ISLA WATER
Earlier in the evening there had been a young moon on Isla Water.
Under it spectres of the mist floated in the pale lustre; a painted
moorhen steered through ghostly pools leaving fan-shaped wakes of
crinkled silver behind her; heavy fish splashed, swirling again to
drown the ephemera.
But there was no moonlight now; not a star; only fog on Isla Water,
smothering ripples and long still reaches, bank and upland, wall and
house.
The last light had gone out in the stable; the windows of Isla were
darkened; there was a faint scent of heather in the night; a fainter
taint of peat smoke. The world had grown very still by Isla Water.
Toward midnight a dog-otter, swimming leisurely by the Bridge of
Isla, suddenly dived and sped away under water; and a stoat,
prowling in the garden, also took fright and scurried through the
wicket. Then in the dead of night the iron bell hanging inside the
court began to clang. McKay heard it first in his restless sleep.
Finally the clangour broke his sombre dream and he awoke and sat up
in bed, listening.
Neither of the two servants answered the alarm. He swung out of bed
and into slippers and dressing-gown and picked up a service pistol.
As he entered the stone corridor he heard Miss Erith's door creak on
its ancient hinges.
"Did the bell wake you?" he asked in a low voice.
"Yes. What is it?"
"I haven't any idea."
She opened her door a little wider. Her yellow hair covered her
shoulders like a mantilla. "Who could it be at this hour?" she
repeated uneasily.
McKay peered at the phosphorescent dial of his wrist-watch:
"I don't know," he repeated. "I can't imagine who would come here at
this hour."
"Don't strike a light!" she whispered.
"No, I think I won't." He continued on down the stone stairs, and
Miss Erith ran to the rail and looked over.
"Are you armed?" she called through the darkness.
"Yes."
He went on toward the rear of the silent house and through the
servants' hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way
along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung
quivering under the slow blows of the clapper.
"What the devil's the matter?" demanded McKay in a calm voice.
The bell still hummed with the melancholy vibrations, but the
clapper now hung motionless. Through the brooding rumour of metallic
sound came a voice out of the mist:
"The hours of life are numbered. Is it true?"
"It is," said McKay coolly; "and the hairs of our head are numbered
too!"
"So teach us to number our days," rejoined the voice from the fog,
"that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
"The days of our years are three-score years and ten," said McKay.
"Have you a name?"
"A number."
"And what number will that be?"
"Sixty-seven. And yours?"
"You should know that, too."
"It's the reverse; seventy-six."
"It is that," said McKay. "Come in."
He made his way to the foggy gate, drew bolt and chain from the left
wicket. A young man stepped through.
"Losh, mon," he remarked with a Yankee accent, "it's a fearful nicht
to be abroad."
"Come on in," said McKay, re-locking the wicket. "This way; follow
me."
They went by the kitchen garden and servants' hall, and so through
to the staircase hall, where McKay struck a match and Sixty-seven
instantly blew it out.
"Better not," he said. "There are vermin about."
McKay stood silent, probably surprised. Then he called softly in the
darkness:
"Seventy-seven!"
"Je suis la!" came her voice from the stairs.
"It's all right," he said, "it's one of our men. No use sittin' up
if you're sleepy." He listened but did not hear Miss Erith stir.
"Better return to bed," he said again, and guided Sixty-seven into
the room on the left.
For a few moments he prowled around; a glass tinkled against a
decanter. When he returned to the shadow-shape seated motionless by
the casement window he carried only one glass.
"Don't you?" inquired Sixty-seven. "And you a Scot!"
"I'm a Yankee; and I'm through."
"With the stuff?"
"Absolutely."
"Oh, very well. But a Yankee laird--tiens c'est assez drole!" He
smacked his lips over the smoky draught, set the half-empty glass on
the deep sill. Then he began breezily:
"Well, Seventy-six, what's all this I hear about your misfortunes?"
"What do you hear?" inquired McKay guilelessly.
The other man laughed.
"I hear that you and Seventy-seven have entered the Service; that
you are detailed to Switzerland and for a certain object unknown to
myself; that your transport was torpedoed a week ago off the Head of
Strathlone, that you wired London from this house of yours called
Isla, and that you and Seventy-seven went to London last week to
replenish the wardrobe you had lost."
"Is that all you heard?"
"It is."
"Well, what more do you wish to hear?"
"I want to know whether anything has happened to worry you. And I'll
tell you why. There was a Hun caught near Banff! Can you beat it?
The beggar wore kilts!--and the McKay tartan--and, by jinks, if his
gillie wasn't rigged in shepherd's plaid!--and him with his Yankee
passport and his gillie with a bag of ready-made rods. Yellow trout,
is it? Sea-trout, is it! Ho, me bucko, says I when I lamped what he
did with his first trout o' the burn this side the park--by Godfrey!
thinks I to myself, you're no white man at all!--you're Boche. And
it was so, McKay."
"Seventy-six," corrected McKay gently.
