There was some excuse for his refusal to face a struggle, for in the
sunshiny days which followed, Nature herself held high holiday, and
the most prosaic might well have found it impossible to avoid falling
in with her gracious mood. The heather-flush was beginning to creep
over the curves of moor, the rowan berries ripened under the sun's
kiss, the juicy _guienne_ cherries purpled the children's mouths, and
the oat fields hid their poverty in a cloak of golden marigold. Down
in the shady nooks the stately foxgloves still lingered, while on the
sunniest spots the bracken was gathering the sun-gold into its
delicate tracery against the coming gloom of winter. Such times come
rarely; times when it is possible to forget the world of toil and
trouble, of sin, sorrow, and shame, which lies beyond the circle of
the everlasting hills; times when one is content to let life slip
past, without counting its pulse-beat; times when one seems to enter
in spirit with that divine rest, because the whole world seems good in
our eyes.
Paul, dulled as he was by world-tarnish, felt the charm; Marjory,
fresh from her sober youth, yielded to it gladly. Will Cameron, with
the hay safe housed and harvest secure in the future, said the weather
was too good for farming, and gave himself a holiday, and even Mr.
Gillespie, free from inspection anxieties, and rejoicing in the
Bishop's praise, fell back for a while on college sermons, and studied
future ones in stones and running brooks. Only Mrs. Cameron, despising
the heat, bustled from kitchen to store-room, from store-room to
dairy, indignant over the irregular meals, and the still more
irregular milk. It was enough, she said, to turn that of human
kindness sour to have charge of five Ayrshires and two Jerseys in such
weather, with an English cook coming, or a Frenchman maybe--the laird
was equal to that iniquity--who would use crocks on crocks of powdered
butter. She knew them! graceless, godless creatures, and Will, instead
of wandering like a tinkler about the place, should be at the markets
buying pigs, to eat up the sinful waste of good victuals which would
begin ere long at the Big House. It was very well of William to smile,
and for the laird to say he didn't mind; but what would Lady George
say to the cook? And how did William expect to supply the Big House as
it should be supplied, when every crofter body was asking one and
eightpence a pound for butter she wouldn't look at? And it all
trysted, every pound of it, to the English folk over at the Forest,
who were coming down like a flight of locusts, devouring the land with
pipers and bad whiskey, and a set of idle, pasty-faced, meat-eating
English maids, ruining the country side with bad examples! There would
have to be a judgment, nothing less, when Sheenach--barefooted
Sheenach from the blackest hut on the property--Marjory would
mind it, seeing that she held it to be a disgrace to a Christian
landholder--set her up for new-fangled notions indeed!--had actually
spoken to her, Mrs. Cameron, about beer-money! The kitchen girl over
at the Forest, forsooth, got it, and three shillings a week for
washings. Heard one ever the like! a barefoot lass that had not spent
three shillings on washings since she was born, and would have to look
to it for white robes in the future. And Mistress Mackenzie at the
ferry house saying calmly that her prices would be doubled from the
10th August.
"It is too true, mother," Will would say consolingly. "I'd like to see
the Commission have its way, and destroy the Forests altogether, if
only to teach the people what it would mean. But there! parcel post is
only twopence a pound, and we can get butter from Devonshire. They pay
high rents there, you know, so they can afford to sell produce
cheaper." But even this paradox would not soothe the old lady's ire,
and the three idlers would escape from the butter-problem into the
wilderness of beauty beyond the fat pastures which fed the dairy; in
so doing, no doubt, following the example of the offending English
folk, who do not care to trouble their holiday with thoughts of the
dishonesty and greed they foster and encourage.
Many a tramp had these three over hill and dale. Sometimes climbing
the boulder-strewn heights whence sea and land showed like a map; more
often lingering by the river lazily, as it made its way through the
grassy uplands in a series of foamy leaps and oily pauses. For here
the sea-trout were to be beguiled by patience; if not by that, then by
the red-tailed fly which Will used with the consummate skill of the
real pot-fisher. Paul, on the other hand, beset by lingering
prejudice, would lounge on the bank intermittently, offering the rod
to Marjory in order to bring him luck; while she, engaged in
collecting a perfect herbarium, would deprecate her own past skill in
the Long Pool.
"And the admirable underhand cast was a chance also?" he retorted
drily. "Really, Miss Carmichael, my modesty is catching."
Marjory laughed. "Oh, no! I learnt that from Will. I never could make
out whither he went on Sundays, till one day I came upon him in that
little strip of pasture in the middle of the larch plantation,
flicking at dandelions with his ten-foot rod. Then he confessed that
it was his usual occupation of a Sabbath afternoon, because it was so
deadly dull with nothing to do at home. So after that I flicked, too.
