Red Rowans Part 4

"'Deed it's so," broke in the querulous voice, satisfied at finding a legitimate object for complaint. "He's just the laziest, weariest wean, and no caring a tinker's d.a.m.n for his nanny. Just lyin'

sleepin', and me in an agony. Could ye not watch?--Ay!--Ay! But what can one expect o' a child o' the devil----"

"Peggy! You're a wicked old woman to speak like that. Paul does more than most boys twice his age. I'll be bound he has been stuffing indoors with you all day long without a grumble. Run away now, dear laddie, and get the fresh air."

The order, spoken in Gaelic, produced a sudden flash of life all over the little fellow, and he was out of the door in a second. Marjory looked after him with a pleasant smile.

"He is a pretty boy, isn't he, Peggy?--quite the prettiest in the glen."

"Aye! he has the curse o' beauty. Sae had his mither. Ay! an' her father before her. Thank the Lord, Miss Marjory, you're no bonnie."

"I shall do nothing of the sort, Peggy. And how is the pain? Better for that liniment I rubbed in yesterday?"

"Better!" There was a world of satisfied scorn in the old voice.

"Better frae ae teaspoonful o' stuff. Lord be gude to us, Miss Marjory! Naethin' short o' a meeracle'll better me, an' ye talk o' a carnal rubbin' doing it."

"It would be a miracle if it did, wouldn't it, Peggy?" retorted the girl, calmly; "but if it did no good at all there is no use in repeating it, so I'll be off and leave you to your sleep again."

"Hoot awa! an' you tired wi' your walk. Just sit ye down and rest a bit and dinna mind me. I'm used to being no minded, ye ken. Wha minds a bit pauper body but the pairish? Two an' saxpence a week, an' a boll o' meal term-day that's no meal at a', but just grits; grits and dirt. I'm no wondering that they puts soddy (soda) until't at the poor's-house to gar't swall. Ay! Aye! and me lyin' a week without spiritual food, an' I cravin' for it from anyone."

"Now, Peggy, you know quite well you told Mr. Gillespie you wanted none of his priestcraft, the last time he was here. You are just a bad, ungrateful old woman, and I've a great mind to go away without making you a cup of tea or telling you the news."

The old face set close in its white cap frills brightened visibly at the last words. "Weel! Weel! I must na be hard on the puir lad. There be divers gifts, an' may be he's gotten one somewhere. And but for the pain makin' me clean wud, I'd have had the tea for you. Just cry on Paulie--the kettle's on the fire, and he'll no be long, puir lammie."

But Marjory preferred to leave the boy to his play, and set about the task herself quickly, dexterously, while old Peggy watched her with sagacious eyes; for she herself had been a notable worker, and had still a regretful admiration for the capability in others. Rather a despicable object, perhaps, this fretful rheumatic old woman, grumbling and growling at everything; and yet, could the secrets of all hearts be revealed, she might have seemed more of a heroine and martyr than many a canonised saint. A youth of ceaseless plodding toil had been given in stolid honesty to her master's interests; then late in life, when the hopes of womanhood were almost over, had come a brief St. Martin's summer, where a wandering Englishman engaged on some mining venture close by had married the sober la.s.s as a means of being comfortable for the time, and after a year had deserted her shamefully, leaving her to work harder than ever for the sake of the little daughter who remained to show that Peggy's short spell of love had not been a dream. Some, indeed, there were who maintained that it had never had any solid foundation, and that the marriage had been but a pretence. This coming to the mother's ears had roused in her a fierce anger, which in its turn gave rise to a pa.s.sionate desire to prove this child of hers to be above their petty spite, superior to their plodding lives. And in a measure she succeeded. Jeanie Duncan grew up in what, to a girl of her cla.s.s, was luxury, while her mother sold brown sugar, herrings, tarred rope, and tobacco--in fact, kept a general store. Until the girl, like many another, fretted at home, sought service, and disappeared beyond the circle of blue hills; to be followed after a time by her mother.

But though pretty Jeanie Duncan never returned, old Peggy did, bringing with her a baby. Not an unusual sequel to the story; and so, though the neighbours shook their heads, there was no need to question the woman. What else could have been expected from flighty Jeanie Duncan, whose head had been turned by Mr. Paul's painting her picture.