"That's better. It should become a habit."
"Excuse me, Seventy-six; I'm Scotch-Irish way back. You're straight
Scotch--somewhere back. We Yankees don't use rods and flies and net
and gaff as these Scotch people use 'em. But we're white,
Seventy-six, and we use 'em RIGHT in our own fashion." He moistened
his throat, shoved aside the glass:
"But this kilted Boche! Oh, la-la! What he did with his rod and
flies and his fish and himself! AND his gillie! Sure YOU'RE not
white at all, thinks I. And at that I go after them."
"You got them?"
"Certainly--at the inn--gobbling a trout, blaue gesotten--having
gone into the kitchen to show a decent Scotch lassie how to concoct
the Hunnish dish. I nailed them then and there--took the chance that
the swine weren't right. And won out."
"Good! But what has it to do with me?" asked McKay.
"Well, I'll be telling you. I took the Boche to London and I've come
all the way back to tell you this, Seventy-six; the Huns are on to
you and what you're up to. That Boche laird called himself Stanley
Brown, but his name is--or was--Schwartz. His gillie proved to be a
Swede."
"Have they been executed?"
"You bet. Tower style! We got another chum of theirs, too, who set
up a holler like he saw a pan of hogwash. We're holding him. And
what we've learned is this: The Huns made a special set at your
transport in order to get YOU and Seventy-seven!
"Now they know you are here and their orders are to get you before
you reach France. The hog that hollered put us next. He's a
Milwaukee Boche; name Zimmerman. He's so scared that he tells all he
knows and a lot that he doesn't. That's the trouble with a Milwaukee
Boche. Anyway, London sent me back to find you and warn you. Keep
your eye skinned. And when you're ready for France wire Edinburgh.
You know where. There'll be a car and an escort for you and
Seventy-seven."
McKay laughed: "You know," he said, "there's no chance of trouble
here. Glenark is too small a village--"
"Didn't I land a brace of Boches at Banff?"
"That's true. Well, anyway, I'll be off, I expect, in a day or so."
He rose; "and now I'll show you a bed--"
"No; I've a dog-cart tied out yonder and a chaser lying at Glenark.
By Godfrey, I'm not finished with these Boche-jocks yet!"
"You're going?"
"You bet. I've a date to keep with a suspicious character--on a
trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by
Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here's
hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he'll dance!"
He emptied his glass, refused more. McKay took him to the wicket and
let him loose.
"Well, over the top, old scout!" said Sixty-seven cheerily,
exchanging a quick handclasp with McKay. And so the fog took him.
A week later they found his dead horse and wrecked dog-cart five
miles this side of Glenark Burn, lying in a gully entirely concealed
by whinn and broom. It was the noise the flies made that attracted
attention. As for the man himself, he floated casually into the
Firth one sunny day with five bullets in him and his throat cut very
horridly.
But, before that, other things happened on Isla Water--long before
anybody missed No. 67. Besides, the horse and dog-cart had been
hired for a week; and nobody was anxious except the captain of the
trawler, held under mysterious orders to await the coming of a man
who never came.
So McKay went back through the fog to his quaint, whitewashed
inheritance--this legacy from a Scotch grandfather to a Yankee
grandson--and when he came into the dark waist of the house he
called up very gently: "Are you awake, Miss Yellow-hair?"
"Yes. Is all well?"
"All's well," he said, mounting the stairs.
"Then--good night to you Kay of Isla!" she said.
"Don't you want to hear--"
"To-morrow, please."
"But--"
"As long as you say that all is well I refuse to lose any more
sleep!"
"Are you sleepy, Yellow-hair?"
"I am."
"Aren't you going to sit up and chat for a few--"
"I am not!"
"Have you no curiosity?" he demanded, laughingly.
"Not a bit. You say everything is all right. Then it is all
right--when Kay of Isla says so! Good night!"
What she had said seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious
sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in
the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing
an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had
uttered--words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words
which no woman would utter except to a man in whom she believed.
And yet this girl knew him--knew what he had been--had seen him in
the depths--had looked upon the wreck of him.
Out of those depths she had dragged what remained of him--not for
his own sake perhaps--not for his beaux-yeux--but to save him for
the service which his country demanded of him.
She had fought for him--endured, struggled spiritually, mentally,
bodily to wrench him out of the coma where drink had left him with a
stunned brain and crippled will.
And now, believing in her work, trusting, confident, she had just
said to him that what he told her was sufficient security for her.
And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself
for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard
with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled
him as this girl's confidence.
And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed
thing that had been, lay dead forever.
He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod
when Miss Erith came upon him next morning,--a tall straight young
man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was
testing.
Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the
sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level
eyes the girl saw what had happened--what she had wrought--that
this young man had come into his own again--into his right mind and
his manhood--and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men
and peers.
He greeted her seriously, almost formally; and the girl, excited and
a little upset by the sudden realisation of his victory and hers,
laughed when he called her "Miss Erith."