We used to do it against each other for hours, didn't we, Will?"
"Ten for a dandie, twenty for a daisy, fifty for a bumble-bee,"
murmured Will from under his tilted hat, as he lay on the grass.
"An instance of the deceit which the irrational worship of the Sabbath
is apt to produce," remarked the Reverend James Gillespie, whose
conscience invariably assailed him when he had not made a professional
remark for some time.
"It is so refreshing to hear you accuse Miss Carmichael," said Paul,
gravely. "Deceit is a mortal sin, isn't it, Mr. Gillespie?"
The Reverend James hesitated. He looked sorely out of place amid the
wilderness in his black garments, with Paul in his loose Indian suits,
and Will guiltless of coat and waistcoat.
"Deceit, cheating--whoever doth wickedly, etc.--generally comes under
common theft--non-bailable," murmured the tilted hat softly; for Will,
in his youth, had studied law.
"I congratulate you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, still gravely, "on
having attained the position of a real criminal. I have a sneaking
admiration for them."
"Why?"
"Because they have done--what I have been afraid to do!"
So the day would slip by in idle talk and idler work, until the
lengthening shadows warned them they were far from home, and Will
would grow restless over the prospect of dinner _versus_ the tea, with
which he had more than once been put off on occasions of gross
irregularity. While Paul would boast of his freedom from all control,
or offer to stand in the breach by begging a meal at the Lodge; since
even Mrs. Cameron's tongue softened when it spoke to the laird, and a
vein of humour ran through her blame.
"It's clean reediklous, Gleneira," she would say. "Here it is gone
ten, and supper was bidden at eight. An' if you expec' me, a Christian
woman, to tell Kursty that _my_ son is even as them who mocked Elijah,
or that it was I that made a mistake, you're just wrong. An' a' for a
wheen trouties, that's no good for kipper or for anything but to
cocker yourselves up wi' at breakfast, instead of being contented with
good porridge, as your fathers were. But there! we ken find that Esau
sold his birthright for a mess o' pottage."
"And I don't wonder at it," Paul would reply gravely; "if he was half
so hungry as I am. How much was it, Cameron, that the hook-and-eye man
offered me for Gleneira? A man must eat, you know."
Whereupon the old lady would remark that, as she at least knew her
duty, his father's son should never lack bread in her house, and so
bustle away good-humouredly to hurry on supper. The unpunctuality was
not, however, always their fault; and on one occasion followed on an
incident which had a curious effect in still further softening
Marjory's judgment on handsome, idle, kindly Paul, and introducing
that vein of pity, which, in women of her type, seems an almost
necessary ingredient of affection. It may be only a triviality, the
half-humorous despair of a buttonless shirt, the possibility of dirty
tablecloths, or it may go further into uncared-for sickness and
loneliness, but the thought of personal discomfort to a man whom she
likes is always grievous to women who have not been educated out of
their housewifely instincts.
It came about in this wise. There was a certain Loch of the Fairies
which, despite its great beauty, Marjory had seldom seen, for this
reason. It lay hidden in the highest corries of the deer forest,
accessible only by the burn watering the sheltered glen which, from
time immemorial, had been the sanctuary; and not even for Marjory
would old John Macpherson disturb his deer, or allow them to be
disturbed. But Paul thought differently when he found that the girl's
face brightened at the idea of an excursion thither; for, to him, the
nearest pleasure was invariably the best.
"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," he said, with a laugh. "We
will start early and make a day of it. And I'll ask Gillespie to come.
He is always telling cock-and-bull stories about the big fish there,
so we will set him to catch one. I never did."
And Will Cameron agreed also, saying he would take the opportunity to
meet the forest keeper on the march, and settle the position of a new
fence to keep the hinds from straying. Only old John shook his head,
with mutterings regarding future sport and old traditions.
"As if _that_ were not worth all the sport in the world," said Paul,
almost exultantly, as, climbing the last bracken-set knoll, and
leaving the last Scotch fir hanging over a wild leap of the burn, they
filed past a sheer bluff, and saw in front of them a long, narrow,
almost level glen, through which the stream slid in alternate reaches
and foaming falls. On either side almost inaccessible cliffs; in front
of them, cutting the blue sky clearly, a serrated wall of rock closing
up the valley. Great sharp-edged fragments from the heights above lay
strewn among the sweeping stretches of heather, whence a brood of
grouse rose, blundering to the anxious cackle of the hen.
"There they are," said Will, from force of habit in a whisper, "up on
the higher pasture. I thought they would be; so we shan't disturb them
a bit if we keep to the burn."
