It was true. The more so because the heat-haze lingered, turning the
hills which lay between the Glen and the world beyond it, into a pale
blue, formless wall, which seemed somehow more of an arbitrary
division than it would have done had the contours of each successive
rise been clearly visible. The fierce sun beat down on the limestone
rocks, giving a russet tinge even to their mosses, and Paul Macleod's
useless rod lay in its case, since the river was reduced to a mere
tinkle of clear water in a moraine of boulders. So he took to
haymaking instead, partly because it suited his mood to play the rôle
of country proprietor--for to a certain extent he shared his sister's
dramatic temperament--and partly because Marjory always brought Will
Cameron's tea into the fields. It was quite idyllic to watch her from
afar, making it ready on the outskirts of a nut coppice or belt of
firs, and then to see her stand out into the rolling, undulating waves
of new cut grass which were creeping up the hillsides before the
scythes, and call to them in her clear, young voice, for, of course,
the laird could not be left out in the heat when his factor was
enjoying the cool. So he used to lounge about as Will did in the
scented hay, and talk nonsense, with infinite grace and skill, until,
with the extinction of his pipe, the latter's tardy sense of duty
would take fire, and he would insist on a return to work.
On the whole, it was scarcely what Paul would have expected to amuse
him, and yet, after ten years of a land where hay-fields are not, and
it is unsafe to sit about for fear of snakes, it was strangely
pleasant. And so delightfully innocent! This came home to him
one night when, on going to his room, he saw his purse on the
dressing-table, and remembered that for a whole week he had not opened
it. The world had gone on as if there were no such thing in it as
money. He mentioned the fact next day among the hay-cocks, declaring
that if someone would only be responsible for his bills, he himself
would never care to see a shilling again.
"Not I," said Will, rather dolefully; "for I'm afraid, Gleneira, these
masons and carpenters will cost a lot more than we fancied. It is
always the way when one touches a place. I remember when Inveresta
began he told me I wasn't to exceed a thousand, and before he was half
way through his list of absolute necessaries, the figures had passed
fifteen hundred. And yet I don't think it can be helped."
He blew disconsolately at his pipe as if it were in fault, for he
prided himself on managing the estates in his charge with strict
economy, but Paul smiled indifferently.
"My owner will be able to pay, I expect, when I get one. For when the
worst comes to the worst, Miss Carmichael, I can always put myself up
to auction. Do you think I should fetch a fair price? Item, one
Highland estate, seriously damaged by the Crofter Commission, and an
ancestral tree, ditto, by Darwinism. N.B.--Property encumbered by
several mortgages and one extravagant proprietor." He lay back against
a hay-cock with his hands behind his head, looking the personification
of lazy content as he watched her face shift and change. "You don't
seem to approve of my plan," he went on, in the same light tones, "but
the idea has infinite charm for me; it would save so much trouble, and
do so little harm. People sell themselves to the devil, we are told,
and that may be reprehensible--at any rate, it would be uncomfortable.
But what inconvenience or immorality can there be in making yourself
over, soul and body, to some virtuous Christian man or woman who, in
all probability, is far more capable of running the coach respectably
than you are?"
"The same immorality as there is in any other form of suicide, I
suppose," she replied coldly; but he was not to be put off.
"And what immorality is there in suicide, Miss Carmichael? I hold that
my life is my own, unless I make over the responsibility of it to
someone else, which you say is wrong. Therefore, I have a perfect
right to do what I please with it."
"Once you have overcome the initial difficulty of discovering what you
do please," she retorted sharply. And he smiled.
"You use a detective camera apparently, but I admit it. I am only
certain of one thing, it pleases me to please myself. It pleases me
now to forget that there is such a thing as money, and to go to bed at
ten o'clock."
"Which shows that you are virtuously inclined, and that,
therefore----"
"I refuse to be whitewashed by your charity," he interrupted. "I am of
the earth, earthy; though sometimes I can lie on my back in the hay
and see heaven opening----" His voice, with a sudden cadence in it,
ceased as he sprang lightly to his feet.
"Come along, Cameron--you are intolerably long over that pipe--my
energy, Miss Carmichael, does not arise from Goodness, but from Greed.
