Red Rowans Part 3

I'm not sure if I want that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?" he put in, rather aghast.

"Oh! nonsense, and all that; and yet----" She looked at him with almost tragic earnestness. "I am not sure if I don't like it after all. It is funny, but it is nice."

"What is nice?"

"You're being so kind. Only I think it would make me lazy, and that wouldn't do at all. Uncle used to say I must never forget that I had to earn my own living."

"And I--well! I'm afraid I should like to make you forget it," he answered; "but we needn't quarrel about it, I suppose. At any rate, not for the next four years."

"But I don't mean to quarrel with you at all," she said, very sedately. "I mean to be friends; it is so much more convenient."

Perhaps it was on the whole; even though as the years went on Dr.

Thomas Kennedy, aged forty, began to wish that her twenty-first birthday would find her willing to continue the tie on another footing. And yet he recognised, not without a certain admiration, that she was not likely to be happy, even if married to one whom she trusted and liked as she trusted and liked him, unless she had first faced the world by herself. Of course, if she were to fall in love it would be different; then, like other women, she might take a certain pride in giving up her future. But she was scarcely likely to fall in love with him, unless he made love to her, and that was exactly what he could not do. In a sort of whimsical way he told himself it would not be fair, since in his heart of hearts he did not believe in the master pa.s.sion! not, at least, in the romantic form in which alone it would appeal to a girl like Marjory. To affect her it must be something very intense indeed; something, in short, which his infinite tenderness for the girl prevented him from giving. Perhaps if there had been any symptoms of another lover appearing on the scene all this philosophic consideration might have disappeared under the pressure of rudimentary jealousy; but there were none. Indeed, barring the Episcopalian clergyman, who was quite out of the question, there was no young man of Marjory's own rank, or near it, at Gleneira, where he had arranged for her to stay on with a distant cousin of his own. And neither Will Cameron, the factor, nor old Mr. Wilson, at the Manse, nor any of the occasional visitors were more likely to stir the romantic side of the girl's nature than he was himself. Less likely, indeed, since he had the manifest charm of being a person of more importance. In appearance he was a small, dark man with a vivacious face and something of a foreign manner, the latter being due to his having wandered about on the Continent for years seeking surgical experience at the cannon's mouth. So, on his last visit to Gleneira, where he spent all his rare holidays, he had told himself point-blank that he of all men in the world was bound in honour not to take advantage of his ward's innocence and undisguised affection. She was exceptionally fitted for the future she had mapped out for herself, so in a way he was bound to let her try it.

Consequently, as she sate that July afternoon teaching the children their duty to their neighbour, there was no _arriere pensee_ of any kind in her affectionate reliance on Cousin Tom's unfailing interest.

That would last until she grew tired of teaching, and he grew old.

Then, always supposing that it was agreeable to both parties, they might settle down somewhere and be the best of friends till death did them part.

Weary of teaching! That did not seem likely, to judge by the way she taught; and yet through all her work she was conscious of that postcard in her pocket; conscious of the fact that there was no denying Donald's proposition, and that it brought great news whatever.

But as she followed the trooping children out of doors to the horse-chestnut shade, she took no notice whatever of Mr. McColl's evident desire to re-open the question, and, with a curt remark that the children knew their duty to their neighbour admirably, she set off with a light, rapid step down the white road.

Mr. McColl looked after her admiringly, unresentfully. Miss Marjory was Miss Marjory, and without her help his grant in aid would be but a poor thing, what with the Bishop's lawn sleeves and the new standards; both of which are stumbling-blocks in a remote Highland parish even when there is no other school within ten miles. Well, well, it was grand news for the Glen that the laird was to be home, and there were others besides Miss Marjory who would be glad to hear it.

CHAPTER II.

Mr. McColl was right, as Marjory herself had ere long to acknowledge; for she had not gone far ere quick steps echoed behind her, and, looking round, she saw the Reverend James Gillespie trying to overtake her. She paused in resigned vexation, experience having taught her the wisdom of waiting for him; the fact being that the fusion point of mind and body was with him extremely low, and heat had a disastrous effect on both; so she waited--that honest walking boot of hers beating a very girlish tattoo of impatience the while against a rock.

"This is great news, Miss Marjory," he began, breathlessly. "Great news--I may say, good news--is--is it not?"