"You called me Yellow-hair last night," she said. "I called you Kay.
Don't you want it so?"
"Yes," he said reddening, understanding that it was her final
recognition of a man who had definitely "come back."
Miss Erith was very lovely as she stood there in the garden whither
breakfast was fetched immediately and laid out on a sturdy green
garden-table--porridge, coffee, scones, jam, and an egg.
Chipping the latter she let her golden-hazel eyes rest at moments
upon the young fellow seated opposite. At other moments, sipping her
coffee or buttering a scone, she glanced about her at the new grass
starred with daisies, at the daffodils, the slim young
fruit-trees,--and up at the old white facade of the ancient abode of
the Lairds of Isla.
"Why the white flag up there, Kay?" she inquired, glancing aloft.
He laughed, but flushed a little. "Yankee that I am," he admitted,
"I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of
my forebears."
"Is it your clan flag?"
"Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh," he said smilingly. "The White Banner of
the McKays."
"Good! And what may that be--that bunch of weed you wear in your
button-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc--in
Gaelic--just reed-grass, Miss Yellow-hair."
"Your clan badge?"
"I believe so."
"You're a good Yankee, Kay. You couldn't be a good Yankee if you
treated Scotch custom with contempt.... This jam is delicious. And
oh, such scones!"
"When we go to Edinburgh we'll tea on Princess Street," he remarked.
"It's there you'll fall for the Scotch cakes, Yellow-hair."
"I've already fallen for everything Scotch," she remarked demurely.
"Ah, wait! This Scotland is no strange land to good Americans. It's
a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by God out of the same
batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind
the first day I ever saw Scotland. 'Twas across Princess
Street--across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland
behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made
out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never
loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married
her to Scotland."
"Kay, you're a poet!" she exclaimed.
"We all are here, Yellow-hair. There's naught else in Scotland," he
said laughing.
The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never
imagined that a "cure" meant the revelation of this unsuspected
personality--this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.
Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the
colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up
his rod, rising as she rose.
"Are there no instructions yet?" she inquired.
As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told
her about the visit of No. 67.
"I fancy instructions will come before long," he remarked, casting a
leaderless line out across the grass. After a moment he glanced
rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her,
watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.
"You're not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"
"About the Boche?"
"I meant that."
"No, Kay, I'm not uneasy."
And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little
more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man
beside her.
It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her--an odd courage
quite unfamiliar--an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the
most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had
clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul
to God, her body to her country's service.
Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly
what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.
Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this
companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a
trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and
transmuted.
And now, here in this ancient garden--here in the sun of earliest
summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell
of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it,
so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this
transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was
no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned
her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that
left her pretty lips softly parted.
At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at
him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute
beast.... That was very hard to know and remember .... But it was
the price he had to pay--that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing
had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget
what she had looked upon.
"Kay!"
"Yes, Lady Yellow-hair."
"What are you going to do with that rod?"
"Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you."
"Isla?"
"Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder."
"You know," she said, "to a Yankee girl those moors appear
rather--rather lonely."
"Forbidding?"
"No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors."
He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast
of tiny flies.
"Have you--" she began, and smiled nervously.
"A gun?" he inquired coolly. "Yes, I have two strapped up under both
arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair."
"You don't think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?"
"No, I don't think it best."
"I wanted to go with you anyway," she said, picking up a soft hat
and pulling it over her golden head.
On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they
chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of
broom and whinn and heath.
As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose
into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse
startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge
burst from the heather at her very feet--a "Frenchman" with his red
legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.
Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and
broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge
of Isla Water and over the road to Isla--the enchanting
river--interested in each other's conversation and in the loveliness
of the sunny world about them.
High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the
wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in
hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching
painted tails.
"It is adorable, this country!" Miss Erith confessed. "It steals
into your very bones; doesn't it?"
"And the bones still remain Yankee bones," he rejoined. "There's the
miracle, Yellow-hair."
"Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we
become to our own. I'm really quite serious. Take yourself for
example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and
heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren't you?"
"Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing
tunes to-day, Yellow-hair."
"Let it sing--God bless it!"
He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her
gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front
of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay
tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer
son; America no son more loyal.
A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the
rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla
hurrying to the sea.
Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair
dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of
waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of
crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered
on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the
happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of
wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across
the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a
big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always
encountered in Isla during the season--always surprising and
exciting the angler with emotion forever new.
Over his shoulder he was saying to her: "Sea-trout and grilse don't
belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair."
"Like you and I, Kay--we don't belong here but we come."
"Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his
sporran," he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan
plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.
"Oh, the modesty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he
is at home!" she cried.
He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and
unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla
like a silver spider's floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet
silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel
cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his
hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the
tremendous rush of the great fish.
Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler.
Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with
rod and gaff--happily aware of the grace in every unconscious
movement of his handsome lean body--the steady, keen poise of head
and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown
hands.
