THE FIRST MEETING.
When we made our way indoors the dogs were bounding and frolicking
round Margaret, and she was all laughter. Her eyes were dancing, and
her wind-whipped cheeks glowed darkly; then she turned, one dainty
finger at her lips, and we kent that no word of her doings that day was
for the ears of her parents.
There was a bustle of women-folk about the house, and the noise of
crockery, and booming into the corridors came the voice of John, Laird
of Scaurdale.
"Chick or child," says he, "she's all I have--a wee Frenchified, Laird,
but she'll learn the wie o' the Scots yet."
And as Margaret entered, a little startled, and us at her heels, "Come
ben, my dear," he cries, "I've a new friend for ye," and beside the
mistress I saw Helen Stockdale.
I was always the great one for watching faces, and as these two maidens
approached, I saw the glowing cheeks of Margaret pale a little, her
lips press together, and her chin become a little proud, but her eyes
never wavered; but Mistress Helen beats me to be describing. There was
an elegance about her and an air of languor, maybe from her sombre dark
eyes, yet her every movement was graceful, and her smile a thing to be
looking for, and she was slender as the stalk of a bluebell. The Laird
of Scaurdale was in great humour, well on to seventy, his teeth still
strong and white, and his shoulders with but a horseman's stoop.
"Kiss, my dearies," says he; "was ever such dainty ladies? Hugh, man,
where are your manners, and you such a namely man among the Saint Andra
lassies. Hoots, man, this blateness does not become ye; ye've slept
wi' the lass before. Ha, Saint Bryde o' the Mountains," says he to
Bryde, "well done, sir," for Mistress Helen, with a quick flashing
upward glance, had rendered her little hand for salutation.
And at his words I saw, like a flash, a look of cold hate leap in the
blue eyes of Margaret McBride.
I did much thinking while the others would be talking, and I thought of
the day, fresh from the college, when we ploughed the stubble and Belle
brought the wean in the tartan shawl,--the wean that grat beside Hugh
in the old room when Belle carried her from the wee byre--the wean that
was carried to McCurdy's hut with Belle and Dan McBride, and had lain
in the crook of the arm of John of Scaurdale that night when McGilp had
shown a light away seaward.
And there she was before me, Helen Stockdale, and I minded McGilp's
words, "Yon's an heiress."
And sitting there in dour silence, there came on me such a longing for
Dan McBride that I could have wept. Eighteen years had I watched the
ploughing and the harvesting, the cutting of the peats and the carting
of hay, and never a word of Dan since the queer outlandish messenger
carried my word to him to come home. The boys were grown men, the
Laird and his Lady getting on in years, and the old folk going away
with every winter, and never a word.
McGilp and his _Seagull_ were not so often at the cove these last
years, and yet McKinnon had a crack with him in Tiree, where he was
buying a horse or two.
"Young Dan's deid," said McKinnon, "and Dol Beag will be hirpling aboot
and eating his kail broth for many's the day."
There was one that never doubted--Belle, and after eighteen years she
was little changed, a weary look sometimes in her eyes, for was she not
like a wild thing chained, but more like a sister to Bryde than a
mother.
And old Betty, Betty of eighty winters, sat by the fireside and would
look at Bryde with her old, old eyes, hardly seeing, and whiles she
would be calling the boy "Young Dan," and whiles havering of Miss
Janet, his grandmother.
"You will be clever, clever," she would be saying to Belle, "and you
will get another man yet. . . ."
And one night as I stood at the door--a clear night, I mind, with a
harvest moon--"Hamish," said Belle, and her hand was at her heart, "I
could go to him barefoot, for is he not always with me in the night?"
As I sat dreaming and listening in a kind of a way to the talk round
me, it came on me that Margaret kept near to her mother, and once only
did I see her look at Bryde, a hurried puzzled look,--but Hugh was
ardent already, his face flushed and his laugh merry, and Mistress
Helen was happy too.
There was the great struggling with our language, and she had a droll
taking way of it that Hugh would be correcting in his college manner;
but Bryde sat back, listening mostly, his face proud and swarthy in the
shadows, and sometimes smiling to Mistress Helen, for her eyes would
come back to him often.
When the moon was up, Bryde rose.
"With your leave," said he, "I will be on the road."
Margaret came over beside me and put her hand into mine.
"You're early, sir, you're early," cried Scaurdale; "it's asourying wi'
the lasses ye will be at."
The mistress looked not so ill-pleased at that, but it seemed to me
Margaret's hand tightened in mine with a little tremble.
"I'm thinking, Scaurdale, we will be getting a pair of colours for
Bryde," said my uncle. "Would he not make a slashing light dragoon?"
At that Mistress Helen clapped her hands. "I think yes," said she,
"but yes, certainly."
"I would be going to the sea," said Bryde, "like Angus McKinnon--the
tall ships and the strange countries, the white sails in the moonlight,
and the black cannon and the cutlasses," said he, and then with a sort
of shame, "and all that," but his eyes were full of longing and his
cheek flushed.
"Ah oui," cried Helen, "I am seeing all that, M'sieu."
And Hugh McBride looked glumly at Bryde as he left.
"I am forgetting," said Margaret, "I am wanting Bryde. Take me,
Hamish," and her hand was pressing mine. But I thought to be teaching
her a lesson, and sat still a little.
"What is it you will have been forgetting, Margaret?" said I.
"Oh--oh," says she, her face all suffused, "it will just be about a pup
he was to be bringing me. . . ."
At that I took her with me. "Pup," said I; "pup, Margaret. What tale
is this?"
"Cat or dog, or--or anything," she cried. "I am wanting him."
Bryde was at his horse's girths, and old Tam with a lanthorn.
"Bryde," cried the lass, "I am wanting you."
He had the horse out by this time, and I went away a little, but I
heard her say--
"You never kissed my hand, sir--no, not in all your life."
"No, Mistress Margaret," said the boy.
"But why, why, why?" said she, and I laughed to see her stamp.
"Ye see," said he, and mounted, then bending over his saddle, "Ye see,
my dear, I was loving your hand all that time," and the clatter of his
horse's feet on the cobbles brought me to my senses.
"Pup," said I.
"But, Hamish," whispered the lass, "I am wanting him."
"For what now?"
"I am wanting him _to keep_," said she, and put her head against my
arm--the brave lass.