The McBrides Part 23

Belle hated that sword from the first day, but Bryde had it by him at his bedside always.

There were many folk coming and going these days, and Ronny McKinnon and McGilp would be sitting with Bryde, and they would have the great tales of ships and the sea, and whiles Ronny would have his fiddle and play, and whiles it would be the old stories they would be telling.

There was a day too when Hugh McBride and Helen came a-riding on the moors, and the thought came to me that both were a little sobered, and the la.s.s had not the same gaiety about her; but I was thinking maybe she would be anxious about the Laird of Scaurdale, for there was word that he would not be keeping so very well of late.

There was a sternness about Hugh as of a man that would be carrying a grim load, but Bryde made very much of him always, and I am thinking that was not the least of his troubles, for there were some words between us after the fight.

"Yon was a dirty business," said Hugh. "I am not fit to stand in the same park with my cousin, and I will have told him that," for his mother would aye be warning Bryde never to lay hands on Dol Beag all his days.

CHAPTER XXIII.

HELEN AND BRYDE McBRIDE REST AT THE FOOT OF THE URIE.

There was a long time that Bryde was lame and weak, for he had lost much blood, but his strength came back to him, and it is droll to think that he had grown in his bed. When he was out he could not be having enough of the hills, and the fields and the sun. He would be talking to the very beasts about the place in his gladness, and Hugh would be giving him an arm, and they would often be at the laughing like brothers; but for long was Margaret, his sister, cold to Hugh.

And in the month of May, Bryde came down to the big house, and the Laird and his Lady welcomed him at the door, and Margaret behind them very sedate by her way of it.

And the Laird gave Bryde a good word that day in my hearing.

"You will not be minding that tale, my lad," said he, with his hand on Bryde's shoulder. "We will whiles be a little careless in the marrying, our folk," said he, "but the blood is strong enough, and we hold together."

But for all that I kent that there would be something strange about Dan's son since he rose from his bed, and I think that Margaret kent it too, for I would be seeing a wistful look in her eyes when no one would be near her.

And then there was a day when Hugh brought Helen to the house, and she was closeted a long time with Margaret.

"Your cousin Bryde will be leaving us ver' soon," said she.

I will never be the one to deny that Mistress Helen came fast to the bit.

"Will Hugh have been telling you that?" said Margaret in a certain tone.

"Hugh--no. I meet Bryde ver' often. He is good to be meeting--there is a fire and dash about him," and at that she spread out her white hands with a fine gesture, and took a turn to the window, her riding-switch at her teeth.

Now there was an intolerance about Margaret which you will find often with a proud spirit, and that Bryde should be happy away from her hurt her like a lash. The women maybe will have a name for it, for there was a smile in Helen's eyes as Margaret spoke--

"I am glad," said she, "he will have so good a friend as you. Maybe he will be staying if you were to ask him."

"And you, Margaret?"

"I do not come of folk who ask," said Margaret, with great unconcern; then for no reason seemingly (but maybe thinking of a certain time when she all but asked) her neck and face and forehead grew dark with mantling blood.

"Is he then not of your people who are slow to ask--favours?" said Helen. "I think so, yes. Do you remember I ride with him a little way from Scaurdale? There is a moon, and the hills ver' clear and we gallop."

"I am minding," said Margaret.

"'It is Romance,' I say to him, and he will be carrying me away off to the hills, and he is laughing.

"'An unwilling captive,' he says.

"'Not ver' unwilling,' I say, for he looked ver' gallant.

"'But a willing captive, she would kiss me,' said Bryde, your cousin, and then I make no movement of my head, but my eyes are looking at his laughing down at me--_asking favours_, ma belle, and still I not move, and he throw back his head (comme ca), and say--

"'I do not beg--even kisses,' very proudly he looks, ma belle, and his blue eyes laughing. . . ."

"I am remembering that the charm was working, Helen," said Margaret, in a voice like the north wind for coldness.

"Ah oui," cried Helen, "backwards it work--I kiss _him_ la la," and she laughed like silver bells a-tinkle.

Now that was a daftlike tale to be telling, but Margaret was for ever cleaving me with Helen after that. "She is beautiful," she would tell me, "and merry and a great lady, and I think any man will be loving her," but there were many nights when Margaret lay wide-eyed, for all that she drove Bryde from her with jest and laughter. But I think it was well that she never kent of the meeting of Bryde and Helen Stockdale at the ford in the burn yonder at the foot of the Urie.

On a summer morning that was, with the heat-haze hardly lifted and long slender threads of spider webs clinging to the leaves of the birches by the burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo spittals on them that will leave a mark like froth on the knees of a horse. To the pebbly ford above the "Waulk Mill" came Bryde, riding loosely with slack rein, for he was thinking much these days. In the burn his horse halted to drink, and then rested a little from the water--his head high and his ears forward--Bryde looking to his path for the South End, for he was on some errand of grazing beasts. Then there came that fine sound, the distant neigh of a horse, and the horse in the burn answered gallantly, and came splashing on, pa.s.saging and side-stepping a little, with curved crest. And there by the burnside they met, Bryde and Helen.

Their words at the meeting were formal enough, for there were houses at a little distance from the crossing; but you will only be seeing the founds of them now, and the plum-trees gone to wood, and the straggling hawthorns and the heather growing to the very burnside by the Lagavile.[1] But at the meeting there was a rich glowing colour in the face of the maid, and her lips were parted in a little smile, and her great eyes, sombre often, but now alight with love a-laughing in them, rested on the man like a caress.

"Ha, well met, my swarthy dragoon," said she, "or are we sailors this merry morning?"

"There's aye the night for dreams, Mistress Helen, but in the daytime I will be but a plain farming body, concerned about b.e.s.t.i.a.l. . . ."

"b.e.s.t.i.a.l," quo' she, as they rode in the old track by the burnside that you'll see yet from the other road, "my horse is a-lathered, and I too am concerned about b.e.s.t.i.a.l. We will let us down," said she, "in the shade yonder, and rest the horses, and be good farmers together--yes?"

Bryde slacked the girths and tied the horses, and then joined the la.s.s on a little mound of green like a couch.

"And now," cried Helen Stockdale--"now, sir, here are we in the green wood with neither page nor groom--squire and dame--and I am loving it,"

said she, and her little brown capable hand took one of his great hard ones.

[1] Laga vile=hollow of the tree.

"You have fine hands, M'sieu Bryde," said she, her fingers over his to be comparing them, "great and strong and well-tried."

And there fell a silence between them, and as both strove to break that silence their eyes met, and there came a quick changing of colour on the face of Helen, and Bryde's hand closed over hers. And as she sat by his side her eyes lowered, and the curling lashes sweeping her cheek, it came to the man how very beautiful she was, her pride all forgotten. He felt her hand trembling in his, and then she raised her head with a questioning little sound at her lips, and looked at him, and smiled, pouting.

"And must _I_ beg," she whispered.

"I think," said Bryde, "that the horses are rested."

The light left her eyes, as the sea darkens when a cloud comes over the sun. Red surged the blood over throat and face and brow. She sprang to her feet, twisting her whip in her brown hands. By the horses she turned--

"Am I lame, or blind, or ugly?" she cried. "Oh, man, I could kill you . . . but some day, Monsieur, some day I shall laugh when that proud Mistress Margaret flouts your love . . ." She laughed, mocking.

"'It will be no concern of mine whether Bryde McBride goes or stays,'

says the Lady Margaret. 'I do not beg--and what is he to me.'"