THE PURPLE LADY
The little menage on the Moor of Creagh was a mistake from the
beginning, and was bound, in the very nature of things, to have a quick
and disastrous end.
This, it must be at once said, was not altogether the fault of Malcolm,
though Isla thought it was. Her fine nature had been soured by her
experiences, and the hard side of her developed by the responsibilities
which she had had to shoulder in her young girlhood, when her heart
ought to have been at play.
She had acquired the habit of legislating for everybody, and up to a
certain point of setting the standard of conduct. Her conscience she
would make the universal conscience, forgetting that there were degrees
and differences of temperament. By an effort of will she had held out a
sort of grudging olive branch to Malcolm. But she had done this simply
and solely because she wished to remain in Glenogle and because there
was no place for her except under his roof. The injustice of it all ate
into her heart. Malcolm, who had done nothing for the Glen, and who, in
her estimation, was totally unfitted to have the destinies of so many in
his keeping, had the whole power in his hands, and none could say him
nay.
The sudden change in his position had made a great difference to
Malcolm.
From being a guest on sufferance, disapproved of by Isla, who was
mistress of the situation, he had stepped into power, which simply
reversed their positions. Isla, so to speak, was now his guest, and,
because there had been no will and there was nothing except the land to
divide, a pensioner on his bounty.
Love would have laughed at the difficulties with which the situation
bristled. But the difficulty of existence in these circumstances became
more acute, and, to Isla, every day more unbearable. It was not that
Malcolm was rude or actively unkind. Nay, his gay good humour never
failed. But he had no use for her advice and he absolutely ignored
anything she said as to his conduct of affairs.
Take the case of the Maclures, for instance.
"You'll never put Donald Maclure out of Darrach, Malcolm," she said one
day in the autumn, when Martinmas was looming in sight. "I met him
yesterday, and he looked like a man under sentence of death. He had
heard that you have been in communication with a man in Fife about the
croft. Is that true?"
"It might be, and, again, it might not be," he answered, though there
was not a word of truth in the report yet.
He had thought of it, but it was characteristic of Malcolm's nature to
postpone most of the serious things of life till a more convenient
season. And just then his energies and his hopes were elsewhere
engaged.
"But, Malcolm," she said, with a touch of passion, "it isn't right to
treat the folk like that--to torment them without sense or purpose.
They haven't been used to it."
"No--they've been used to nothing but having their own way, to paying
when they liked and what they liked," he answered, with a touch of
grimness. "But I'm going to alter all that."
They were at breakfast at the moment, and she looked down the narrow
table at him with a feeling of strong disgust. There is no bitterness
like the bitterness between those of one blood who persistently
misunderstand and misjudge each other.
Malcolm Mackinnon was not wholly bad. Nay, at that very time he was
honestly striving to do his duty and to establish himself in the esteem
of those whose esteem he valued. But among these he did not include his
dependants. Towards them he was a bit of a martinet, as his mother--a
creature from the nether world dressed in a little brief authority--had
been before him.
Isla knew nothing about her mother except that she had been very pretty
and that she had died young. Had she known more she would have
understood that alien and lawless blood run in Malcolm's veins. But the
old General had never spoken of the one irretrievable mistake of his
life--a mistake which had left his heart seared and made his life
desolate in the summer of his days. Happily perhaps for Isla the brief
tragedy had been enacted in India, and General Mackinnon's wife had
never beheld the place of her husband's birth and true affection.
"I am sure Mr. Cattanach can't approve of your turning out the folk like
that. And what will a few shillings or pounds a year more do for you?
It will make so little difference that, looking at it even from the
sordid standpoint, it isn't worth while."
Isla spoke thus because she was intensely of opinion that Malcolm had no
feelings, and that this was the only appeal that would strike home. He,
knowing perfectly well how she regarded him, was pleased to play upon
her erroneous conceptions.
"It's worth while, my dear," he said, with his ready and, to her, most
aggravating smile, "because these Highland folk want waking up. They
are like the Irish--lazy, easy-going, and without independence. You
should hear George Larmer on the state of things on his Wicklow place.
He says it is due partly to the rain and partly to the whisky, but there
is not a man of them who will do a decent day's work."