If the hay is not in tonight, it may rain; if it rains, the hay will
be spoilt. If it is spoilt I shall have to buy more, and if I buy more
I shall not have that shilling to spend on myself. It comes to that in
the end, even in Arcadia."
There were similar endings to many conversations in which Marjory
tilted bravely at various objects, which, in her heart of hearts, she
feared might be windmills. For she was never quite sure if he was in
earnest or not, and even when he had palpably played the fool with her
pet theories, or scouted a serious thought, a word, even a look, would
come to redeem the past, and give a curious zest to the future. Yet in
a way it distressed her also by confusing her clear-cut, unswerving
outlook on life. A man even professing such atrocious sentiments ought
to be unendurable, and this man was not. Far from it. And what was
almost more disconcerting, he evidently understood her better than
honest Will did; while, as for the Reverend James! the very thought
made her laugh. Yet, on the whole, she welcomed a reasonable cause
which, despite the holiday she had imposed on herself in obedience to
Cousin Tom's wishes, came to make an absence from the hay-fields less
marked, and a reversion to the young clergyman's company quite
natural. This being nothing more or less than a visit from the Bishop,
which, coming as it did in this holiday time, gave to the person who
was ostensibly responsible for the pupils' duties towards their
neighbours fearful anticipations of failure. For James Gillespie
was one of those persons who cannot teach; well meaning, fairly
well-educated, people who know the information they wish to impart and
cannot impart it, people who, in a repetition, invariably prompt the
wrong word, and send the hesitating memory hopelessly astray. And this
was a question of repetition, since the Bishop never interfered with
the secular teaching, which he left, with a Levite shake of the head,
to the Government inspector. So Marjory, relieved she scarcely knew
why, spent these afternoons in hammering the necessary precision into
the children's heads while the Reverend James sate watching her
rapturously and feeling that the whole parish, including himself,
would have no excuse for not knowing its duty towards its neighbour if
she were the clergyman's wife.
And on the third day someone else seemed bitten with a desire to
learn, for Captain Macleod strolled in lazily and sate down on the
furthest bench, saying he had come to fetch the letters, and with her
permission would await their arrival in the cool. Why his presence
should have immediately aroused her to a resentful consciousness of
the adoring expression on the face beside her, she did not understand,
but the certainty and the uncertainty of it combined made her turn to
her companion with an audible asperity of tone:
"I really think, Mr. Gillespie, that you might try and get the little
ones perfect in their hymn. You must remember that the last time the
Bishop inspected he told the children that the youngest Christian
should know one hymn, and the infants are not even perfect in the
'Happy Land.'"
To hear being to obey, Mr. Gillespie retired towards the post-office
portion of the room where, with a semicircle of tiny bare-legged
lassies and laddies before him, he sate beside Paul Macleod and began
his task. It was rather a Herculean one, owing to the fact that his
pupils having no English, as the phrase runs, the simple stanzas were
to them mere gibberish.
"It is three months they will be learnin' it, whatever," said Mr.
McColl, cheerfully, when the last of the semicircle had failed
hopelessly.
"It is impossible, quite impossible," retorted Mr. Gillespie, in a
white heat of anxiety. "Some of them must have picked up something in
that case----"
"'Deed, no, sir. Naethin's impossible with bairnies. And wee Paulie
there has it fine, for he is at me to learn it on him many a time,
because Miss Marjory was saying he would be a fool if he didn't. Speak
up, Paulie," he added, in the Gaelic, "you have it fine."
Wee Paulie hung his close-cropped fair head with its odd little fringe
left over the forehead, so that nothing was to be seen but a rising
flush, and murmured some half-inaudible words, whereat the biggest boy
in Marjory's class said triumphantly:
"He is saying that he will no be saying it to him, but to her."
"Hush! Donald," came the quick, clear, dictatorial young voice; "that
is not the way to speak. Stand down two places. Paul, come here."
The big Paul, seated on the back bench, looked up and smiled, feeling
it would be rather pleasant than otherwise to obey; and little Paul
pattered shamefacedly across to the girl's side, yet with a confident
air which raised the sleek head a little, and showed a pair of very
long lashes on the flushed cheeks. As he edged close Marjory passed
her arm round him, and with the other hand raised his chin square and
straight.
