Red Rowans Part 50

"My dear mother!" quoth Will, good-naturedly. "You look after the beasts, and my corn is all carried."

"Weel! weel! When I'm carried to me grave ye'll find the difference, even if ye get a wife. Aye, aye! I ken fine what she'll be like--just one o' the sort wi' a hump somewhere. I kenna whaur the fashion'll put it then, since 'of that hour knoweth no man,' but it will be somewheres, an' her hair will be as if a clucking hen had bin sc.r.a.pin'

in't."

"I deny it; I deny it," laughed Will; "when I marry, I shall marry a girl just like Marjory. Only she shall not be quite so tall, or so clever, and shall be thinner, and less opinionated--more of my sort, and----"

"And her hair shall be of a different colour," laughed Marjory, in her turn; "I'm glad I don't leave you heartbroken--or anyone else, either," she added, half to herself.

And as she pa.s.sed through her little sitting-room, before starting on her rendezvous with Paul, she paused for an instant before her letter to Tom Kennedy, which still lay unfinished, as she had left it, and looked down again on those last words. They were true still, and with a sudden impulse she took up the pen to say so.

"Tom!" she wrote, "the problem is solved! Paul has come back to me, and we are going to begin a new life together. Yet, I stretch out my hands to you, dear, as I did before, and say 'Friendship is a bigger thing than love!'"

Then she went gaily through the garden to pick a late carnation for Paul's b.u.t.tonhole, and as she picked it she sang the "Flowers o' the Forest."

"I've seen Tweed's silver streams, Glittering in the sunny beams, Grow drumly and dark as he row'd on his way."

The tune, with its haunting cadences, lingered in her mind, and more than once fell from her lips, when with a light heart she faced the ups and downs of the white road as it crept round the loch to where the bridge, spanning the river, would enable her to strike across the moss-hags to the alder-fringed bank above. And Paul would be on the other side as he had been before. But he should not jump this time, for that was one of the things she did not like; those things which she was going to take out of his life and hers. The very thought, indeed, of the risk of a slip made her shiver as she paused for a moment on the bridge, and saw the yellow-brown flood, swollen with the night's rain, rushing against the piers.

"Drumly and dark!" Drumly it was, yet scarcely dark. It ran too fast for that, and up yonder, where she was to meet Paul, it would be a ma.s.s of foam with yellow lights in it. A sort of syllabub of a river pouring over the curved edge of the rock heavily. Not like water at all, but like some drugged draught; falling not with a roar or a rush, but with slow, deafening boom. The waters of Lethe might fall so, she fancied. Well! Paul should run no risk of them to-day, for she was before her time, and would be there to warn him. So thinking, she clambered down to the water's edge, and seating herself on the only level slab of rock, which projected slightly over the boiling pool below, she faced the downward course of the river, certain thus of seeing the first glimpse of her lover's tall figure above the bracken which crested the almost perpendicular rocks on the other side.

"I've seen this morning." It was a most distracting tune! All the more so because the words would follow Mrs. Cameron's sentimental lead, instead of keeping to the old lament with the lilt of battle and sudden death in it.

"The flowers o' the forest that fought aye the foremost, The prime o' our land are cauld in the clay."

That was why they played it as a Dead March in the Highland regiments.

If Paul decided not to retire, it might be played at his funeral some day. At Paul's funeral! The very thought seemed impossible; and yet the girl's heart throbbed more with pride than fear. "That fought aye the foremost." Yes! if she were a soldier's wife that was what a soldier should do, even if she had to sit "drearie, lamenting her dearie."

It was too bad, she told herself, for the tune to haunt her so, since Paul would be coming soon now, and when they had first met her head had not been full of the "Flowers of the Forest" and such things; she had been reading one of Tom's letters. How foolish of her not to have brought one to complete the illusion! unless, indeed, there were, by chance, one in her pocket. Yes! a sc.r.a.p of one, old enough to rouse her curiosity and engross her attention as she smoothed it out and began to read.

"To be disappointed in love! The phrase is arbitrarily bound up with the state of celibacy. Wherefore, my dear Marjory? wherefore? If love, as we once agreed, I think, is the touchstone of life, then marriage appears to me to be the continual essay of love, where, alas! the gold does not often reach the standard for hall marking; therefore it is conceivably better to be continually in love and not to marry. I don't know how it is, Mademoiselle Grands-serieux, but my philosophy invariably ends in paradoxes of doubtful propriety--now, doesn't it?"