"We get rain enough here," said Isla with a sigh, for it had been a very
wet summer, and the poor harvest was to be very late. "But our people
don't drink whisky. Even Donald is a teetotaller and wears a blue
ribbon in his buttonhole."
"Which that shrew of his pinned on, doubtless. Poor devil!--I'm sorry
for Donald if that's the set of it, and I'll stand him a drink next time
I meet him at a handy place."
"Then, what are you going to do about the Maclures? I wish you would be
serious for just a minute, Malcolm. I really want to know what's in
store for them. I am almost afraid to go past the door of Darrach now
or to meet Eppie. She's wearing herself to a shadow over it all."
"There you are, Isla--you've ruined them, neck and crop, by listening to
their grumblings and pandering to their lack of independence! Nobody
knows just how much money there is in Glenogle--or in any of the glens,
for that matter. It strikes me there are a good many fat stocking-feet
hidden among the thatch."
"Oh, nonsense, Malcolm! Nobody does that now. They all use the bank
when they have anything to put away, but I don't think that is often the
case."
He cut the top neatly off his third egg and proceeded to enjoy it.
Malcolm had a healthy appetite, and Margaret Maclaren, still more or
less in a state of grumbling rebellion, said that he was hard to fill.
"Look here, Isla, I wish you would take a sensible view of things and
leave me to manage my own business. You won't deny that the management
is mine now, I suppose? Unfortunately for me, you've been Laird of
Achree for the last five or six years, and you're difficult to follow.
It's just like what happens in a regiment when an easy Colonel is
followed by a smart one. Every unit in it jibs, but they all come into
line a little later. And that's what the tenants--my tenants--are going
to do if you'll let them alone. But you must let them alone, do you
understand? I am sick of all this wrangling, and I won't listen to you
any more. It isn't decent for you to act as go-between among the
tenants. If they have a grievance let them come to me. Next time you
see the Maclures you can tell them it will pay them to address
themselves to me instead of putting up a poor face to you."
Isla's colour rose, for both the words and the manner of them were
offensive.
"It would be better for yourself, too," he added in a gentler tone. "I
don't suppose you ever look at yourself in the glass. You've gone off
most frightfully of late. It's the worry and the bearing of loads for
other folk that they are perfectly able to bear themselves that are to
blame for that. Take me, for instance. You'd like to melt me down and
drop me into your own mould. But, my dear, it can't be done. Leave me
to go my own way. Maybe it's a blundering bad way, but at least give me
credit for trying to make the best of things. Once for all, I won't be
dictated to or legislated for. There isn't in the whole world a more
difficult or impossible person to live with than the woman who wants to
run a universal conscience."
There was just sufficient truth in the words to make their sting doubly
telling.
"If that is how you feel about me, Malcolm," she said, rising stiffly,
"then the sooner I leave Creagh the better."
"A visit to the Barras Mackinnons would do you a power of good, I admit,
and would give me time to look round and get my bearings," he said
frankly. "The quarters are a bit close here, you know, for us in our
present state. Why not go to Wimereaux to them? The sea air would do
you good, and they've asked you often enough, in all conscience."
She rolled up her napkin and pushed it all awry into the ring with the
Mackinnon crest on it, and her downcast eyes were full of strange fires.
"I don't want to be unjust or hard. Heaven knows I don't, but you won't
do anything," continued Malcolm. "At Achree they're always asking why
you don't come down, and I must say I think that, after all their
kindness, you've treated them shabbily."
"You go so much," she said sullenly. "We can't both live on the
American bounty."
It was a speech wholly unworthy of Isla and unjust to the Rosmeads. But
it was prompted by jealousy alone and by the distorted view of things
prevailing in the mind of the lonely girl whom nobody now seemed to
want.
Her only faithful henchman was Neil Drummond, but on the last occasion
on which he had come with words of healing and sympathy on his lips she
had sent him away, telling him she would not see him again unless he
promised to talk of ordinary things.
