Mr. McColl was right, as Marjory herself had ere long to acknowledge; for she had not gone far ere quick steps echoed behind her, and, looking round, she saw the Reverend James Gillespie trying to overtake her. She paused in resigned vexation, experience having taught her the wisdom of waiting for him; the fact being that the fusion point of mind and body was with him extremely low, and heat had a disastrous effect on both; so she waited--that honest walking boot of hers beating a very girlish tattoo of impatience the while against a rock.
"This is great news, Miss Marjory," he began, breathlessly. "Great news--I may say, good news--is--is it not?"
The latter rather alarmed inquiry being the result of a glance at her face; for she was in a contradictory mood, and the Reverend James never had any fixed opinions in minor matters. He took them from his friends and was, in consequence, often in the position of a child who, having filled both hands with biscuits, is suddenly offered a sweetie. Even then he was quite ready to swallow the new contribution if it was firmly put into his mouth. There was no little excuse for him, however, since his present environment in a measure forced him to a poor opinion of himself in the past. The fact being that until the age of fifteen he had been nothing more than the son of a poor crofter on the estate of Gleneira. A clever lad, no doubt, who might perchance rise to something above his father's fate. And then the Bishop, on the lookout for recruits to the Gaelic-speaking clergy necessary to carry on the work in the remoter glens, where the Episcopal faith still lingers, had chosen him out like Samuel for the service of the Lord. It had been a veritable translation, for the Bishop, being High Church, had exalted views of the priesthood. The result being that James Gillespie, fulfilled with a virtuous desire to justify the Bishop's choice, soon lost the small amount of individuality he had originally possessed. Educated by the Bishop, ordained by the Bishop, made the Bishop's chaplain in order that the Bishop might coach him through the rocks of social etiquette, he became, not unnaturally, a sort of automaton, safe so far as his knowledge of the Bishop's views went, but no further. On these points he was logic proof; on others the veriest weathercock at the mercy of every breeze that blew. For the rest, a good-looking, florid, fair young man, dressed rigorously in clerical costume. This again being in deference to the Bishop who, honest man, having his fair share of the serpent's wisdom, saw the necessity of hedging this prophet in his own country about with every dignity which might serve to emphasise the difference between his past and present. The more so because the sparse congregations amid the fastnesses of the hills were in the charge of different pastors. Once a month or so the Reverend Mr. Wilson, from the Manse miles away down the Strath, would drive up in a machine, put up with the Camerons at the Lodge, and deliver a very cut-and-dried little sermon in the school-house. On these occasions the Reverend Mr. Gillespie used to trudge over the hills with his surplice in a brown paper parcel, so leaving the Geneva gown and bands a fair field while he delivered an equally cut-and-dried little homily to the still more outlying faithful in a barn. About this arrangement, necessitated by ancient custom, even the Bishop constrained his tongue, seeing that Mr. Wilson belonged to the Church of Scotland, as by law established, and, what is more, to the very highest and driest portion of it. He was a courtly old gentleman, with a white tie, yards long, wound round his neck numberless times, and finished off by an odd little bow made out of the extreme ends; a learned old man with a turn of the leg, suggesting a youth when calves were visible, and a vast store of classical quotations remaining over from the days when he lectured on the humanities at St. Andrews. Neither did the Bishop consider the Reverend Father Macdonald, who came once in three months or so, and generally on a week day, an intruder. On the contrary, the Reverend James had instructions to ask him to dinner, and, if it was a Friday, to have cockle soup and stewed lentils for him; that is to say, if the invitation was accepted, which it was not as a rule, the Father preferring to eat potatoes and butter at the Camerons, and endure the old lady's good-natured scorn, for the sake of hearing Marjory sing Scotch songs and play Scarlatti. For Dr. Carmichael's one relaxation had been, music, in which, as in other things, the girl had proved herself to be an apt pupil. As often as not, too, on these occasions, old Mrs. Cameron would send a man with the dogcart down the Strath to fetch up Mr. Wilson, and then the two old enemies could fence at each other courteously over the single glass of port, for which the Jesuit had a dispensation. And, if the buttons seemed inclined to come off the foils, Marjory, in the next room, would strike up, "Come, bring to me a stoup o' wine, and bring it in a silver tassie." Then their old heads would wag, and they would give over the endless battle for the sake of hearing a "bonnie lassie" sing their favourite song. But it was very different when the Free Church missioner came round, for he was an earnest, red-haired person, who any day of the week would gladly have testified against Black Prelacy to the bitter end of the stake. He was a stumbling-block, even to Marjory, who professed calm tolerance; but then those courtly old admirers of hers, to say nothing of Cousin Tom's rather foreign manners, had spoilt her. So that amid all her theories--the theories of clever youth instinct with the love of justice and liberty--she could not help being repelled by the roughness of life when, as it were, she touched and handled it. The people themselves, however, thought it a sign of strength to bang the pulpit and bellow, as, indeed, it was, undoubtedly. So the consensus of opinion in all sects was that the Free Church had the finest preacher. Not that it mattered much in a place where church-going on a Sunday was a recognised dissipation, which had to last for a week. Thus, no matter who was in the pulpit, the little school-house on a fine day overflowed; and even the Reverend Father Macdonald had not a few applicants for a blessing against witchcraft if the cows did not milk properly. This, however, was done on the sly, by accident as it were, when the petitioners chanced to meet priestly authority in the post-office.