"Now, Paul, if you please," she said, in the Gaelic; "clasp your
hands, and say it right out--to the whole school, remember. You know
it quite well, and you should never, never pretend that you don't know
when you do. It is mean."
Big Paul, thinking that even reproof sounded pleasant in that voice,
and, at any rate, must be bearable in that position, smiled again, and
continued smiling unavoidably, as little Paul reeled off the whole
hymn from beginning to end in confused, unintelligible fluency, broken
only by hurried gasps for breath.
"A pretty little fellow," said Captain Macleod, in an undertone to his
neighbour. "Who is he?"
"Old Peggy Duncan's grandson--Jeanie Duncan's child--you must remember
her."
The words seemed to jar the very foundations of happy, idle, careless
content, and Paul, even in his surprise, felt aggrieved.
"Of course I remember her; but they told me she was dead. Who did she
marry?"
The Reverend James Gillespie put on his most professional manner. "I'm
afraid it is a very sad story, but no one really knows the facts of
the case. She left home, as you may have heard----"
"Yes! I have heard," put in Paul, suddenly, resentfully. "And I--I can
understand the rest. It's a common enough story, in all conscience."
"Too true, too true," began his companion, but the laird had risen,
and, with a remark that he would wait outside for the tardy letters,
left the schoolhouse. Apparently he tired even of that, for when
Marjory, after lingering longer than was necessary over the
arrangements for the morrow's inspection with Mr. Gillespie, came out
with a half-annoyed expectation of finding the tall figure still
lounging under the horse-chestnut tree, it had gone, rather to her
surprise.
Still, it would ensure her the solitary walk home which she loved;
since really it was too much to expect her to devote a whole afternoon
to the Reverend James who, curtly dismissed to a neglected parishioner
up the Glen, watched her pass down the loch with wistful yet still
admiring eyes until she disappeared behind a knoll of ash trees,
hiding the bridge which carried the road to the other side of the
river, and so down the seashore to Gleneira House and Lodge. A road
which, beautiful at all times, was never so beautiful as in the
sunsetting. There was one point, however, where its beauty seemed to
culminate, where, after climbing a rocky knoll cushioned with bosses
of bell-heather and the close oak scrub which springs from the roots
of past cuttings, it dipped down to the very edge of the water. Here,
on spring tides, the waves crept up to smooth away the wheel marks,
and leave a scalloped fringe of seaweed on the turf beyond. And hence
you could see straight through the cleft of the Narrowest, where the
hills embosoming the upper portion of the loch sloped down into the
gentler contours of the lower, right away to the Linnhe Loch, and so
beyond the purple bluff of Mull to the wide Atlantic. On that evening
the sun was setting into it in a golden glory, guiltless of a cloud.
And Marjory, cresting the knoll, thought instantly that here, indeed,
was a chance of the Green Ray. For ever since she had read Jules
Verne's book the idea of this, the last legacy of a dying day, had
remained with her fancifully. Many and many a time, half in jest, half
in earnest, she had watched for it, wondering if she would feel
different after she had seen it. If, in fairy-tale fashion, the world
would seem the better for it. Even if the legend was no legend, and
the phenomenon simply a natural one, due to refraction, there must be
something exhilarating in seeing that which other people had not seen;
in seeing the world transfigured, even for a second, for you, and you
only. Unless, indeed, others were watching with you. And, then, what a
strange tie that would be! To have seen something together that the
rest of the world had not seen; something at which it would laugh, but
which you knew to be true. The quaintness of the idea attracted her as
she walked over the crisp shingle to sit on a rock close to the
incoming tide. Out yonder on the far sea horizon it was a blaze of
light, but closer in the loch showed like a golden network of ripples
with ever-widening meshes enclosing the purple water till it ended, at
her very feet, in a faint foam-edge. There was no sound save the
blab-blabbing of the tiny wavelets on the rocks as they whispered to
each other of the havoc they had done far out at sea, or met every now
and again with a little tinkle of laughter to drown a stone.