"You've got into a beastly habit of nagging when you're not curled right
up in a hard shell which nobody can open," said Malcolm, enjoying his
opportunity now that candour was the order of the day. "You've choked
off nearly everybody, and it's your own fault. I find folk very
pleasant because I let them alone. I'm not for ever telling them to do
this or that. I've enough to do to look after myself. I know you think
me a rotter--and all that. But you might do worse than take a leaf out
of my book. I've been out in the world, and I've learned two
things--that it's ready to laugh with you, but that the moment you show
the other side of your face it is bored to extinction. Your long face
bores folk, Isla. Nobody has ever told you the truth about yourself
before. You've arrogated the role of truth-teller to yourself, but
that's it----"
Isla walked out of the room with her head held high in air and fire
burning fiercely in her eyes. She was so angry that she dared not trust
her voice. Now she knew exactly what position she occupied at
Creagh--that Malcolm regarded her as an encumbrance and a nuisance, and
that she dwelt there merely on sufferance and during his good pleasure.
Well, such a situation being intolerable to a woman of spirit, it must
be ended, and that without delay.
She ascended the stairs to her own room, and when she was intercepted by
Margaret Maclaren with some inquiry about the meals for the day, she
simply told her to get what she liked, and passed on.
Margaret, no stranger to wrangling, having had a bout of it that very
morning with her arch-enemy Diarmid, understood that there had been a
small storm raging in the dining-room, and discreetly retired.
New, strange, dreadful elements had crept into the quiet life on Creagh
Moor, and all its sweet harmony was destroyed.
Isla shut the door of her own room, and dropped for a moment into her
chair, wringing her hands the while with a sense of utter helplessness.
She was at the end of her tether. Nobody wanted her, and the time had
come for her to go away. Not a soul in the Glen, she told herself
bitterly, would lament her going. She had dropped into obscurity, and
even if she were never to come back any more to Glenogle, how many would
mourn her absence or long for her return?
The impulse to go there and then was strong upon her. She even opened
the door of her wardrobe and her drawers to take a brief inventory of
her belongings and consider what she would take away.
If only she could walk out as she was! But travel, even of the simplest
sort, is hampered by the multitude of our needs, by the things which
complicate life. Then she looked at her little store of money, counting
it out with careful fingers. Eighteen pounds in gold and two handfuls
of silver--well, that would keep her until she could earn more for
herself.
She was a forlorn creature, without plan or compass, proposing to let
herself drift upon an unknown sea. She had not the smallest intention
of going to the Barras Mackinnons at Wimereaux. She must get away quite
alone, where she could realize herself, and arrive at some conclusion
regarding her ultimate fate.
Through the open window she heard Malcolm go off with the dogs,
whistling as if he had not a care in the world. The things which
daunted her and lay like a nightmare on her white, sensitive soul, had
no power over him. Frankly selfish, he lived from day to day,
extracting the honey from the hours, and stoically enduring what he
could not evade. Perhaps, she said to herself, his was no bad
philosophy. She wished somebody had taught it to her sooner; now it was
a difficult lesson, baffling her intelligence at every point.
By and by she grew calmer, and her distracted thoughts began to collect
themselves. It was not possible to run away in a hurry without telling
any one, and her orderly mind shrank from taking such a foolish and
unnecessary step. No--whatever she did, she would not forget herself or
the dignity of the Mackinnons. She would put no occasion for talk into
people's mouths.
In an hour's time she had decided what to do, and, after making a sort
of preliminary division of her possessions, she dressed herself and went
out. Margaret, having the feeling that Miss Isla wished to be alone,
did not intercept her this time.
It was a fine, clear, hard morning in September, with a touch of frost
in the air after a night's rain. But the clouds on the far horizon were
still watery, and Isla's keen eyes decided that the deluge had not spent
itself. She would, however, get fair weather as far as Lochearnhead,
which was her present destination, seeing that she had to give a certain
order to Jamie Forbes concerning the morrow.
Of a set purpose, she kept to the sheep tracks on the hills, thus
avoiding the vicinity of Achree. She had been there very few times
since her father's death, and as Mrs. Rosmead had had a somewhat serious
illness in the interval, her daughters had been too much engaged in
looking after her to pay distant calls. But Isla knew that Malcolm was
constantly there--if not every day, at least several times a week.
About half a mile beyond Achree gates, on the Lochearn side of the Glen,
she had to come out on the road again, because the sheep track ended
suddenly with Donald Maclure's pasture. The heavy rains had washed
every superfluous particle of earth from the roads, and left the
gravelled bottom bare, while there were delicious runnels of water here
and there, all making swiftly for the burn, which was swollen far beyond
its ordinary limits. There had been very little fair weather in
Glenogle or in the valley of the Earn since the Lammas floods.