Marjory, shading her eyes from the sun, stood looking on one of the
prettiest sights in the world; a herd of red deer dotted over a hill
slope, or seen outlined against the horizon line. Paul, from sheer
habit also, had slipped to the ground, and had his glass on them.
"Splendid royal to the left, Cameron--wonder if we shall get him this
year--and, by George, there's the old crooked horn! I remember, Miss
Carmichael, trying to put a bullet into him--well, we won't say how
many years ago."
"What a slaughterhouse a man's memory must be," remarked Marjory, with
her head in the air.
"Not in this case, at any rate," retorted Paul. "Sometimes I am
merciful--or miss; which answers the purpose quite as well." As he
spoke the memory of Jeanie Duncan rose quite causelessly to his mind,
and he started to his feet impatiently; for somehow little Paul's
existence had taken the bloom off his self-complacency in regard to
that episode.
"Now for the Pixie's loch," he cried gaily. "The ladies have it all
their own way there in destruction, if tales be true. I wonder which
of us three unfortunate males she will choose as her victim to-day?"
Marjory, looking down as they crested the last boulder-strewn rise on
the almost black and oily sheet of water in the crater-like cup of the
corrie, felt that she did not wonder at the legends which had gathered
round the spot. The very perfection of its loneliness, its beauty,
marked it as a thing apart from the more familiar charm of the world
around it. There seemed scarce foothold for a goat on those pillared
cliffs which sank sheer into the dark water, and the streak or two of
snow lingering still in a northern recess marked, she felt sure, some
deep crevasse hidden from sight by the innocent-looking mantle of
white. Nor could one judge of the depth of the lake by the jagged
points of rocks which rose here and there from the surface of the
water, for, as she stood, she leant against a fragment of some earlier
world, which looked as if it must have fallen from the sky, since the
vacant place left by such a huge avalanche must have remained visible
for ever in the rocks above. So those out yonder might go down and
down, forming vast caves where the Pixie might hold her court of
drowned, dead men. She turned to look at Paul suddenly,
apprehensively; perhaps because, even in her innocence, she recognised
instinctively that there, with all its gifts, with all its charm, lay
the nature to which the syren's song is irresistible. But he, stopping
on the brink to dip his hand into the water, was looking back at her
with a laugh.
"By Jove!" he said, "isn't it cold? Enough to give anyone the
shivers."
As he spoke, far out on the glassy glint of water came a speck of
stronger light, widening to a circle, widening, widening ever, in
softening ripples.
"There! I told you so!" cried the Reverend James, excitedly; "a
five-pounder at least!" After which, naturally, there was no time for
sentiment, no time for anything but an unconfessed race as to which of
the three should have his fly on the water first. Marjory, left to her
own devices, wandered as far as she could round the level edge, which
to the south lay between the lake and the cliff, until she came to the
moss-clad moraine, through which the water found its way to new life
in the first long leap of the burn below; for the loch itself was fed
by unseen springs. She could hear the stream beneath her feet tinkling
musically, and gurgling softly, as if laughing at something it had
left behind, or something it was going to meet; and the sound
oppressed her vaguely. Here, in an angle of sand, stood a half-ruined
boat-house, and within it a boat painted gaily, yet with an air of
disuse about it which made Marjory go inside and look at it more
closely. It seemed sound enough, and yet, as she wandered on, she
hoped that the fishers might not be tempted to use it out on those
unknown depths. Then, coming on a great bank of dewberries, she sank
down into the yielding heather and gave herself up to enjoyment,
finally stretching herself at long length on the springy softness, and
watching the lake through her half-closed eyelids. Suddenly, with a
smile, she began to sing, and then as suddenly ceased. Cliffs could
give back an echo, certainly, but not so clear an one as the tenor
tone which followed close on that first phrase of the "Lorelei." An
instant after Paul's figure showed round a rock below, busily engaged
with a swishing trout rod.
"Die schönste Mädchen sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar."
An echo, indeed! and Marjory sat up among the dewberries, feeling
indignant.
"Captain Macleod," she called aggressively, "have you caught
anything?"
He turned, as if he had been unaware of her presence, and raised his
cap. "It is not a question of my catching anything, Miss Carmichael,
but of my being caught. There is a syren about somewhere; I heard her
just now; did you?"
"I generally hear myself when I am singing," she replied coldly.
"Where is Will?"
"Will," replied Paul, cheerfully, "is swearing round the corner. He
has just had a splendid rise, and his hook drew. No further
description necessary."
She laughed, and Captain Macleod went on in the easy familiar tone
which had taken the sting out of so many other remarks which, to
Marjory's unsophisticated ears, had savoured of impertinence.