To Marjory, looking and listening so intently that consciousness
seemed to leave eyes and ears, came a sudden dread, not for herself,
but for others different from what she was.
"Drowned--dead, drowned--drowned and cold--dead, dead, drowned!" Those
whispering voices seemed to repeat it over and over again, as for the
first time in her life she realised that others might not steer
straight for the sun across the ocean of life, as she did,
unswervingly. Of course, in a scholastic, unreal way she knew well
that there were swift currents to betray, big loadstone rocks to make
the compass waver, but till she had met Paul Macleod the possibility
of anyone deliberately and wilfully weighting his log and depolarising
his compass had not occurred to her. It is so, often, with those who,
as she was, are almost overburdened with that mysterious outcome of
past sacrifices, a sense of duty. But Paul, she recognised clearly,
might steer straight for the rocks, though his knowledge of seamanship
was equal to her own. On that point she would take no denial. It was
her one solace against her own interest in him. But for it what scorn
would be too great for the weakness of her tolerance for a handsome
face, a soft voice, and the most engaging of manners. No! The
charm--for there was undoubtedly a charm--lay elsewhere; in his
considerateness, his quick sympathy. This did not come, as he averred,
from a mere selfish desire to be liked, a mere selfish consideration
for his own comfort. It might suit him to say so, to declare his
disbelief in anything higher, to scoff, for instance, at the Green
Ray. The girl's thoughts rebounded swiftly to their starting-point,
and brought back sight to her dream-blinded eyes.
Too late! Too late! The last outermost edge of the sun had dipped
beneath the sea; the fateful moment was past, and with the little
chill shudder of a breeze which had crept like a sigh over the water
at the Death of Day, the little wavelets at her feet were whispering--
"Drowned--dead--drowned! Who cares? Drowned! drowned! drowned!"
She rose suddenly and stretched her hands out to the fast fading glow,
as if in entreaty. But only for a second; the next the voice of
someone coming up the opposite side of the knoll carolling a Gaelic
song made her turn quickly to see Paul Macleod outlined against the
blue of the hills as he paused on the summit to take breath and look
up into the child's face above him with a smile; for little Paul was
perched on his shoulder.
The western glow, already leaving the earth, fell full on those two
faces, and on the firm delicate hands, holding the child secure. It
was like a St. Christopher, thought Marjory, with a pulse, almost of
pain, at her heart. For it left her bereft of something; of something
that had gone out irrevocably to be Paul's henceforth, even though the
first glimpse of her standing below made him loosen his clasp almost
roughly.
"Is that you, Miss Carmichael?" he called, walking on to meet her;
"I'm doing good Samaritan against the grain; but I found the little
imp on the road. He had fallen from a rowan tree and sprained his
ankle."
She found it easier for some reason to speak to the child in reproof.
"I've told you so often not to climb so recklessly," she said in
Gaelic.
"He was getting berries for you; there was a bunch half ripe at the
very top; at least so he says," replied Captain Macleod in the same
language, then at her look of surprise added a trifle bitterly--"you
see I remember--we lairds don't often speak it--more's the pity--but I
have an uncomfortable memory for the days of my youth."
"It was very good of you," she began, when he cut her short.
"It was least trouble to carry him. He was whimpering like a little
cur at the river pool, so I elected to bring him along instead of
going back half a mile to ask someone else to do it for me. His
grandmother's cottage is just below the point there, isn't it? He can
walk as far as that." As he spoke he swung the child to the ground
lightly. "And you needn't look so fierce, Miss Carmichael; it won't
hurt him."
She took no notice of his remark, except to ask the child if he could
manage.
"If you speak in that tone of voice he will say 'no,' of course; but I
assure you it is all right. I've tied it up tight, and it wasn't very
bad to begin with."
It had indeed been very neatly bandaged with a handkerchief torn into
strips, and the sight softened her rising indignation. "Possibly, but
it will be none the worse for being put in hot water. Come, Paulie,
lean on me, and if it's bad I'll carry you----"
Before she could finish, the child was back on his namesake's
shoulder.
"If you will show me the way down, I'll save you the trouble."