Isla paused for a moment on the Darrach Brig to watch the brown swirl of
the water below, which fascinated her. Her eyes and ears were ever
quick and keen to note every change in the aspect of the landscape, and
she was more weather-wise than most. She had fallen into a kind of
brown study, from which she was awakened very suddenly by the sound of a
voice speaking a few yards away.
It was a woman's voice, and when Isla swung round upon her with
quickly-uplifted head she saw a lady on the road dressed in garments
such as were not often seen in Glenogle. She wore a gown which, Isla
decided, was more fitted for an afternoon function than a quiet country
road. It was of a somewhat vivid purple hue, trimmed profusely about
the bodice with string-coloured lace. The skirt was long, but she had
it gathered in her hand, and held high enough to show the froth of
white, lace-trimmed petticoats and a mauve stocking against the clear,
patent leather of the high-heeled shoes. A large black hat, surmounted
with feathers and swathed in a veil like a spider's web, through which
the vivid colour of the face appeared somewhat softened, completed the
costume, which was certainly a startling one in that remote place,
though such a common sight in London streets as to excite no remark.
Isla grew hot and cold, and started back with a little gesture of
aversion, for she recognized the woman whose face she had seen once in
the flesh, and once again in a photograph in her brother's room.
"Good day," said the stranger quite pleasantly. "Could you tell me
whether there is a place close by here called Achree?"
She pronounced the last word without the guttural, so that it sounded
like Akree.
"I asked about it at the hotel," the lady continued. "and they directed
me along this road. But it seems a good bit away. Is it much farther
off?"
"The Lodge gates are half a mile farther on," Isla answered. "Then
there is the avenue to the house and that is rather long."
"I may as well go on, now I have come so far, but if I'd known how far
off it was I would have hired a trap of some kind."
She leaned against the parapet of the bridge in a quite friendly
fashion, as if ready to talk; and Isla hating herself intensely for
lingering, yet felt impelled to do so, and even to put a question to the
stranger concerning her business at Achree.
"I suppose that it is the American tenants you have come to see? They
have been in Achree for about six months now."
The lady shook her head.
"No. I don't know that I've come to see anybody in particular, but I'm
interested in the place through a friend of mine. I didn't know there
were Americans in it. I thought it belonged to a family called
Mackinnon."
"They are the owners, but it is let, as most of the big places are in
these days."
"I see. And where are the Mackinnons? Mr. Mackinnon chiefly? He is
what you call the laird now, isn't he? I read about his father's death
in the newspapers, and what a fuss they made about it! Is he here just
now?"
"He is not at Achree."
"But he lives in this neighbourhood, surely? He has not left Scotland?"
said the stranger with a quick, apprehensive note in her voice.
"No, he lives farther up the Glen--oh, a long way. You could not
possibly walk it," said Isla hastily. "Good morning. I must go on."
She was ashamed of herself for having lingered to parley even a moment
with this woman, who, she felt sure, by her coming presaged more dool
and woe to Achree. How she longed to get clean away from the Glen
before the name of Mackinnon was dragged in the mire! This impossible
woman must have a hold of some kind on Malcolm, else she never would
have dared to come seeking him in his own glen.
As she turned away her soul felt sick within her.
"I'm sorry you are not walking my way," said the stranger easily. "I'll
walk on a bit farther and take a look at the place, now I have come so
far. What a country! Such hills! And how dull you must all find it!
I'm stopping at Strathyre, and when there are not the hills, there's the
water to get on your nerves. I don't wonder the Scotch are a melancholy
people. Ta-ta!"
She waved her plump, gloved hand in quite friendly fashion, and showed
her dazzling teeth in a pleasant smile as she sauntered off.
Isla, with her limbs positively trembling beneath her, hurried over the
bridge, and so on to the hotel, where she merely left a message,
ordering the trap to fetch her and her luggage from Creagh in the
morning.
She had had various plans when she started out. She had thought she
might possibly hire Jamie Forbes to take her through Balquhidder to
Garrion, or that she might even on the way home pay a call at Achree.
But after what had just happened, she had only one desire--to get away
out of Glenogle as fast as the fastest train could take her.