"If we neither of us get another this round, we are going to start
over the hills for the fence. I want to see it myself. You will find a
splendid place for tea about a quarter of a mile down below the fall.
Heaps of sticks--bits of the primeval forest washed out of the
moss--so you will manage nicely; besides Gillespie will be here."
It was just such a careless, brotherly speech as Will might have made,
and Marjory appreciated it. Besides the thought of an hour or two,
absolutely to herself, in those solitudes had an indescribable charm;
indescribable because, to those who know it not of themselves, words
are useless, and those who do need them not. For her, with a stainless
past and a hopeful future, it was bliss unalloyed to wander down the
burn-side, resting here and there, watching the ring-ouzel skim from
shelter, or an oak-eggar moth settle lazily on a moss-cushion. And
yet, as she sate perched on a rock far down the valley above a deeper
pool than usual, she amused herself by singing the "Lorelei" from
beginning to end, secure from unwelcome echoes. So back on her traces
to the baskets which had been hidden in the fern, and the preparations
for tea. The relics of the primeval forest burnt bravely aided by some
juniper branches, the kettle was filled, boiled, and set securely on a
stony hob; and then, free from cares, Marjory chose out a springy nest
among the short heather and curled herself round lazily to watch the
sky line where before long two figures should come striding into
sight, dark against the growing gold of the westering sun. Blissful
indeed; extremely comfortable also.
When she woke Paul Macleod was calling her by name, and she started up
in a hurry. "I came on as fast as I could lest you should be
wearying," he said, and his face showed he spoke the truth. "It was
further than we thought for. Where's Gillespie? He can't be fishing
still, surely. I didn't see him on the shore as I came past."
Marjory, confused as she was by sudden awakening, remembered one
thing, and one thing only--the boat--the old rotten-looking boat.
"You didn't see him--and he hasn't been here! Oh! Captain Macleod, I
do hope nothing has happened--the boat----"
"Nonsense!" replied Paul, decisively, "nothing can have happened.
Still, it's late--you have been asleep some time, I expect. Perhaps he
has missed you, and gone home."
"He could not miss the fire," she said quickly, "and he cannot swim.
If he has taken the boat, and if----"
"There is no use imagining evil," put in Paul, drily; "as you are
anxious I will go----"
"I will come with you," she said eagerly; "if I put some more wood on
the fire----"
"It will be ready for us when we return," remarked Paul, cheerfully,
"and Gillespie will want his tea. I expect he is in to the big trout
or----" he paused before her anxious face and told her again that
nothing could have happened. She surely did not believe in pixies?
Still, he grew graver when a look at the boat-house proved it to be
empty, and his first shout brought no answer, except a confused,
resounding echo.
"If he had gone beyond that bluff into the inaccessible part, which he
is likely to have done with the boat--he might not hear. Come on--and
don't imagine the worst. If, when we can see all the water----"
He paused, and said no more, as, with her following fast at his heels,
he hurried up the brae which hid the further reach of the lake. So,
being a step or two ahead, and several inches taller than she was, a
view halloo, followed by a laugh, was her first intimation that the
search had come to an end. The next instant she had joined the laugh,
for a more ridiculous sight than the Reverend James Gillespie
presented as he stood up, in full clerical costume, on an uneven rock
some two feet square, in the very middle of the loch, could scarcely
be imagined. The cause, however, was clear in the half-sunk,
water-logged boat, jammed on a jagged rock, which was just visible
above the water close by.
"Have you been there long?" called Paul, recovering himself.
"All the afternoon," came back in hoarse and distinctly cross tones.
"I shouted till I could shout no more. I thought you had all gone
home!"
"Gone to sleep," remarked Paul, aside, as he sate down and began
deliberately to unlace his boots. "Now, Miss Carmichael, if you will
look after the tea, I'll rescue the shipwrecked mariner, and bring him
to be comforted."
Marjory, eyeing the stretch of black water nervously, suggested he had
better wait for Will to turn up; but Paul laughed. "I'm relieved to
find you have some anxiety left for me--yet it is really absurd. I
could swim ten times the distance ten times over; besides, I'll bring
him back with the oars if that will satisfy you?"
