"Good-morning," said the American McTavish. "It is very kind of Miss
McTavish to let me go into her chapel. Are you the housekeeper?"
"I am," said The McTavish. "Mrs. Nevis is my name."
"What a pity!" murmured the gentleman.
"This way, sir," said The McTavish.
She stepped into the open, and, jangling her keys occasionally, led him
along an almost interminable path of green turf bordered by larkspur and
flowering sage, which ended at last at a somewhat battered lead statue
of Atlas, crowning a pudding-shaped mound of turf.
"When the Red Currie sacked Brig O'Dread Castle," said The McTavish, "he
dug a pit here and flung the dead into it. There will be McTavishes
among them."
"There are no inscriptions," said the gentleman.
"Those are in the chapel," said The McTavish. "This way." And she swung
into another turf walk, long, wide, springy, and bordered by birches.
"Tell me," said the American, "is it true that Miss McTavish is down on
strangers?"
She looked at him over her shoulder. He still wore his enigmatic smile.
"I don't know what got into her," she said, "to let you in." She halted
in her tracks and, looking cautiously this way and that, like a
conspirator in a play: "She's a hard woman to deal with," she said,
"between you and me."
"I've heard something of the kind," said the American. "Indeed, I asked
the porter. I said, 'What manner of woman is Miss McTavish?' and he
said, in a kind of whisper, 'The McTavish, sir, is a roaring, ranting,
stingy, bony female.'"
"He said that, did he?" asked the pseudo Mrs. Nevis, tightening her lips
and jangling her keys.
"But I didn't believe him," said the American; "I wouldn't believe what
he said of any cousin of mine."
"Is The McTavish your cousin?"
"Why, yes," said he; "but just which one I don't know. That's what I
have come to find out. I have an idea--I and my lawyers have--that if
The McTavish died without a direct heir, I should be The McTavish; that
is, that this nice castle, and Red Curries Mound, and all and all, would
be mine. I could come every August for the shooting. It would be
very nice."
"It wouldn't be very nice for The McTavish to die before you," said
Mrs. Nevis. "She's only twenty-two."
"Great heavens!" said the American. "Between you, you made me think she
was a horrid old woman!"
"Horrid," said Mrs. Nevis, "very. But not old."
She led the way abruptly to a turf circle which ended the birch walk and
from which sprang, in turn, a walk of larch, a walk of Lebanon cedars,
and one of mountain ash. At the end of the cedar walk, far off, could be
seen the squat gray tower of the chapel, heavy with ivy. McTavish caught
up with Mrs. Nevis and walked at her side. Their feet made no sound upon
the pleasant, springy turf. Only the bunch of keys sounded occasionally.
"How," said McTavish, not without insinuation, "could one get to know
one's cousin?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "if you are troubled with spare cash and stay in
the neighborhood long enough, she'll manage that. She has little enough
to spend, poor woman. Why, sir, when she told me to show you the chapel,
she said, 'Catherine,' she said, 'there's one Carnegie come out of the
States--see if yon McTavish is not another.'"
"She said that?"
"She did so."
"And how did you propose to go to work to find out, Mrs. Nevis?"
"Oh," said she, "I've hinted broadly at the news that's required at
headquarters. I can do no more."
McTavish reflected, "Tell her," he said presently, "when you see her,
that I'm not Carnegie, nor near it. But tell her that, as we Americans
say, 'I've enough for two.'"
"Oh," said Mrs. Nevis, "that would mean too much or too little to a
Scot."
"Call it, then," said McTavish, "several million pounds."
"Several," Mrs. Nevis reflected.
"Say--three," said McTavish.
Mrs. Nevis sighed. "And where did you gather it all?" she asked.
"Oh, from my father," said McTavish. "And it was given to him by the
government."
"Why?" she asked.
"Not why," said he, "so much as how. You see, our government is
passionately fond of certain people and makes them very rich. But it's
perfectly fair, because at the same time it makes other people, of whom
it is not fond, desperately poor. We call it protection," he said. "For
instance, my government lets a man buy a Shetland wool sweater in
Scotland for two dollars, and lets him sell it on Broadway for twenty
dollars. The process makes that man rich in time, but it's perfectly
fair, because it makes the man who has to buy the sweater poor."
"But the fool doesn't have to buy it," said Mrs. Nevis.
