments, with Paul in his loose Indian suits, and Will guiltless of coat and waistcoat.

"Deceit, cheating--whoever doth wickedly, etc.--generally comes under common theft--non-bailable," murmured the tilted hat softly; for Will, in his youth, had studied law.

"I congratulate you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, still gravely, "on having attained the position of a real criminal. I have a sneaking admiration for them."

"Why?"

"Because they have done--what I have been afraid to do!"

So the day would slip by in idle talk and idler work, until the lengthening shadows warned them they were far from home, and Will would grow restless over the prospect of dinner _versus_ the tea, with which he had more than once been put off on occasions of gross irregularity. While Paul would boast of his freedom from all control, or offer to stand in the breach by begging a meal at the Lodge; since even Mrs. Cameron's tongue softened when it spoke to the laird, and a vein of humour ran through her blame.

"It's clean reediklous, Gleneira," she would say. "Here it is gone ten, and supper was bidden at eight. An' if you expec' me, a Christian woman, to tell Kursty that _my_ son is even as them who mocked Elijah, or that it was I that made a mistake, you're just wrong. An' a' for a wheen trouties, that's no good for kipper or for anything but to c.o.c.ker yourselves up wi' at breakfast, instead of being contented with good porridge, as your fathers were. But there! we ken find that Esau sold his birthright for a mess o' pottage."

"And I don't wonder at it," Paul would reply gravely; "if he was half so hungry as I am. How much was it, Cameron, that the hook-and-eye man offered me for Gleneira? A man must eat, you know."

Whereupon the old lady would remark that, as she at least knew her duty, his father's son should never lack bread in her house, and so bustle away good-humouredly to hurry on supper. The unpunctuality was not, however, always their fault; and on one occasion followed on an incident which had a curious effect in still further softening Marjory's judgment on handsome, idle, kindly Paul, and introducing that vein of pity, which, in women of her type, seems an almost necessary ingredient of affection. It may be only a triviality, the half-humorous despair of a b.u.t.tonless shirt, the possibility of dirty tablecloths, or it may go further into uncared-for sickness and loneliness, but the thought of personal discomfort to a man whom she likes is always grievous to women who have not been educated out of their housewifely instincts.

It came about in this wise. There was a certain Loch of the Fairies which, despite its great beauty, Marjory had seldom seen, for this reason. It lay hidden in the highest corries of the deer forest, accessible only by the burn watering the sheltered glen which, from time immemorial, had been the sanctuary; and not even for Marjory would old John Macpherson disturb his deer, or allow them to be disturbed. But Paul thought differently when he found that the girl's face brightened at the idea of an excursion thither; for, to him, the nearest pleasure was invariably the best.

"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," he said, with a laugh. "We will start early and make a day of it. And I'll ask Gillespie to come.

He is always telling c.o.c.k-and-bull stories about the big fish there, so we will set him to catch one. I never did."

And Will Cameron agreed also, saying he would take the opportunity to meet the forest keeper on the march, and settle the position of a new fence to keep the hinds from straying. Only old John shook his head, with mutterings regarding future sport and old traditions.

"As if _that_ were not worth all the sport in the world," said Paul, almost exultantly, as, climbing the last bracken-set knoll, and leaving the last Scotch fir hanging over a wild leap of the burn, they filed past a sheer bluff, and saw in front of them a long, narrow, almost level glen, through which the stream slid in alternate reaches and foaming falls. On either side almost inaccessible cliffs; in front of them, cutting the blue sky clearly, a serrated wall of rock closing up the valley. Great sharp-edged fragments from the heights above lay strewn among the sweeping stretches of heather, whence a brood of grouse rose, blundering to the anxious cackle of the hen.

"There they are," said Will, from force of habit in a whisper, "up on the higher pasture. I thought they would be; so we shan't disturb them a bit if we keep to the burn."

Marjory, shading her eyes from the sun, stood looking on one of the prettiest sights in the world; a herd of red deer dotted over a hill slope, or seen outlined against the horizon line. Paul, from sheer habit also, had slipped to the ground, and had his gla.s.s on them.

"Splendid royal to the left, Cameron--wonder if we shall get him this year--and, by George, there's the old crooked horn! I remember, Miss Carmichael, trying to put a bullet into him--well, we won't say how many years ago."

"What a slaughterhouse a man's memory must be," remarked Marjory, with her head in the air.

"Not in this case, at any rate," retorted Paul. "Sometimes I am merciful--or miss; which answers the purpose quite as well." As he spoke the memory of Jeanie Duncan rose quite causelessly to his mind, and he started to his feet impatiently; for somehow little Paul's existence had taken the bloom off his self-complacency in regard to that episode.

"Now for the Pixie's loch," he cried gaily. "The ladies have it all their own way there in destruction, if tales be true. I wonder which of us three unfortunate males she will choose as her victim to-day?"

Marjory, looking down as they crested the last boulder-strewn rise on the almost black and oily sheet of water in the crater-like cup of the corrie, felt that she did not wonder at the legends which had gathered round the spot. The very perfection of its loneliness, its beauty, marked it as a thing apart from the more familiar charm of the world around it. There seemed scarce foothold for a goat on those pillared cliffs which sank sheer into the dark water, and the streak or two of snow lingering still in a northern recess marked, she felt sure, some deep creva.s.se hidden from sight by the innocent-looking mantle of white. Nor could one judge of the depth of the lake by the jagged points of rocks which rose here and there from the surface of the water, for, as she stood, she leant against a fragment of some earlier world, which looked as if it must have fallen from the sky, since the vacant place left by such a huge avalanche must have remained visible for ever in the rocks above. So those out yonder might go down and down, forming vast caves where the Pixie might hold her court of drowned, dead men. She turned to look at Paul suddenly, apprehensively; perhaps because, even in her innocence, she recognised instinctively that there, with all its gifts, with all its charm, lay the nature to which the syren's song is irresistible. But he, stopping on the brink to dip his hand into the water, was looking back at her with a laugh.

"By Jove!" he said, "isn't it cold? Enough to give anyone the shivers."

As he spoke, far out on the gla.s.sy glint of water came a speck of stronger light, widening to a circle, widening, widening ever, in softening ripples.