In order, therefore, to hold his own amid the hosts of Midian, the Reverend James spent quite a large slice of his modest income on all-round collars and silk cassocks; and even when the old Adam arose at the sight of a red-brown river, and hehadto creep away with a hazel rod and a bag of worms to some seething pool where the sea-trout lay, he still kept to his professional garments and sate on a rock with his long coat-tails pinned behind his back, looking like a gigantic crow about to fly.
Despite this and other ridiculous habits, Marjory, with her clear, honest eyes saw the real desire to do his duty to Church and State underlying the young man's indecision; but, fortunately for him, she had no notion that of late this had taken the form of wishing to marry her. The fact being that in a recent visit the Bishop had not only remarked that the parish clergy should be the husbands of one wife, but had rather pointedly referred to the immense improvement in the school standard, since Miss Carmichael had begun to practise teaching there. The direct consequence of which had been to make the Reverend James believe himself in love, and at the same time to make him regard all Marjory's opinions as episcopally blessed. An effort needing mental gymnastics of the highest class, especially when, as now, she was bent on mischief.
"Good news," she echoed. "Well, I hardly know; that must surely depend entirely on what sort of person Captain Macleod turns out to be." This she knew must, to begin with, savour of blasphemy to one born and bred on the estate.
"Naturally, I may say, of course, but----" he looked at her pathetically, like a dog when asked to perform a difficult trick; "you--you--you surely have not heard anything against him, have you?"
Marjory's eyes twinkled, but only for a moment; after all it was poor fun depolarising his mental compass.
"Anything against him? No; except that he is too good-looking, I am told."
"Handsome is that handsome does," remarked the Reverend James, cheerfully; it was a favourite proverb at the palace, and he felt sure of his ground. Unfortunately, since it roused Marjory to contradiction.
"Nonsense! As if all the goodness in the world could change a snub nose into a Grecian."
"But surely, my dear Miss Marjory," protested the young man feebly, "the proverb does not assert--em--that sort of thing. I have always understood it--em--I mean the latter half--perhaps I should say the simile--alludes to moral worth."
"Now, Mr. Gillespie! does that mean you consider beauty and goodness to be the same, or simply that you deny the value of physical beauty altogether?" asked Marjory in aggrieved tones.
"I--I don't think I mean either," he replied, so naively that she was obliged to laugh; "but indeed," he went on, "it seems to me, as I remember the Bishop said in his sermon on All Souls, that beauty and goodness are in a measure synonymous, that----"
"Do you mean," she interrupted hastily, but with a sort of quick hesitation which came often to her speech when she was really interested, "that not only are good things necessarily beautiful in a way, but that beautiful things must be good? Look at Tito! All his vileness did not mar the perfection of his beauty. It was a tower of strength to him till the day of his death. It must be so--you can't help it. The thing is good in itself."
Never having read "Romola," the Reverend James fell back discreetly on a more unimpeachable proverb, by remarking, with the air of a man making a valuable contribution to the argument:--
"Beauty is but skin deep."