She looked up smiling, then rose to her feet quickly, for there was a rustle behind her. Paul might have been there ahead of her after all, and have gone up to look at the river. Yes! there was someone at the head of the fall, where the solitary rowan tree leant above the alder-bushes, for the branches swayed.

"Paul!" she cried across the boom of the river, "is that you? Come down a bit; I'm here!"

"I'm coming, Miss Marjory, I'm coming," answered a childish voice; "but it is the berries I'm getting for you first. It is the last I will be getting you in Gleneira, I'm thinking, and they're real beauties, whatever."

Great heavens! how reckless of the boy! yet, was not recklessness in the blood? There he was, clinging to an overhanging branch; any instant he might fall, and---- "Paul!" she cried quickly, peremptorily; "come down at once. I don't want them."

She saw his bright, flushed face through the spa.r.s.e yellowing leaves, close to the bunch of red berries, clutched by the little brown hand.

So like that picture of his mother--so like--so like Paul, too!--her Paul. Ah, G.o.d in heaven!

The child had slipped. "Hold tight, Paul! Hold tight!"

Vain cry! Almost before it was uttered the seething foam with the sunny glints in it had stifled his swift scream.

Marjory made no sound. White, desperate, she leant over the slippery edge of the shelf, clutched at something that seethed upwards for a second, lost her balance, and was gone--in silence. The heavy foam closed over her like a snow-drift with the sun on it, and all the help the bravest heart could have given was the hope that unconsciousness might come quickly through some kindly rock, and not in the slow agony of suffocation.

It was all over in a minute, for Nature knows her own mind when she is in the tragic mood. She allows no time for unavailing tears. When, not a minute afterwards, Paul Macleod's cry of "Marjory! Marjory!" with its ring of glad certainty, echoed over the pool, there was not a sign to show that she would ever give answer to his call again.

"Marjory! Marjory! Marjory!"

Pitiful appeal, though he knew it not, not even when a vague wonder at her tardiness clouded the careless joy which had come to him with this dawn of a new day, a new life. For the night seemed to have stolen his fears as fit companions for its shadows, and left him nothing but his hopes.

"Marjory! Marjory! Marjory!"

Is there anything in the wide world so terrible as the slow dread which comes as the minutes pa.s.s unavailingly by?--as the certainty that something has gone amiss seems to grow from the very pa.s.sion of protestation against the possibility?--and then, when fear has gone, and unknown grief is the companion of the fruitless search, in which a wild hope will spring up sometimes to intensify the pain? Of such things all men may surely pray that fancy, and not memory, may speak.

It was Tom Kennedy's letter--lighter than the love which had penned it--that gave the first clue, and the hope went out from Paul Macleod's face for ever when his quick eye found it like a foam bubble in a backwater near the ford.

"It will be in the Long Pool we must be looking," whispered the rough, tender voices to each other, but Paul heard. Paul knew, Paul understood what would come--if not that night, then the next day--or the next.

But Fate was merciful, and did not prolong the agony.

"Don't look, laird! Oh, my dear! you that I carried in my arms as a laddie--don't look," sobbed old Macpherson, as, with the first streak of the following dawn, the men who had been working all the night long bent over the oil-strewn, torch-lit depth through which the grapnel came up, slowly, heavily.

But Paul was no coward. He had looked death steadily in the face many and many a time.

"Stand back, John!" he said quietly. "I'll lift her in."

And as he held her there in his arms while they drifted down stream a s.p.a.ce to a shelving gra.s.sy bank, he bent over her calm face, and thanked "whatever G.o.ds there be," pa.s.sionately, for the gift of that sharp cut just showing beneath the damp curls through which some friendly rock had brought a quick end to life. As he looked up again, the dawn was out-paling the stars, and the birds in the alder-bushes were stirring into song.

"What day is it?" he asked, drearily, of old John; and that sudden forgetfulness was the only sign he showed at the time of the terrible shock he had sustained. Yet none who noticed it could ever forget the look which came to his face, when, guided by the clue given by the child's cap still clenched in the girl's hand, a further search ended in the discovery of little Paul's body, and Marjory's lover realised that she must have lost her life in the effort to save his namesake.