"Oh yes, he does," said McTavish; "in America--if he likes the look of
it and the feel of it--he has to buy. It's the climate, I suppose."
"Did your father make his money in Shetland sweaters?" she asked.
"Nothing so nice," said McTavish; "rails."
A covey of birds rose in the woods at their right with a loud whir of
wings.
"Whew!" exclaimed McTavish.
"Baby pheasants," explained Mrs. Nevis. "They shoot three thousand at
Brig O'Dread in the season."
After certain difficulties, during which their hands touched, the
greatest key in Mrs. Nevis's bunch was made to open the chapel door, and
they went in.
The place had no roof; the flagged floor had disappeared, and it had
been replaced by velvety turf, level between the graves and headstones.
Supporting columns reared themselves here and there, supporting nothing.
A sturdy thorn tree grew against the left-hand wall; but the sun shone
brightly into the ruin, and sparrows twittered pleasantly among the
in-growths of ivy.
"Will you wish to read all the inscriptions?" asked Mrs. Nevis,
doubtfully, for there were hundreds of tombstones crowding the turf or
pegged to the walls.
"No, no," said McTavish "I see what I came to see--already."
For the first time the enigmatic smile left his face, and she watched
him with a kind of excited interest as he crossed the narrow houses of
the dead and halted before a small tablet of white marble. She followed
him, more slowly, and stood presently at his side as he read aloud:
"SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
COLLAND McTAVISH,
WHO DISAPPEARED, AGED FIVE YEARS,
JUNE 15TH, 1801."
Immediately below the inscription a bar of music was engraved in the
marble. "I can't read that," said McTavish.
Mrs. Nevis hummed a pathetic air very sweetly, almost under her breath.
He listened until she had finished and then: "What tune is that?" he
asked, excitedly.
"'Wandering Willie,'" she answered.
"Of course," said he, "it would be that."
"Was this the stone you came to see?" she asked presently.
"Yes," he said. "Colland McTavish, who disappeared, was my
great-grandfather. The old gentleman--I never saw him myself--used to
say that he remembered a long, long driveway, and a great iron gate, and
riding for ever and ever in a wagon with a tent over it, and sleeping at
night on the bare hills or in forests beside streams. And that was all
he remembered, except being on a ship on the sea for years and years.
But he had this--"
McTavish extracted from a pocket into which it had been buttoned for
safety what appeared, at first sight, to be a linen handkerchief yellow
with age. But, on unfolding, it proved to be a child's shirt, cracked
and broken in places, and lacking all but one of its bone buttons.
Embroidered on the tiny shirt tail, in faint and faded blue, was the
name Colland McTavish.
"He always thought," said McTavish, "that the gypsies stole him. It
looks as if they had, doesn't it? And, just think, he used to live in
this beautiful place, and play in it, and belong to it! Wasn't it
curious, my seeing that tablet the first thing when we came in? It
looked as big as a house and seemed to beckon me."
"It looks more like the ghost of a little child," said Mrs. Nevis
quietly. "Perhaps that is why it drew you so."
"Why," said he, "has this chapel been allowed to fall to pieces?"
"Because," said Mrs. Nevis, "there's never been the money to mend it."
"I wonder," he mused, "if The McTavish would let me do it? After all,
I'm not an utter stranger; I'm a distant cousin--after all."
"Not so distant, sir," said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say
is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's
great-grandfather, were brothers--and the poor bereft mother that put up
this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, and hers."
"Surely then," said he, "The McTavish would let me put a roof on the
chapel. I'd _like_ to," he said, and the red came strongly into his
cheeks. "I'll ask her. Surely she wouldn't refuse to see me on such
a matter."
"You can never tell," Mrs. Nevis said. "She's a woman that won't bear
forcing."
He looked at her for the first time in some minutes. "Why," said he,
"you're ill; you're white as a sheet!"
"It's the long walk uphill. It takes me in the heart, somehow."
"I'm sorry," said McTavish simply. "I'm mighty sorry. It's all my
fault."
"Why, so it is," said she, with the flicker of a smile.
"You must take my arm going back. I _am_ sorry."
When they had left the chapel and locked the door, she took his arm
without any further invitation.
"I will, if you don't mind," she said. "I am shaken, and that's the
truth.... But what," and again the smile flickered--"what would The
McTavish say if she saw us--her cousin and her housekeeper--dawdling
along arm in arm?"