It came into her mind that he'd look like that on the firing-line
some day when his Government was ready to release him from his
obscure and terrible mission--the Government that was sending him
where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured,
repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the
most brave and unselfish dare undertake.
A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout
died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the
ripples.
In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she
heard the bells of Banff--a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland
on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.
Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and
weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of
reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they
had had their hour, and that the hour was ending--almost ended now.
They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay
before them beyond the bright moor's edge--beyond the far blue
horizon--preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their
play-day was finished--seemed already to feel physically the
approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East--that
hellish mist toward which they both were headed--the twilight of the
Hun.
Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up
there,--a flight of lapwings now and then--a lone curlew. The long,
squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla
Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.
McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for
Donald"--the lament of CLAN AOIDH--his clan.
"That's rather depressing, Kay--what you're whistling," said Evelyn
Erith.
He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming
the "Over There" of that good bard George of Broadway.
After a moment the girl said: "There seem to be some people by Isla
Water."
His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist
automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the
hampers on the grass.
"Trespassers," he said with a shrug. "But it's a pretty spot by Isla
Bridge and we never drive them away."
She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of
stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on
the grass were picnicking three people--a very good-looking girl, a
very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a
thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.
The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one
hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.
McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. "That won't do,"
he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said
pleasantly: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn't permitted
in Isla Water."
At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness--a
powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.
"Say, sport," he called out, "if this is your fish-pond we're ready
to pay what's right. What's the damage for a dozen fish?"
"Americans--awful ones," whispered Miss Erith.
McKay rested his folded arms on the parapet and regarded the advance
of the flashy man up the grassy slope below.
"I don't rent fishing privileges," he said amiably.
"That's all right. Name your price. No millionaire guy I ever heard
of ever had enough money," returned the flashy man jocosely.
McKay, amused, shook his head. "Sorry," he said, "but I couldn't
permit you to fish."
"Aw, come on, old scout! We heard you was American same as us.
That's my sister down there and her feller. My name's Jim
Macniff--some Scotch somewhere. That there feller is Harry Skelton.
Horses is our business--Spitalfields Mews--here's my card--"
pulling it out--"I'll come up on the bridge--"
"Never mind. What are you in Scotland for anyway?" inquired McKay.
"The Angus Dhu stables at Inverness--auction next Wednesday. Horses
is our line, so we made it a holiday--"
"A holiday in the Banff country?"
"Sure, I ain't never seen it before. Is that your house?"
McKay nodded and turned away, weary of the man and his vulgarity.
"Very well, picnic and fish if you like," he said; and fell into
step beside Miss Erith.
They entered the house through the door in the garden. Later, when
Miss Erith came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing
skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing
and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a
banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl.
"What people to encounter in this corner of Paradise," she said
laughingly. And, as he did not smile: "You don't suppose there's
anything queer about them, do you, Kay?" At that he smiled: "Oh, no,
nothing of that sort, Yellow-hair. Only--it's rather odd. But bagmen
and their kind do come into the northland--why, Heaven knows--but
one sees them playing about."
"Of course those people are merely very ordinary Americans--nothing
worse," she said, seating herself at the table.
"What could be worse?" he returned lightly.
"Boche."
They were seated sideways to the window and opposite each other,
commanding a clear view of Isla Water and the shore where the
picnickers sprawled apparently enjoying the semi-comatose pleasure
of repletion.
"That other man--the thin one--has not exactly a prepossessing
countenance," she remarked.
"They can't travel without papers," he said.
For a little while luncheon progressed in silence. Presently Miss
Erith reverted to the picnickers: "The young woman has a foreign
face. Have you noticed?"
"She's rather dark. Rather handsome, too. And she appears rather
nice."
"Women of that class always appear superior to men of the same
class," observed Miss Erith. "I suppose really they are not superior
to the male of the species."
"I've always thought they were," he said.
"Men might think so."
He smiled: "Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to
size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this."
"Don't you?"
"I don't know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?"
"Oh, the moors--please, Kay!"
"What!" he exclaimed laughingly; "you're already a victim to Glenark
moors!"
"Kay, I adore them! ... Are you tired? ... Our time is short-our day
of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can ... before we--"
"Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?"
"If it please my lord."
"Now?"
"In the cool of the afternoon. Don't you want to be lazy with me in
your quaint old garden for an hour or two?"
"I'll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair."
When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside
chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers,
their hamper, and their car.
"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.
"Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."
The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark
lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her
in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the
liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.
"Kay?"
"Yes, Yellow-hair." Their voices were vague and dreamy.
"Tell me something."
"I'll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is
always warned."
"How?"
"A cold hand touches his hand in the dark."
"Kay!"
"It's so. It's called'the Cold Hand of Isla.' We are all doomed to
feel it."
"Absurd!"
"Not at all. That's a pretty story; isn't it? Now what more shall I
tell you?"