The accent he laid deliberately on the pronoun took half the virtue
from his action, and yet the certainty that he had purposely put it
there showed her that he was alive to something else, and made her
lead the way silently to the cottage; and, even when there, the
remembrance of the St. Christopher picture joined to the unconscious
Highland hospitality, which forbids an unsought parting on the
threshold, made her ask if he would not come in and let old Peggy
thank him for his kindness.
"I doubt if she would," he replied curtly; "anyhow I won't risk it."
Perhaps he exercised a wise discretion. Marjory herself was inclined
to think so, in view of the old woman's general attitude towards the
world.
"Pickin' rowan berries, was he," she echoed wrathfully, turning as she
so often did when angry to the broader Scotch of her youth; "they're
the deil's ain beads for young folk--aye! I mind it was so in the
beginning!" Her restless claw-like fingers busied themselves over the
coverlid, and her restless eyes followed Marjory, who was attending to
the sprained foot, which to say sooth was not a very serious matter.
"And Mr. Paul hefted the wean, and wouldna' come in bye to say a word
to the auld wife. That was real kind, or maybe it wasn't; but there!
he never brocht luck to my hoose, an' he wouldn't raise a finger to
do't. It's the way o' the warld, the way o' the warld."
"That is not fair, Peggy," retorted the girl, roused as she always was
by injustice. "The laird was speaking of you only the other day. He is
much annoyed at your having been allowed to go on the roll, and
said----"
The old pauper's hands stopped their uncanny fingerings, and every
line of the old face hardened.
"If I choose to be on the pairish, I'll be on the pairish. It's better
than Mr. Paul's charity, an' ye may just tell him sae frae old Peggy
Duncan. I may be wrang, I may be richt, an' Him above only kens hoo it
is, but I was no born on his land, and I'm no his poor."
"All the kinder of him to offer help," persisted Marjory. "And you
have no right, just because you are in an evil temper, to speak as if
he had done you some wrong."
"Wha says he did?--not I! D'ye think I soud be lyin' here wi' him oot
ben if he had. Na! Na! Half deid as they are, my auld fingers wad be
at his bonnie fause face." The very vigour of her own voice seemed to
choke her, and she fell into a fit of coughing, then lay back
exhausted into a more Christian frame of mind. "God guid us, Miss
Marjory," she gasped, "but I'm jest an awfu' limmer whiles. If I was
to be nippit awa' this nicht I ken fine whaur I'd wauken."
"And quite right, too," replied her visitor, severely, recognising the
half-apologetic tenor of the last remark, and, seizing the opportunity
for a bit of her mind before old Peggy, with some sidelong sally,
should escape deftly from the difficulty, after her wont.
"Aye, aye! The tongue is an unruly member, and yet I bridle it whiles
for fear o' findin' myself in the same mansion wi' the pairish
officer. Eh! yon's an awfu' man, Miss Marjory, for sweerin', and I
just couldna' thole him. So, if ye like, ye may give old Peggy
Duncan's thanks to the laird, when you see him, for bringing the
laddie hame. Maybe it was kind o' him."
"It was kind of him, very kind," said the girl, stoutly, feeling dimly
pleased to hear herself say so, and know that there could be no
mistake about that. And yet she felt vexed when she found him waiting
for her on the road when she came out into the darkening dusk.
"I thought it was the proper thing to do," he replied, to her little
stiff expression of regret that he should have troubled himself so
far.
"What was the proper thing?" she asked captiously. "I am quite
accustomed to walking home in the dark."
"Proper to act up to your opinion of me, and be self-sacrificing,
perhaps." He paused, then said, suddenly, "Don't let us quarrel, Miss
Carmichael; it is such a lovely evening."
True a thousand-fold! True beyond measure! The light had left
everything, save the sky and the sea as they walked on side by side
silently.
"How's the patient?" he said, at last, reverting somewhat to the old,
airy, half-bantering tone.
"Well; thanks to you. If he had walked home he might have been laid up
for days."
"I did as little as I could, I assure you."
"On the contrary, you did more than was necessary. Paul told me how
you comforted him, and sang songs all the way to cheer him up."