And Peggy said nothing, even while she concealed nothing. Silent from her youth, she was more silent than ever as she reverted again to the hard toil of those early days, until one January the cold settled into her ill-clad old bones when she was gathering sticks in the woods and left her a cripple. And then the loss of her independence broke her spirit and turned her into a fretful scold. A dreary, toil-worn, barren youth, desertion, degradation, outrage of love and pride--all this gamut of grief had she sounded without an answering groan. The straw which broke her patience was not the hardness but the charity of her fellow-creatures. A most irrational old lady, no doubt, yet not altogether blameworthy in her self-satisfied appreciation of the tea "that was no from the pairish, praise be to the Lord," and very human, certainly, in her eager desire to hear the news of that parish. Yet her face when Marjory told her of the laird's return seemed to settle into a strange indifference. "The laird! It will be Mr. Paul you're meaning."

"Yes, Mr. Paul; he is the laird now, you know, and he hasn't been here for nine years. He has been away in India with his regiment."

"Lord sakes! as if I did na' know that; he has been the laird these sax years gone. I mind it weel. And I mind him, too; ower weel, maybe.

A winsome laddie, fond of painting; but 'Thou shalt not make to thyself the likeness,' ye ken. So he is coming home at last--bonnie nae doot; and she, my Jeanie, is dust and ashes."

It was seldom that Peggy alluded to her dead daughter, and there was a wistful look in the crabbed old face. Marjory, quickly responsive, stroked the crabbed old hand which lay on the coverlet gently; but old Peggy would none of her sympathy and drew it away, while her voice took almost a triumphant tone.

"Ay! Dust and ashes! That's what we a' come to. Young and auld, Miss Marjory, my dear, rich and poor. Ay! and pairish officers, forbye; it's no to be escapit, thank the Lord! And if you're going ye might just open yon drawer in the aumry an' tak' oot my deid claes. There's a bonnie blaze in the fire that maun-na be wasted, and in life we are in death, ye ken, so it's as weel to hae them aired. There's a deal o'

sickness comin' frae damp linen, and I'm sae subjec' to the rheumatism."

"That would be one of the ills you would leave behind you, Peggy,"

suggested Marjory, with a tender smile at the oddity of the old woman's thought.

"I'm sure I hope sae, for it wad be maist terrible in the wings,"

replied Peggy, gravely. Her eyes, following the girl as she complied with the grim request, lit up with satisfaction, her mouth trembled in the effort for calm indifference.

"Ay! sure enough it's the best of cloth, yon, and there is twa rows back st.i.tchin' as fine as fine, and a frill down the front. Some has a lace edgin', but I'm no sure o' furbelows. It wad no be decent for me to come before my Maker prinked oot like a young la.s.s; though Mary McAndrews, who was a gude four year aulder nor me, had real Valenciennes. But, there! she was ae' flighty, puir thing; her mind set on bows and gum flowers, no on things above. Fine cloth an' a cambric frill's gude eneuch for my funeral; an' the coffin no from the pairish, thank the Lord!"

As old Peggy lay there in the bay bed gossiping over her shroud she was a grim sight; yet a pathetic one, since there is nothing in the wide world which appeals to the humanity within us so much as the tired, toil-wasted hands of old age folded on a coverlet waiting for death. Marjory, with her strong young ones straightening the dead clothes, felt a strange thrill at her heart, even as she thought of the long years of welcome struggle before she, too, would be glad of rest.

"So Mr. Paul is to come hame again?" quavered the old voice, softened inexplicably by that chill thought of death. "Aye, aye! he will be bonnie still, for he was aye of the kind to mak' a bonnie corp. And no that bad for a man--not by ordinair. Weel! when ye see him tell him that ould Peggy's gone on the pairish, but that it'll no be a pairish funeral. For there's twa bottles gude whiskey in the draw wi' the deid claes, my dear, and that's eneuch to carry me to my grave as I sou'd be carried."

CHAPTER III.