"Who wants it to be more?" she asked, hotly. "That is all you see. No one asks whether the muscles follow the proper curves beneath the skin, or the bones are strong. And, after all, it seems to me that goodness and beauty appeal to the same chord--the love of everything that is clear, defined, orderly. Ugliness is so incoherent, so indistinct, Mr. Gillespie! Did it ever strike you how unnecessarily ugly we all are? Now, don't deny the fact. Remember the Bishop's hymn says, 'only man is vile.'"
"But that really does apply to his moral."
"I don't agree with you. Some of us, perhaps, are wicked, but most of us are hideous."
"Do you really think so?" And the self-conscious look on his smug, comely face was too much for her gravity. She laughed merrily.
"There are exceptions to every rule, Mr. Gillespie; I only meant to say that since the strongest and best, and therefore, according to you, the most beautiful, had survived in the struggle for existence----"
"By the bye," he put in, for him quite eagerly, "the Bishop has just sent me an excellent reply to the Darwinian----"
Marjory went on remorselessly, "That we were singularly plain-looking, as a rule. For my part I would gladly have eliminated the Carmichael nose if I had had any choice in the matter."
The remark left a grand opening for a compliment if he could at the moment have thought of anything save the crude assertion that he considered it the most beautiful nose in the world. So he remained silent, casting about in his mind for a less absolute form, with such concentrated admiration in his face, that even Marjory could not avoid noticing it, and with a sudden curl of her lip, changed the subject by asking him, in her best categorical manner, when he had last been to see old Peggy, who was bad with her rheumatism. Now old Peggy's cottage was not an inviting-looking abode--a boulder-built hut with a peat roof and a rudimentary chimney--and it lay close by in a hollow between the road and a bog full of waving cotton grass. So the Reverend James regretfully gave up his opportunity as lost for the time; but a gleam of manly resolution came to him as he looked first at the hut, then down the road, the pleasant sunshiny road stretching away to where a thin blue smoke from the chimneys of Gleneira Lodge rose above the silver firs and copper beeches to the right of the big house. All that distance to traverse with Marjory, as against Peggy Duncan the pauper, who was bad enough at the best, but, with the rheumatism, simply appalling.
"I'm afraid I haven't time to-day," he began, with admirable regret, which, however, changed to consternation as his companion paused and held out her hand.
"Then good-bye! I promised to look in on my way home. And on the whole it is better as it is, for it is positively unsafe to visit old Peggy in couples when she is ill. So long as she has but one visitor, you know, the fear of losing a gossip bridles her tongue; but when there are two, one is always a scapegoat." Now, Marjory looked at her companion gravely, and spoke deliberately, "You wouldn't, I'm sure, care to hear me abused; so it is wiser for me to go alone. Good-bye."
She was off as she spoke down the brae, leaving him disappointed, yet still vaguely content, the very thought of in the future having a wife who would go and visit old Peggy filling him with peace, for that old woman was a sore trial to his dignity, since she invariably made a point of remembering his youth as a barefoot cotter's boy. But then at heart she was a Presbyterian who did not believe in the sanctity of orders. So he went on his way down the loch fairly satisfied with himself, while Marjory took his place beside the sick bed of the rheumatic old woman.
The girl gave one regretful glance at the sunshine before she dived into the darkness of the cottage. It was mean and squalid in the extreme, yet to those accustomed to the dirt and warmth, the discomfort and the cosiness of a Highland hut, its air of tidiness was unusual. The mud floor was even and clean swept, the single pane of glass doing duty as a window was neither broken nor patched with rags, while the crazy, smoke-blackened dresser was ranged with common earthenware. A gathering peat, just edged with fire, lay on the huge stone hearth, above which a tiny black pot hung in the thin column of pale blue smoke which, as it rose to the dim rafters, was illumined by the only ray of sunlight in the house--that which streamed through the round hole in the roof which did duty as a chimney. Beside the hearth a fair-haired boy of about six lay fast asleep, while from a settle in the darkness a pair of gleaming green eyes revealed the presence of a cat.
Nothing more to be seen by Marjory's sun-blinded sight. Not a sound to be heard, until suddenly a grey hen roosting in the rafters began to cluck uproariously with much sidelong prancings of a pair of yellow legs, and downward dips of a quaint, irascible, tufted head. Instantly from a recess bed arose a patient moan and a pious aspiration that the Lord's will might be done at all costs.