"Anything you like, Kay. I'm in paradise--or would be if only
somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep."
"Stories about what?"
"About YOU, Kay."
"I'll not talk about myself."
"Please!"
But he shook his head without smiling: "You know all there is," he
said--"and much that is--unspeakable."
"Kay!"
"What?"
"Never, never speak that way again!"
He remained silent.
"Because," she continued in her low, pretty voice, "it is not true.
I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very
moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say
to me, 'This is a boy who also is a real man!' ... And it was true,
Kay."
"You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that
beastly drunken--"
"Yes! Don't use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy,
asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man."
"You are merciful, but I know what you went through," he said
morosely.
She paid no attention: "I liked you instantly. I thought to myself,
'Now when he wakes he'll be what he looks like.' And you are!"
He stirred in his chair, sideways, and glanced at her.
"You know what I think about you, don't you?"
"No." She shouldn't have let their words drift thus far and she knew
it. Also at this point she should have diverted the conversation.
But she remained silent, aware of an indefinite pleasure in the
vague excitement which had quickened her pulse a little.
"Well, I shan't tell you," he said quietly.
"Why not?" And at that her heart added a beat or two.
"Because, even if I were different, you wouldn't wish me to."
"Why?"
"Because you and I are doomed to a rather intimate comradeship--a
companionship far beyond conventions, Yellow-hair. That is what is
ahead of us. And you will have enough to weary you without having
another item to add to it."
"What item?" At that she became very silent and badly scared. What
demon was prompting her to such provocation? Her own effrontery
amazed and frightened her, but her words seemed to speak themselves
independently of her own volition.
"Yellow-hair," he said, "I think you have guessed all I might have
dared say to you were I not on eternal probation."
"Probation?"
"Before a bitterly strict judge."
"Who?"
"Myself, Yellow-hair."
"Oh, Kay! You ARE a boy--nothing more than a boy--"
"Are you in love with me?"
"No," she said, astonished. "I don't think so. What an amazing thing
to say to a girl!"
"I thought I'd scare you," he remarked grimly.
"You didn't. I--I was scarcely prepared--such a nonsensical thing to
say! Why--why I might as well ask you if you are in--in--"
"In love with you? You wish to know, Yellow-hair?"
"No, I don't," she replied hastily. "This is--stupid. I don't
understand how we came to discuss such--such--" But she did know and
she bit her lip and gazed across Isla Water in silent exasperation.
What mischief was this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering
in every heather-scented breeze--laughing at her from every little
wave on Isla Water?--counselling her to this new and delicate
audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very
soul fluttering with a delicious laughter--an odd, perverse,
illogical laughter, alternately tremulous and triumphant!
Was she in love, then, with this man? She remembered his unconscious
head on her knees in the limousine, and the snow clinging to his
bright hair--
She remembered the telephone, and the call to the hospital--and the
message. ... And the white night and bitter dawn. ... Love? No, not
as she supposed it to be; merely the solicitude and friendship of a
woman who once found something hurt by the war and who fought to
protect what was hers by right of discovery. That was not love. ...
Perhaps there may have been a touch of the maternal passion about
her feeling for this man. ... Nothing else--nothing more than that,
and the eternal indefinable charity for all boys which is inherent
in all womanhood--the consciousness of the enchantment that a boy
has for all women. ... Nothing more. ... Except that--perhaps she
had wondered whether he liked her--as much as she liked him.... Or
if, possibly, in his regard for her there were some slight depths
between shallows--a gratitude that is a trifle warmer than the
conventional virtue--
When at length she ventured to turn her head and look at him he
seemed to be asleep, lying there in the transformed shadow of the
lawn umbrella.
Something about the motionless relaxation of this man annoyed her.
"Kay?"
He turned his head squarely toward her, and 'o her exasperation she
blushed.
"Did I wake you? I'm sorry," she said coldly.
"You didn't. I was awake."
"Oh! I meant to say that I think I'll stroll out. Don't come if you
feel lazy."
He swung himself up to a sitting posture.
"I'm quite ready," he said. ... "You'll always find me ready,
Yellow-hair--always waiting."
"Waiting? For what?"
"For your commands."
"You very nice boy!" she said gaily, springing to her feet. Then,
the subtle demon of the sunlight prompting her: "You know, Kay, you
don't ever have to wait. Because I'm always ready to listen to any
pro--any suggestions--from you."
The man looked into the girl's eyes:
"You would care to hear what I might have to tell you?"
"I always care to hear what you say. Whatever you say interests me."
"Would it interest you to know I am--in love?"
"Yes. ... With wh--whom are--" But her breath failed her.
"With you. ... You knew it, Yellow-hair. ... Does it interest you to
know it?"
"Yes." But the exhilaration of the moment was interfering with her
breath again and she only stood there with the flushed and audacious
little smile stamped on her lips forcing her eyes to meet his
curious, troubled, intent gaze.
