Red Rowans Part 51

"I used to do it before," she whispered, "and it seems to soothe him--do you think it foolish?"

For Dr. Kennedy, with a smile, had looked round the room, wondering at the woman's quick touch which had transformed it. A night-light flickered from the floor in one corner, the curtains had gone and the bed was shifted to the centre, so that the mingled light of waning night and dawning day fell sideways on the patient, and he could have seen--if he could have seen at all--the door set wide open to the long corridor to which some of Peter Macpherson's orange trees, the scarlet hibiscus, and a few hot-house plants gave the look of a verandah. A faint scent from them filled the air, and the large, empty room, almost devoid of furniture, had lost its snug English comfort altogether.

"Foolish?" he echoed, going to the window, and looking out, absently.

"Who can say? The brain knows its own secrets. He seems to have responded to the suggestion, and, for all we can tell, is ten years younger to-day than he was yesterday."

"I wish he were! I wish he were." The whisper came so pa.s.sionately, that Dr. Kennedy turned and looked at her curiously, sadly.

"He is no worse, surely," she asked, rising softly, her hands seeming to melt away, as it were, leaving the sick man unconscious of their going. "Surely he is not worse?"

"No! I was only thinking it might be better for us all if his memory stopped where it is now--if he could forget."

She clasped her hands together tightly. "If he could!--if only he could forget--I would not care how much I remembered."

EPILOGUE.

It was once more autumn. The rowans were as red, the heather as purple, as it had been in the year when Jeanie Duncan had sate for her portrait and Marjory Carmichael had taken her holiday; as red, as purple, as both will be until--

"The slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink."

For Nature is supremely indifferent whether she gives birth to fools or knaves, or whether the Great Reaper fills his sheaf with wheat or tares.

The evening shadows were lengthening in the Glen, and from the little school-house by the horse-chestnut tree the cadence of children's voices rose and fell over the stirring measure of a processional hymn.

"Not so fast! not so fast! who told you to gallop it like that?" cried a smartly dressed young woman at the harmonium; a young lady with that curious resemblance to a commonplace book, which the profession of teaching brings to all but clever faces.

"Miss Marjory was saying it should be gay-like," murmured a rebellious voice among the elder scholars; the younger pausing with awed glances at the only authority they had known.

"Then she was wrong," retorted the Reverend James Gillespie's owner.

"It should be stately and solemn as befits a--a hymn. Don't you agree with me, James?"

"Perfectly, perfectly. The Bishop agrees also." His face beamed unalloyed content; for he had read "dust to dust, ashes to ashes,"

over many a coffin since his voice broke down one November morning some years ago, and the memory of one funeral scarcely troubles him more than another; each and all have a place in that growing sense of his sacerdotal position, which makes him greatly regret that in those earlier days he did not wear a biretta when exercising his priestly function in committing his flock to their graves.

And the evening shadows were lengthening also along the white road that curves and crests the points and bays of the loch. A glint of light where Paul had stood like St. Christopher, a deeper shadow where Marjory had sate listening to the blabbing of the waves. Light and shadow mingled in the woods, through which they had run hand in hand, though with every moment the sunset glow left some golden birch or scarlet cherry; and down among the tall, silver firs by the house a faint white mist was beginning to rise over the trim lawns.

"It is growing chill, Paul!" said an anxious voice.

"To be continued in our next, Blazes; your aunt is inexorable!" The tone was gracious as ever, but thinner, as Paul Macleod rose from his lounge chair.

"But, Uncle Paul! How many runs did you make?" cried Blasius, eagerly.

It had been his first term at Harrow, and this tale he had been hearing of past prowess in cricket was too interesting to be thus left pointless.

"How many? I forget. Perhaps your aunt will remember----"

A little spasm of pain pa.s.sed over Violet's face. "How lazy you are, Paul! You will end by remembering nothing."

"Why should I remember when you do it so much better than I? It was a good lot, Blasius, and I recollect being awfully proud at the time.

But these things slip by, somehow. When you are as old as I am----"

"You really ought to go in, Paul!" came that warning voice, with a studied patience in it. "This is not the Riviera, remember."

"No, worse luck! I suppose it is the proper thing to come down here, but it is an awful bore in some ways. Ah! there's George, back from the hill--well, he likes it, that is one comfort."

Blanche stood at the jasmine-covered porch to welcome her husband, for the advancing years had, as is so often the case, decided her final selection of a part in favour of the devoted wife--the fact being that she was becoming a trifle too matronly for most of the others, while the growing independence of the children stood in the way of a satisfactory rendering of the maternal one.

"Taking him in? That is right," she said approvingly, to her sister-in-law, as Paul, on his wife's arm, paused to look at the birds old John's son was laying out on the step. Old John himself, st.u.r.dy on his legs as ever, but mindful of the dignity due to head keeperdom, standing by. And then, not to be outdone, she turned to her husband.

"George! you ought not to dawdle about in wet feet. Please go in, too, and change."

"Wet? My dear, the moors are as dry as a bone. Aren't they, John?"

"As dry as they will have been these fifty years, whatever," replied the old man. "As dry as they would be that summer, Gleneira, when you and----"

"Do come in, Paul!" came the anxious voice, again. "Look, how the mist is rising----"

"By Jove! that's a fine young bird!" interrupted Paul, inconsequently, with a flash of his old interest. "By the way, Violet, you might tell the cook not to roast them to cinders as she did last night, and, while I remember it, I wish you'd speak to Cunningham about that horse----"

"Really, Paul!" said his sister; "I think you might give the grooms their orders yourself."

He smiled kindly, and laid his other hand upon his wife's, as together they went slowly to the smoking-room.

"I am afraid I give you a lot of trouble," he said apologetically, as he held the door open for her to pa.s.s through--"but I have such a wretched memory, and you are so kind."

"Don't say that, Paul! don't say that; what does it matter? I am quite happy if you are."

She watched his face curiously, eagerly, almost pa.s.sionately; but she saw nothing save that easy, kindly smile.

Had her wish been fulfilled? and had he left memory behind in the Valley of the Shadow, where he had left so much of the old Paul? She could scarcely tell, for he never spoke of that one summer, but lived his life as if it had not been.

But the light was lingering still on that steep slope, whence the purple cloud of Iona could be seen lying like an amethyst on the golden shield of the sea--for the sky was hung with blood-red pennants as if the hosts of heaven were going forth to war.

And Tom Kennedy looked out over sea and sky from the gravestone which told that Marjory Carmichael died in attempting to save the life of Paul Macleod. There was a bunch of red rowans on the green gra.s.s. He brings one every year when, his brief holiday over, he climbs over the hill--as he did on the last day he saw her--on his way back to the work-a-day world, and that hand-to-hand fight with Death in others which will cease with his own.

His eyes are troubled, for it comes back to him every year as he sits there that he might have saved her--if he had known.

Known what? A smile comes to his face as he takes out an old letter and reads the last words she ever wrote to him, "Yet I stretch out my hands to you and say, again and again, Friendship is a bigger thing than Love!"

The mists are rising even there as he turns to breast the hill, the cloud wreaths sweep solemnly in from the sea in stately curves, and as he pauses on the summit for a last look downwards, lo! there is nothing at all in earth, or sea, or sky, save himself and a grey, encircling mist. Love and Friendship, Life and Death, Sunshine and Shade! Where are they?