The latter rather alarmed inquiry being the result of a glance at her face; for she was in a contradictory mood, and the Reverend James never had any fixed opinions in minor matters. He took them from his friends and was, in consequence, often in the position of a child who, having filled both hands with biscuits, is suddenly offered a sweetie.

Even then he was quite ready to swallow the new contribution if it was firmly put into his mouth. There was no little excuse for him, however, since his present environment in a measure forced him to a poor opinion of himself in the past. The fact being that until the age of fifteen he had been nothing more than the son of a poor crofter on the estate of Gleneira. A clever lad, no doubt, who might perchance rise to something above his father's fate. And then the Bishop, on the lookout for recruits to the Gaelic-speaking clergy necessary to carry on the work in the remoter glens, where the Episcopal faith still lingers, had chosen him out like Samuel for the service of the Lord.

It had been a veritable translation, for the Bishop, being High Church, had exalted views of the priesthood. The result being that James Gillespie, fulfilled with a virtuous desire to justify the Bishop's choice, soon lost the small amount of individuality he had originally possessed. Educated by the Bishop, ordained by the Bishop, made the Bishop's chaplain in order that the Bishop might coach him through the rocks of social etiquette, he became, not unnaturally, a sort of automaton, safe so far as his knowledge of the Bishop's views went, but no further. On these points he was logic proof; on others the veriest weatherc.o.c.k at the mercy of every breeze that blew. For the rest, a good-looking, florid, fair young man, dressed rigorously in clerical costume. This again being in deference to the Bishop who, honest man, having his fair share of the serpent's wisdom, saw the necessity of hedging this prophet in his own country about with every dignity which might serve to emphasise the difference between his past and present. The more so because the spa.r.s.e congregations amid the fastnesses of the hills were in the charge of different pastors. Once a month or so the Reverend Mr. Wilson, from the Manse miles away down the Strath, would drive up in a machine, put up with the Camerons at the Lodge, and deliver a very cut-and-dried little sermon in the school-house. On these occasions the Reverend Mr. Gillespie used to trudge over the hills with his surplice in a brown paper parcel, so leaving the Geneva gown and bands a fair field while he delivered an equally cut-and-dried little homily to the still more outlying faithful in a barn. About this arrangement, necessitated by ancient custom, even the Bishop constrained his tongue, seeing that Mr. Wilson belonged to the Church of Scotland, as by law established, and, what is more, to the very highest and driest portion of it. He was a courtly old gentleman, with a white tie, yards long, wound round his neck numberless times, and finished off by an odd little bow made out of the extreme ends; a learned old man with a turn of the leg, suggesting a youth when calves were visible, and a vast store of cla.s.sical quotations remaining over from the days when he lectured on the humanities at St. Andrews. Neither did the Bishop consider the Reverend Father Macdonald, who came once in three months or so, and generally on a week day, an intruder. On the contrary, the Reverend James had instructions to ask him to dinner, and, if it was a Friday, to have c.o.c.kle soup and stewed lentils for him; that is to say, if the invitation was accepted, which it was not as a rule, the Father preferring to eat potatoes and b.u.t.ter at the Camerons, and endure the old lady's good-natured scorn, for the sake of hearing Marjory sing Scotch songs and play Scarlatti. For Dr. Carmichael's one relaxation had been, music, in which, as in other things, the girl had proved herself to be an apt pupil. As often as not, too, on these occasions, old Mrs. Cameron would send a man with the dogcart down the Strath to fetch up Mr. Wilson, and then the two old enemies could fence at each other courteously over the single gla.s.s of port, for which the Jesuit had a dispensation. And, if the b.u.t.tons seemed inclined to come off the foils, Marjory, in the next room, would strike up, "Come, bring to me a stoup o' wine, and bring it in a silver ta.s.sie." Then their old heads would wag, and they would give over the endless battle for the sake of hearing a "bonnie la.s.sie" sing their favourite song. But it was very different when the Free Church missioner came round, for he was an earnest, red-haired person, who any day of the week would gladly have testified against Black Prelacy to the bitter end of the stake. He was a stumbling-block, even to Marjory, who professed calm tolerance; but then those courtly old admirers of hers, to say nothing of Cousin Tom's rather foreign manners, had spoilt her. So that amid all her theories--the theories of clever youth instinct with the love of justice and liberty--she could not help being repelled by the roughness of life when, as it were, she touched and handled it. The people themselves, however, thought it a sign of strength to bang the pulpit and bellow, as, indeed, it was, undoubtedly. So the consensus of opinion in all sects was that the Free Church had the finest preacher. Not that it mattered much in a place where church-going on a Sunday was a recognised dissipation, which had to last for a week.