Indeed, in after years, old John, telling the tale, would often say that he never went in such fear of seeing murder done as when Mr.

Gillespie had suggested the touching propriety of burying the brave girl and her little friend side by side. He had even taken the bunch of rowan berries found in the boy's fingers from the girl's breast, where they had laid them, as no doubt they had been intended to lie, saying, in a sort of fury, that nothing of the child's should come near her. But beyond that he made no sign.

And old John said true. Paul Macleod came back courteous and calm among the many mourners who climbed one sunny afternoon to that sunny spot on the southern slope of the hill, where Marjory had said the light lingered longest. James Gillespie, his fair, florid face gaining a dignity from his office, leading the way bareheaded, in his white surplice, through the dead bracken and over the heathery slopes, while his voice steadied itself over the words of consolation and hope. Tom Kennedy, and Will, the laird, and Mr. Wilson--who, old as he was, would not be gainsaid--carrying their dear dead, resting at times upon some lichen-covered rock, or aided by other hands, tenderly, sorrowfully, willing as theirs, falling for a time a step behind. All, save Paul, who, setting even old John's offer of help aside, kept his clasp tight upon the tough ash staff until, as they pa.s.sed the wishing-well on their downward way, he broke it across his knee fiercely and flung the pieces on the dismal little pile. And then it was that Father Macdonald, who, with sad, serene eyes, and softly moving lips, had followed at a little distance, pleaded with the Great Judge for another soul needing mercy.

And Paul came back courteous and calm also from that smaller, drearier procession, which laid the new-found heir among his forbears in the stone vault belonging to the Macleods, far over by Ardmore point, in the old kirk-yard. Dr. Kennedy, knowing all the circ.u.mstances, would fain have spared the empty honour to the dead boy, but all his arguments in favour of silence were unavailing. So old Peggy's little grandson rested under a broad, silver plate, proclaiming him to be the only son of Ronald Alister Macleod, of Gleneira, and Janet Duncan, his wife. The sleet showers were slanting bitterly; and the outgoing tide, buffeting with the westerly wind, almost swamped the little white coffin as it lay in the bottom of the "Tubhaneer," while Paul sate steering for the point steadily, as if he were not chilled through to the marrow of both body and soul.

It was the drenching he got, no doubt, as he stood alone, as chief mourner, on the bare, wind-swept point, that made him look so ghastly.

He said so, at any rate, when Dr. Kennedy, noting his appearance with professional eyes, recommended him to go to bed. It was Indian ague, he said, nothing more; he was subject to it; had, in fact, had several similar attacks at Gleneira.

So he retired, courteously, calmly as ever, to the Big House, where he set aside all offers of companionship. And there, Dr. Kennedy, with that look on Paul Macleod's handsome face haunting his professional soul, sought him next morning on pretence of saying goodbye. But by that time Paul was past anything save that odd, rhythmical tossing from side to side of the restless head, which comes when the brain is conscious of nothing but the fever raging in it.

Lord George came down at once, gentle as any woman, and surprised to hear the long tale Dr. Kennedy had to tell, for Paul had only written of the sad accident. And Lady George followed, with two plain, black dresses and a little a.s.sortment of highly starched linen collars and cuffs in her portmanteaux, ready at all points to take up the role of nurse; though why a woman should nurse better in handcuffs, which prevent all natural play of the wrist, and why a patient should be supposed to like the dangling of starched cap-strings in his face, is another matter.

And still the head tossed restlessly, and the parched lips went on muttering, muttering. At the first, of many things faintly articulate; many things, and of many places; then, by degrees, centring round one time, one scene; finally emerging into a monotonous whisper--

"Violet! Violet! Violet!"

"I think we had better telegraph for Mrs. Vane," said Dr. Kennedy, looking grave; "his mind has gone back to that time when she nursed him through something similar. It is often so in brain cases, and we cannot afford to lose a chance of saving him--sane. That previous attack lessens the chance terribly."

She came, of course, without an instant's delay, as she would have come to anyone who needed her extraordinary tact and care; and Dr.

Kennedy gave a sigh of relief when, stealing in for a look about dawn on the next day, he found her seated on a stool beside the low camp bed, one hand laid lightly on the sick man's breast, the other as lightly keeping the ice bag on his forehead, while he lay still, quite still.