"You did know it?" he repeated.
"No."
"You suspected it."
"I wanted to know what you--thought about me, Kay."
"You know now."
"Yes ... but it doesn't seem real. ... And I haven't anything to say
to you. I'm sorry--"
"I understand, Yellow-hair."
"--Except-thank you. And-and I am interested. ... You're such a boy....
I like you so much, Kay.... And I AM interested in what you
said to me."
"That means a lot for you to say, doesn't it?"
"I don't know. ... It's partly what we have been through together, I
suppose; partly this lovely country, and the sun. Something is
enchanting me. ... And you are very nice to look at, Kay." His smile
was grave, a little detached and weary.
"I did not suppose you could ever really care for such a man as I
am," he remarked without the slightest bitterness or appeal in his
voice. "But I'm glad you let me tell you how it is with me. ... It
always was that way, Yellow-hair, from the first moment you came
into the hospital. I fell in love then."
"Oh, you couldn't have--"
"Nevertheless, and after all I said and did to the contrary. ... I
don't think any woman remains entirely displeased when a man tells
her he is in love with her. If he does love her he ought to tell
her, I think. It always means that much tribute to her power. ...
And none is indifferent to power, Yellow-hair."
"No. ... I am not indifferent. I like what you said to me. It seems
unreal, though--but enchanting--part of this day's enchantment. ...
Shall we start, Kay?"
"Certainly."
They went out together through the garden door into the open moor,
swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as
dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking world
invades their vision.
Again the brown grouse whirred from the whinns; again the subtle
fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma;
again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of
bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew
sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue vault
of space.
On the edge of evening with all the west ablaze they came out once
more on Isla Water and looked across the glimmering flood at the old
house in the hollow, every distant window-pane a-glitter.
Like that immemorial and dragon-guarded jewel of the East the sun,
cradled in flaky gold, hung a hand's breadth above the horizon, and
all the world had turned to a hazy plum-bloom tint threaded with
pale fire.
On Isla Water the yellow trout had not yet begun to jump; evening
still lingered beyond the world's curved ruin; but the wild duck
were coming in from the sea in twos and threes and sheering down
into distant reaches of Isla Water.
Then, into the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable
twang of a banjo; and a fat voice, slightly hoarse:
"Rocks on the mountain,
Fishes in the sea,
A red-headed girl
Raised hell with me.
She come from Chicago, R.F.D.
An' she ain't done a thing to a guy like me!"
The business was so grotesquely outrageous, so utterly and
disgustingly hopeless in its surprise and untimelines, that McKay's
sharp laugh rang out under the sky.
There they were, the same trespassers of the morning, squatted on
the heather at the base of Isla Craig--a vast heap of rocks--their
machine drawn up in the tall green brakes beside the road.
The flashy, fat man, Macniff, had the banjo. The girl sat between
him and the thin man, Skelton.
"Ah, there, old scout!" called out Macniff, flourishing one hand
toward McKay. "Lovely evening, ain't it? Won't you and the wife join
us?"
There was absolutely nothing to reply to such an invitation. Miss
Erith continued to gaze out steadily across Isla Water; McKay,
deeply sensitive to the ludicrous, smiled under the grotesque
provocation, his eyes mischievously fixed on Miss Erith. After a
long while: "They've spoiled it," she said lightly. "Shall we go on,
Kay? I can't endure that banjo."
They walked on, McKay grinning. The picnickers were getting up from
the crushed heather; Macniff with his banjo came toward them on his
incredibly thick legs, blocking their path.
"Say, sport," he began, "won't you and the lady join us?" But McKay
cut him short:
"Do you know you are impudent?" he said very quietly. "Step out of
the way there."
"The hell you say!" and McKay's patience ended at the same instant.
And something happened very quickly, for the man only staggered
under the smashing blow and the other man's arm flew up and his
pistol blazed in the gathering dusk, shattering the cairngorm on
McKay's shoulder. The young woman fired from where she sat on the
grass and the soft hat was jerked from Miss Erith's head. At the
same moment McKay clutched her arm and jerked her violently behind a
jutting elbow of Isla Rock. When she recovered her balance she saw
he held two pistols.
"Boche?" she gasped incredulously.
"Yes. Keep your head down. Crouch among the ferns behind me!"
There was a ruddy streak of fire from the pistol in his right hand;
shots answered, the bullets smacking the rock or whining above it.
"Yellow-hair?"
"Yes, Kay."
"You are not scared, are you?"
"Yes; but I'm all right."
He said with quiet bitterness: "It's too late to say what a fool I
am. Their camouflage took me in; that's all--"
He fired again; a rattling volley came storming among the rocks.
"We're all right here," he said tersely. But in his heart he was
terrified, for he had only the cartridges in his clips.
Presently he motioned her to bend over very low. Then, taking her
hand, he guided her along an ascending gulley, knee-deep in fern and
brake and brier, to a sort of little rocky pulpit.