Thus, no matter who was in the pulpit, the little school-house on a fine day overflowed; and even the Reverend Father Macdonald had not a few applicants for a blessing against witchcraft if the cows did not milk properly. This, however, was done on the sly, by accident as it were, when the pet.i.tioners chanced to meet priestly authority in the post-office.

In order, therefore, to hold his own amid the hosts of Midian, the Reverend James spent quite a large slice of his modest income on all-round collars and silk ca.s.socks; and even when the old Adam arose at the sight of a red-brown river, and he _had_ to creep away with a hazel rod and a bag of worms to some seething pool where the sea-trout lay, he still kept to his professional garments and sate on a rock with his long coat-tails pinned behind his back, looking like a gigantic crow about to fly.

Despite this and other ridiculous habits, Marjory, with her clear, honest eyes saw the real desire to do his duty to Church and State underlying the young man's indecision; but, fortunately for him, she had no notion that of late this had taken the form of wishing to marry her. The fact being that in a recent visit the Bishop had not only remarked that the parish clergy should be the husbands of one wife, but had rather pointedly referred to the immense improvement in the school standard, since Miss Carmichael had begun to practise teaching there. The direct consequence of which had been to make the Reverend James believe himself in love, and at the same time to make him regard all Marjory's opinions as episcopally blessed. An effort needing mental gymnastics of the highest cla.s.s, especially when, as now, she was bent on mischief.

"Good news," she echoed. "Well, I hardly know; that must surely depend entirely on what sort of person Captain Macleod turns out to be." This she knew must, to begin with, savour of blasphemy to one born and bred on the estate.

"Naturally, I may say, of course, but----" he looked at her pathetically, like a dog when asked to perform a difficult trick; "you--you--you surely have not heard anything against him, have you?"

Marjory's eyes twinkled, but only for a moment; after all it was poor fun depolarising his mental compa.s.s.

"Anything against him? No; except that he is too good-looking, I am told."

"Handsome is that handsome does," remarked the Reverend James, cheerfully; it was a favourite proverb at the palace, and he felt sure of his ground. Unfortunately, since it roused Marjory to contradiction.

"Nonsense! As if all the goodness in the world could change a snub nose into a Grecian."

"But surely, my dear Miss Marjory," protested the young man feebly, "the proverb does not a.s.sert--em--that sort of thing. I have always understood it--em--I mean the latter half--perhaps I should say the simile--alludes to moral worth."

"Now, Mr. Gillespie! does that mean you consider beauty and goodness to be the same, or simply that you deny the value of physical beauty altogether?" asked Marjory in aggrieved tones.

"I--I don't think I mean either," he replied, so naively that she was obliged to laugh; "but indeed," he went on, "it seems to me, as I remember the Bishop said in his sermon on All Souls, that beauty and goodness are in a measure synonymous, that----"

"Do you mean," she interrupted hastily, but with a sort of quick hesitation which came often to her speech when she was really interested, "that not only are good things necessarily beautiful in a way, but that beautiful things must be good? Look at t.i.to! All his vileness did not mar the perfection of his beauty. It was a tower of strength to him till the day of his death. It must be so--you can't help it. The thing is good in itself."

Never having read "Romola," the Reverend James fell back discreetly on a more unimpeachable proverb, by remarking, with the air of a man making a valuable contribution to the argument:--

"Beauty is but skin deep."

"Who wants it to be more?" she asked, hotly. "That is all you see. No one asks whether the muscles follow the proper curves beneath the skin, or the bones are strong. And, after all, it seems to me that goodness and beauty appeal to the same chord--the love of everything that is clear, defined, orderly. Ugliness is so incoherent, so indistinct, Mr. Gillespie! Did it ever strike you how unnecessarily ugly we all are? Now, don't deny the fact. Remember the Bishop's hymn says, 'only man is vile.'"

"But that really does apply to his moral."

"I don't agree with you. Some of us, perhaps, are wicked, but most of us are hideous."

"Do you really think so?" And the self-conscious look on his smug, comely face was too much for her gravity. She laughed merrily.