She would not allow him this denial of his own virtues, or accept his
estimate of himself.
"That was to cheer myself up, and forget my dislike to carrying a
dirty little boy, I expect. The study of one's own motives, Miss
Carmichael----"
He got no further, for she turned to him with a quick gesture of
pained denial. "Don't--please don't. Why should you slander yourself?"
Something in her tone roused a response in him for a moment, but the
next he had smothered it in a sort of reckless desire to shock this
girl with the intelligent, trustful eyes--to force her from her belief
in him.
"Slander," he echoed; "there is no slander, I assure you. What do you
know about my life? Would it help you to understand my complicated
state of mind about that boy, for instance, if I told you that I was
once madly in love with his mother, and that I still think her the
most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
He had not intended this confidence; yet now he had given it, he did
not regret the impulse, nor did he wonder at it, since the thought of
that past idyll had been interfering so much with the present one
during the afternoon, that he felt inclined to get rid of both once
and for all.
"I have always heard she was very beautiful," replied Marjory, slowly;
"but, of course, I did not know----"
He burst into a hard laugh. "That I fell in love with her! Really,
Miss Carmichael, you are most disconcertingly cool!"
"I was going to say," she put in, unmoved, "that I did not know she
was the sort of person----"
"I would fall in love with? Indeed! Perhaps, as you appear to have
formed some sort of estimate as to the qualities likely to attract me,
you might give me a hint or two. It might help me in the selection of
a wife." He hardly knew what he was saying, for his temper had got the
better of him; indeed, he did not care for the moment what he said,
save that it should be something that would put an end to this
confidence of hers. But he had reckoned without her absolute
unconsciousness; what is more, without her fearlessness and high
spirit.
"I said nothing about a wife," she replied quietly. "Why should I? You
were talking of love, and I knew that you had made up your mind to
marry for money."
"So I have; what then?"
"Nothing, except this--that since you can set love aside so easily, I
fail to see what effect the memory of a past one could have on your
present life--that is all."
He looked at her in the growing darkness, wishing that he could see
her face more clearly; wishing still more keenly that he could see
straight into her mind and satisfy himself that this calm indifference
was simply cold-bloodedness. But what if it was something more? If
here, at last, he had found that of which most men dream at times; the
refuge from themselves. And when he spoke again his voice had changed
its tone, though the bitterness remained in the words.
"You make no allowance, then, for the power of a sentiment, especially
when it is morbid and unhealthy. And yet such things mean more to most
of us than right or wrong; because they are more human."
There was a pause; then she turned to him with a smile, which he felt,
more than saw.
"I am afraid I don't understand what you mean."
"Perhaps it is as well you do not," he replied; and changed the
subject.
But from that day their mutual attitude towards each other altered,
perhaps unconsciously. To tell the truth, the remembrance of the St.
Christopher rose up between her and Paul in his less admirable
impersonations. All the more so, perhaps, because of his strange,
impulsive confidence regarding his love for the boy's mother. He must
have been quite a boy himself at the time, she thought; no older than
she was now, and boys were so much younger than girls for their age.
She felt vaguely sorry for that young Paul and his fruitless love; for
Marjory, like most girls who have been much in contact with the poor,
accepted the facts of life calmly, looking at them straight in the
face, and calling them by their names fairly, ere she passed them by.
And so no doubt of that past to which Paul had alluded so frankly ever
crossed her mind. She felt, almost unconsciously, that he would not
have spoken about it to her had there been any cause for such
suspicion. So the only effect of his attempt to shock her was to bring
into stronger relief her confidence in his gentlemanly instincts. And
Paul, seeing this, metaphorically took off his shoes before the holy
ground which she prepared for him, even while he fretted against the
necessity imposed upon him by that better part of his nature, which,
in environments like these, would have its say. And then, even as he
discussed the matter with himself cynically, telling himself at one
and the same time that she was not human enough to see, and that it
would be cowardly to open her eyes, there would come with a rush a
fierce resentment at all reason. This was holiday time, and it would
soon be over for him. A week or two more and Gleneira would be full of
London ways and London talk; it would be time enough then to remember
the world, the flesh, and the devil.