She felt that it ought, yet as she turned to leave him, the keen pang
at her heart surprised her, and not even his gay call of reassurance,
"Two teas, please, hot, in ten minutes," given, she knew, from such
kindly motives, availed to drive away a sudden thought of that
gracious face--drowned--dead--drowned. Such irrational fears, when
they come at all, come overwhelmingly; since the mind, imaginative
enough even to admit them, is their natural prey. Yet this very
imagination of her own was in itself startling to the girl, who caught
herself wishing she had not sung the "Lorelei," with a sort of
surprised pain at her own fancifulness. It was absurd, ridiculous, and
yet the sight of Will's loose-limbed figure coming to meet her,
brought distinct relief as she bade him go on and help Captain
Macleod. Even so, as she blew at the fire and made the tea, the
thought would come that a man who could not swim would be of no
possible use if--if--if---- So, in the midst of her imaginings, came
at last the sight of three figures striding down the brae, talking and
laughing; at least, two of them were so engaged, the Reverend James
having scarcely recovered his temper, and being, in addition, almost
quite inaudible from his previous efforts to make himself heard.
"The pixie wouldn't have him, said he wouldn't suit the place," said
Paul, gravely, when, with the aid of several cups of tea, the victim
had finished his tale of the big trout, which had deliberately dragged
him on to a jag, knocked a hole in the bottom of the rotten old boat,
and left him helpless, taking advantage--and this seemed the greatest
offence--of the confusion consequent on the man[oe]uvre, to swim away
with ten yards of good trout line and an excellent cast. At least,
this was Will's view of the situation, the Reverend James attempting
hoarsely to give greater prominence to the saving of his own life,
while Paul gave a graphic description of their procession down the
loch to the landing-place, with the clerical costume packed out of
harm's way in the fishing-basket which was swung to the butt end of
the rod, and Marjory indignantly disclaimed the slumber of the Seven
Sleepers, declaring that the shouting must have gone on when she had
been down the burn. So, chattering and laughing, the tea things were
packed up, and they started homewards.
"Let us have a race down the level," said Paul, suddenly; "that water
was cold as ice."
Five minutes after, when Marjory caught him up, as he lingered a
little behind the two others, who were just disappearing behind the
bluff at the entrance to the sanctuary, she was startled at his face.
"Ague," he said, in answer to her look. "That is the worst of India. I
told you the water was cold enough to give anyone the shivers." He
tried to laugh it off, but he was blue and pinched, his teeth were
chattering, and with every step the effort to stand steady became more
apparent. The sight of his helplessness made the girl forget
everything but her womanly instinct to give comfort.
"You had far better sit down for a while," she said, eagerly. "I can
easily light a fire, and we have the kettle. Some hot whiskey and
water----" But Paul was actually beyond refusal; he sate down weakly,
utterly knocked over for the time, and unable to do anything but
mutter, between the chatterings of his teeth, that it would not last
long--that it would be all right when the hot fit began--that she had
better go on and leave him. To all of which Marjory replied, in
businesslike fashion, by bringing him a great bundle of bracken as a
pillow, spreading her waterproof over him, and piling it over with
more fern, till he smiled faintly, and chattered something about there
being no necessity for covering him up with leaves--he was not dead
yet. Then the fire had to be lit, the kettle boiled, a jorum of hot
toddy brewed, a stone warmed and set to hands and feet.
"Now, if you lie still for half an hour," she said magisterially, "I
expect you will be much better when I come back." And he was hot--as
fire, of course, and shaky still, but minus the cramps, and very
apologetic for the delay.
"You couldn't possibly help it," she interrupted quickly. "You
looked--you looked----" and then something seemed to rise up in her
throat and keep her silent. But it was just this look of utter
helplessness which remained in her mind, bringing with it always a
tender compassion; and as the remembrance of him with little Paul on
his shoulder served to soften her towards his atrocious sentiments, so
that of his sudden physical collapse served to lessen the sort of
resentment she had hitherto felt to the charm of his great good looks.
She could not have explained how either of these facts came about; she
was not even aware that it was so, and yet it did make a difference in
her attitude towards him. A pity for his weakness, for his faults and
failings, came to take the place of condemnation.
So the days passed, until one evening as they trudged home from an
unsuccessful raid on the river, Mr. Gillespie remarked that the
herring were in at Craignish, and the mackerel often came at the back
of the herring, so, maybe, it would be worth while to have a try at
them.
"Better than the river, anyhow," grumbled Will, who, even with the
red-tailed fly, felt the horrid weight of an empty creel on his
shoulders.
Paul looked at Marjory. It had come to that in most things by this
time, and as often as not, as now, no words were necessary. "Then I
will tell John Macpherson to have the boat ready to-morrow, for it is
my last day--of leisure, I mean. My sister comes on Saturday, my
guests follow on Monday, and after that--the deluge, I suppose."
"I should not wonder," remarked Will, gravely; "the midges were awful
to-day."
Both Paul and Marjory laughed; they could not help it, despite their
vague regret that holiday time was over.