The lake lay behind them, lapping the pulpit's base. There was a man
in a boat out there. McKay fired at him and he plied both oars and
fled out of range.
"Lie down," he whispered to Miss Erith. The girl mutely obeyed.
Now, crouched up there in the deepening dusk, his pistol extended,
resting on the rock in front of him, his keen eyes searched
restlessly; his ears were strained for the minutest stirring on the
moor in front of him; and his embittered mind was at work
alternately cursing his own stupidity and searching for some chance
for this young girl whom his own incredible carelessness had
probably done to death.
Presently, between him and Isla Water, a shadow moved. He fired; and
around them the darkness spat flame from a dozen different angles.
"Damnation!" he whispered to himself, realising now what the sunlit
moors had hidden--a dozen men all bent on murder.
Once a voice hailed him from the thick darkness promising immunity
if he surrendered. He hesitated. Who but he should know the Boche?
Still he answered back: "If you let this woman go you can do what
you like to me!" And knew while he was saying it that it was
useless--that there was no truth, no honour in the Boche, only
infamy and murder. A hoarse voice promised what he asked; but Miss
Erith caught McKay's arm.
"No!"
"If I dared believe them--"
"No, Kay!"
He shrugged: "I'd be very glad to pay the price--only they can't be
trusted. They can't be trusted, Yellow-hair."
Somebody shouted from the impenetrable shadows:
"Come out of that now, McKay! If you don't we'll go in and cut her
throat before we do for you!"
He remained silent, quite motionless, watching the darkness.
Suddenly his pistol flashed redly, rapidly; a heavy, soft bulk went
tumbling down the rocks; another reeled there, silhouetted against
Isla Water, then lurched forward, striking the earth with his face.
And now from every angle slanting lines of blood-red fire streaked
the night; Isla Craig rang and echoed with pelting lead.
"Next!" called out McKay with his ugly careless laugh. "Two down. No
use to set 'em up again! Let dead wood lie. It's the law!"
"Can they hear the shooting at the house?" whispered Miss Erith.
"Too far. A shot on the moors carries only a little way."
"Could they see the pistol flashes, Kay?"
"They'd take them for fireflies or witch lights dancing on the
bogs."
After a long and immobile silence he dropped to his knees, remained
so listening, then crept across the Pulpit's ferny floor. Of a
sudden he sprang up and fired full into a man's face; and struck the
distorted visage with doubled fist, hurling it below, crashing down
through the bracken.
After a stunned interval Miss Erith saw him wiping that hand on the
herbage.
"Kay?"
"Yes, Yellow-hair."
"Can you see your wrist-watch?"
"Yes. It's after midnight."
The girl prayed silently for dawn. The man, grim, alert, awaited
events, clutching his partly emptied pistols. He had not yet told
her that they were partly empty. He did not know whether to tell
her. After a while he made up his mind.
"Yellow-hair?"
"Yes, dear Kay."
His lips went dry; he found difficulty in speaking: "I've--I've
undone you. I've bitten the hand that saved me, your slim white
hand, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I've destroyed you, Yellow-hair."
"How, Kay?"
"My pistols are half empty. ... Unless dawn comes quick--"
Again one of his pistols flashed its crimson streak across the
blackness and a man began scrambling and thrashing and screaming
down there in the whinns. For a little while Miss Erith crouched
beside McKay in silence. Then he felt her light touch on his arm:
"I've been thinking.",
"Aye. So have I."
"Is there a chance to drop into the lake?"
He had not thought so. He had figured it out in every possible way.
But there seemed little chance to swim that icy water--none at
all--with that man in the boat yonder, and detection always imminent
if they left the Pulpit. McKay shook his head slightly:
"He'd row us down and gralloch us like swimming deer."
"But if one goes alone?"
"Oh, Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair! If you only could!"
"I can."
"Swim it?"
"Yes."
"It's cold water. Few can swim Isla Water. It's a long swim from
Isla Craig to the house."
"I can do it, I think."
After a terrible silence he said: "Yes, best try it, Yellow-hair....
I had meant to keep the last cartridge for you..."
"Dear Kay," she breathed close to his cheek.
Presently he was obliged to fire again, but remained uncertain as to
his luck in the raging storm of lead that followed.
"I guess you better go, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "My guns are
about all in."
"Try to hold them off. I'll come back. Of course you understand I'm
not going for myself, Kay, I'm going for ammunition."
"What!"
"What did you suppose?" she asked curtly.
At that he blazed up: "If you can win through Isla Water you stay on
the other side and telephone Glenark! Do you hear? I'm all right.
It's--it's none of your business how I end this--"
"Kay?"
"What?"
"Turn your back. I'm undressing."
He heard her stripping, kneeling in the ferns behind him,--heard the
rip of delicate fabric and the rustle of silk-lined garments
falling.
Presently she said: "Can I be noticed if I slip down through the
bushes to the water?"