"There are exceptions to every rule, Mr. Gillespie; I only meant to say that since the strongest and best, and therefore, according to you, the most beautiful, had survived in the struggle for existence----"

"By the bye," he put in, for him quite eagerly, "the Bishop has just sent me an excellent reply to the Darwinian----"

Marjory went on remorselessly, "That we were singularly plain-looking, as a rule. For my part I would gladly have eliminated the Carmichael nose if I had had any choice in the matter."

The remark left a grand opening for a compliment if he could at the moment have thought of anything save the crude a.s.sertion that he considered it the most beautiful nose in the world. So he remained silent, casting about in his mind for a less absolute form, with such concentrated admiration in his face, that even Marjory could not avoid noticing it, and with a sudden curl of her lip, changed the subject by asking him, in her best categorical manner, when he had last been to see old Peggy, who was bad with her rheumatism. Now old Peggy's cottage was not an inviting-looking abode--a boulder-built hut with a peat roof and a rudimentary chimney--and it lay close by in a hollow between the road and a bog full of waving cotton gra.s.s. So the Reverend James regretfully gave up his opportunity as lost for the time; but a gleam of manly resolution came to him as he looked first at the hut, then down the road, the pleasant sunshiny road stretching away to where a thin blue smoke from the chimneys of Gleneira Lodge rose above the silver firs and copper beeches to the right of the big house. All that distance to traverse with Marjory, as against Peggy Duncan the pauper, who was bad enough at the best, but, with the rheumatism, simply appalling.

"I'm afraid I haven't time to-day," he began, with admirable regret, which, however, changed to consternation as his companion paused and held out her hand.

"Then good-bye! I promised to look in on my way home. And on the whole it is better as it is, for it is positively unsafe to visit old Peggy in couples when she is ill. So long as she has but one visitor, you know, the fear of losing a gossip bridles her tongue; but when there are two, one is always a scapegoat." Now, Marjory looked at her companion gravely, and spoke deliberately, "You wouldn't, I'm sure, care to hear me abused; so it is wiser for me to go alone. Good-bye."

She was off as she spoke down the brae, leaving him disappointed, yet still vaguely content, the very thought of in the future having a wife who would go and visit old Peggy filling him with peace, for that old woman was a sore trial to his dignity, since she invariably made a point of remembering his youth as a barefoot cotter's boy. But then at heart she was a Presbyterian who did not believe in the sanct.i.ty of orders. So he went on his way down the loch fairly satisfied with himself, while Marjory took his place beside the sick bed of the rheumatic old woman.

The girl gave one regretful glance at the sunshine before she dived into the darkness of the cottage. It was mean and squalid in the extreme, yet to those accustomed to the dirt and warmth, the discomfort and the cosiness of a Highland hut, its air of tidiness was unusual. The mud floor was even and clean swept, the single pane of gla.s.s doing duty as a window was neither broken nor patched with rags, while the crazy, smoke-blackened dresser was ranged with common earthenware. A gathering peat, just edged with fire, lay on the huge stone hearth, above which a tiny black pot hung in the thin column of pale blue smoke which, as it rose to the dim rafters, was illumined by the only ray of sunlight in the house--that which streamed through the round hole in the roof which did duty as a chimney. Beside the hearth a fair-haired boy of about six lay fast asleep, while from a settle in the darkness a pair of gleaming green eyes revealed the presence of a cat.

Nothing more to be seen by Marjory's sun-blinded sight. Not a sound to be heard, until suddenly a grey hen roosting in the rafters began to cluck uproariously with much sidelong prancings of a pair of yellow legs, and downward dips of a quaint, irascible, tufted head. Instantly from a recess bed arose a patient moan and a pious aspiration that the Lord's will might be done at all costs.

"Good afternoon, Peggy! I hope your sleep has done you good," said Marjory blithely, as she sate down on the edge of the bed, and looked steadily at the occupant's face. Old Peggy Duncan, with the a.s.sertion that she had not slept for days trembling on her tongue, wavered before the girl's decision, and murmured something about closing an eye.

"That is better than nothing, isn't it?" continued the uncompromising visitor. "And as for wee Paulie! he's been having a fine snooze.

Haven't you, Paulie?"

The child by the fire, rubbing his eyes drowsily, smiled back at her rather sheepishly.