Will Cameron the grieve, or, in plain English, the land steward of the Gleneira property, was leaning lazily over the shrubbery gate, watching two men mowing a narrow strip of gra.s.s on either side of the grand approach leading up to the Big House; a proceeding which gave the whole place a most ridiculous half-shaven air. It had its merits, however, in Mr. Cameron's eyes, seeing that it was supposed to make the roadway look kempt while it preserved the rest of the lawn for hay; an economy sorely needed at the Big House, after the late laird's riotous living. Even now, when matters had mended somewhat, honest Will did not care to think of those times when all he saw of the laird of Gleneira was a signature on I O U's; for, when all was said and done, his own honesty seemed bound up in that of the old place. A gardener was nailing up the creepers covering the porch; the windows of the house were set wide open, and through them a noise of hammering and brushing floated out into the crisp morning air as Marjory came up the road from the lodge; her footsteps crunching in the loose sea-gravel, which not even the coming and going of years had worn into compactness, and leant over the gate likewise. Will shifted a little, almost unconsciously, to make room for her, with loose-limbed easy good-nature, and in so doing revealed the whole att.i.tude of his individuality towards Marjory Carmichael. Briefly she was the dearest girl in the world, but rather apt to make a fellow move on, when he would much rather have stopped where he was. Yet they were the best of friends, almost playmates, although he was double her age and distinctly bald. For the rest a very straightforward simple person, with nothing complex about him. One of those men whom Nature has made firstly a sportsman, secondly a farmer; in other words, a descendant of both Cain and Abel. Marjory herself was very fond of him, and no wonder, since during the years she had spent with his mother he had set himself to make things pleasant for her as a man about a house can do when he has absolutely no ulterior object in view. The mere suggestion of such an object would have filled him with terror, for Marjory's energy was appalling.

"What a pretty place it is after all," she said suddenly, and in so saying spoke the truth. Framed in by an amphitheatre of purple heather-clad hills and dark green fir-clad spurs, Gleneira House with its swelling lawns stretching away to the rocky beach of the loch, its tall silver pines and clumps of rhododendrons looked bright and cheerful despite the nameless want which hangs always round an empty house; the dead look, as if, the soul having pa.s.sed from it, naught remained save for it to hasten back to the dust whence it came. There was something, however, which struck one as homelike in its low irregular outline, its bow windows set in rose, jasmine, and magnolia; above all in its cl.u.s.tered stacks of chimneys rising without respect to symmetry and suggesting comfortable firesides within. Cosy firesides in corners, not set back to back in pairs after the modern fashion. A conglomerate building altogether, not unlike a two-storied summer-house full of French windows. An airy feminine sort of house, unlike the usual aggressively stony Scotch mansions, yet fitting in strangely with its fairylike background of hills, and woods, and lochs.

"Very pretty, but awfully out of repair," replied Will, disconsolately. "The roof won't last much longer."

"Why doesn't he--Captain Macleod I mean--put on a new one?"

"My dear Marjory! He can't afford it. A man has to spend a lot in an expensive regiment like his, and----"

"Nine years since he was in the Glen," interrupted the girl, bent on her own thoughts. "I don't remember him a bit. What is he like, Will?"

"Awfully handsome; about the handsomest boy I ever saw, and I don't suppose he has changed much."

"I know that--anything more?"

"Spends a heap of money."

"I know--anything more?"

"Yes; you will like him."

"Why?"

"Women always do."

Marjory turned down the corners of her mouth; a trick which with her meant disapproval, disgust, dislike, disappointment,--such a variety of small d's that Will was wont to say it was quite as reprehensible as the collective big one of his s.e.x.

"He really is an awfully nice fellow," continued Will; "but the place is going to rack and ruin. The farm houses are so poor that the south country men won't take them, and a slack style of tenant only means going from bad to worse. He ought to marry money. It is the only way out of the difficulty, since he won't skin the woods or let the place."

"Why doesn't he come and live here as his fathers did," put in the girl, quickly; "why shouldn't he be satisfied to do his duty to the people as his fathers did?"

"Because his income isn't what theirs was to begin with. The place is heavily mortgaged; everyone knows it, so there is no reason why I shouldn't say so. Then Alick Macleod ran through a heap of money somehow, and left a lot of debts which had to be paid off. I don't say that the Captain mightn't have been more economical, but it isn't all his fault. And then he won't touch the estate. That is right enough in a way, and yet Smith, the hook-and-eye man, offered twice its value for that bit of moor that marches with his forest."

"And Captain Macleod refused?"

"Declined with thanks; and wrote me privately not to bother him again with any proposals of that sort from a bloated mechanic."

Marjory's mouth turned down again. "Indeed! that was very n.o.ble of him."

"So it was in a way," replied her companion, sticking to his own ill-concealed satisfaction, "for the man is offensive to the last degree. He has invented a tartan, and has a piper to play him to bed."