"O God," he whispered, "be careful, Yellow-hair. ... No, the man in
the boat is keeping his distance. He'll never see you. Don't splash
when you take the water. Swim like an otter, under, until you're
well out. ... You're young and sturdy, slim as you are. You'll get
through if the chill of Isla doesn't paralyse you. But you've got to
do it, Yellow-hair; you've GOT to do it."
"Yes. Hold them off, Kay. I'll be back. Hold them off, dear Kay.
Will you?"
"I'll try, Yellow-hair.... Good luck! Don't try to come back!"
"Good luck," she whispered close to his ear; and, for a second he
felt her slim young hands on his shoulders--lightly--the very ghost
of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another.
Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance
backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock.
Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars'
lustre the shadowy boat lying motionless.
Toward dawn they tried to rush the Pulpit. He used a heavy fragment
of rock on the first man up, and as his quarry went smashing
earthward, a fierce whine burst from the others: "Shot out! All
together now!" But his pistol spoke again and they recoiled,
growling, disheartened, cursing the false hope that had re-nerved
them.
It was his last shot, however. He had a heavy clasp-knife such as
salmon-anglers carry. He laid his empty pistols on the rocky ledge.
Very patiently he felt for frost-loosened masses of rock, detached
them one by one and noiselessly piled them along the ledge.
"It's odd," he thought to himself: "I'm going to be killed and I
don't care. If Isla got HER, then I'll see her very soon now, God
willing. But if she wins out--why it is going to be longer waiting....
And I've put my mark on the Boche--not as often as I wished--but
I've marked some of them for what they've done to me--and to the
world--"
A sound caught his ear. He waited, listening. Had it been a fighting
chance in Isla Water he'd have taken it. But the man in the
boat!--and to have one's throat cut--like a deer! No! He'd kill all
he could first; he'd die fighting, not fleeing.
He looked at his wrist-watch. Miss Erith had been gone two hours.
That meant that her slender body lay deep, deep in icy Isla.
Now, listening intently, he heard the bracken stirring and something
scraping the gorse below. They were coming; they were among the
rocks! He straightened up and hurled a great slab of rock down
through darkness; heard them scrambling upward still; seized slab
after slab and smashed them downward at the flashes as the red flare
of their pistols lit up his figure against the sky.
Then, as he hurled the last slab and clutched his short, broad
knife, a gasping breath fell on his cheek and a wet and icy little
hand thrust a box of clips into his. And there and then The McKay
almost died, for it was as if the "Cold Hand of Isla" had touched
him. And he stared ahead to see his own wraith.
"Quick!" she panted. "We can hold them, Kay!"
"Yellow-hair! By God! You bet we can!" he cried with a terrible
burst of laughter; and ripped the clips from the box and snapped
them in with lightning speed.
Then his pistols vomited vermilion, clearing the rock of vermin; and
when two fresh clips were snapped in, the man stood on the Pulpit's
edge, mad for blood, his fierce young eyes searching the blackness
about him.
"You dirty rats!" he cried, "come back! Are you leaving your dead in
the bracken then?"
There were distant sounds on the moor; nothing stirred nearer.
"Are you coming back?" he shouted, "or must I go after you?"
Suddenly in the night their motor roared. At the same moment, far
across the lake, he saw the headlights of other motors glide over
Isla Bridge like low-flying stars.
"Yellow-hair!"
There was no sound behind him. He turned.
The fainting girl lay amid her drenched yellow hair in the ferns,
partly covered by the clothing which she had drawn over her with her
last conscious effort.
It is a long way across Isla Water. And twice across is longer. And
"The Cold Hand of Isla" summons the chief of Clan Morhguinn when his
time has come to look upon his own wraith face to face. But The Cold
Hand of Isla had touched this girl in vain--MOLADH MAIRI!!
"Yellow-hair! Yellow-hair!" he whispered. The roar of rushing motors
from Glenark filled his ears. He picked up one of her little hands
and chafed it. Then she opened her golden eyes, looked up at him,
and a flood of rose dyed her body from brow to ankle.
"It--it is a long way across Isla Water," she stammered. "I'm very
tired--Kay!"
"You below there!" shouted McKay. "Are there constables among you?"
"Aye, sir!" came the loud response amid the roar of running engines.
"Then there'll be whiskey and blankets, I'm thinkin'!" cried McKay.
"Aye, blankets for the dead if there be any!"
"Kick 'em into the whinns and bring what ye bring for the living!"
said McKay in a loud, joyous voice. "And if you've petrol and speed
take the Banff road and be on your way, for the Boche are crawling
to cover, and it's fine running the night! Get on there, ye Glenark
beagles! And leave a car behind for me and mine!"
A constable, shining his lantern, came clumping up the Pulpit. McKay
snatched the heavy blankets and with one mighty movement swept the
girl into them.
Half-conscious she coughed and gasped at the whiskey, then lay very
still as McKay lifted her in his arms and strode out under the
paling stars of Isla.