"Good afternoon, Peggy! I hope your sleep has done you good," said Marjory blithely, as she sate down on the edge of the bed, and looked steadily at the occupant's face. Old Peggy Duncan, with the assertion that she had not slept for days trembling on her tongue, wavered before the girl's decision, and murmured something about closing an eye.
"That is better than nothing, isn't it?" continued the uncompromising visitor. "And as for wee Paulie! he's been having a fine snooze. Haven't you, Paulie?"
The child by the fire, rubbing his eyes drowsily, smiled back at her rather sheepishly.
"'Deed it's so," broke in the querulous voice, satisfied at finding a legitimate object for complaint. "He's just the laziest, weariest wean, and no caring a tinker's damn for his nanny. Just lyin' sleepin', and me in an agony. Could ye not watch?--Ay!--Ay! But what can one expect o' a child o' the devil----"
"Peggy! You're a wicked old woman to speak like that. Paul does more than most boys twice his age. I'll be bound he has been stuffing indoors with you all day long without a grumble. Run away now, dear laddie, and get the fresh air."
The order, spoken in Gaelic, produced a sudden flash of life all over the little fellow, and he was out of the door in a second. Marjory looked after him with a pleasant smile.
"He is a pretty boy, isn't he, Peggy?--quite the prettiest in the glen."
"Aye! he has the curse o' beauty. Sae had his mither. Ay! an' her father before her. Thank the Lord, Miss Marjory, you're no bonnie."
"I shall do nothing of the sort, Peggy. And how is the pain? Better for that liniment I rubbed in yesterday?"
"Better!" There was a world of satisfied scorn in the old voice. "Better frae ae teaspoonful o' stuff. Lord be gude to us, Miss Marjory! Naethin' short o' a meeracle'll better me, an' ye talk o' a carnal rubbin' doing it."
"It would be a miracle if it did, wouldn't it, Peggy?" retorted the girl, calmly; "but if it did no good at all there is no use in repeating it, so I'll be off and leave you to your sleep again."
"Hoot awa! an' you tired wi' your walk. Just sit ye down and rest a bit and dinna mind me. I'm used to being no minded, ye ken. Wha minds a bit pauper body but the pairish? Two an' saxpence a week, an' a boll o' meal term-day that's no meal at a', but just grits; grits and dirt. I'm no wondering that they puts soddy (soda) until't at the poor's-house to gar't swall. Ay! Aye! and me lyin' a week without spiritual food, an' I cravin' for it from anyone."
"Now, Peggy, you know quite well you told Mr. Gillespie you wanted none of his priestcraft, the last time he was here. You are just a bad, ungrateful old woman, and I've a great mind to go away without making you a cup of tea or telling you the news."
The old face set close in its white cap frills brightened visibly at the last words. "Weel! Weel! I must na be hard on the puir lad. There be divers gifts, an' may be he's gotten one somewhere. And but for the pain makin' me clean wud, I'd have had the tea for you. Just cry on Paulie--the kettle's on the fire, and he'll no be long, puir lammie."
But Marjory preferred to leave the boy to his play, and set about the task herself quickly, dexterously, while old Peggy watched her with sagacious eyes; for she herself had been a notable worker, and had still a regretful admiration for the capability in others. Rather a despicable object, perhaps, this fretful rheumatic old woman, grumbling and growling at everything; and yet, could the secrets of all hearts be revealed, she might have seemed more of a heroine and martyr than many a canonised saint. A youth of ceaseless plodding toil had been given in stolid honesty to her master's interests; then late in life, when the hopes of womanhood were almost over, had come a brief St. Martin's summer, where a wandering Englishman engaged on some mining venture close by had married the sober lass as a means of being comfortable for the time, and after a year had deserted her shamefully, leaving her to work harder than ever for the sake of the little daughter who remained to show that Peggy's short spell of love had not been a dream. Some, indeed, there were who maintained that it had never had any solid foundation, and that the marriage had been but a pretence. This coming to the mother's ears had roused in her a fierce anger, which in its turn gave rise to a passionate desire to prove this child of hers to be above their petty spite, superior to their plodding lives. And in a measure she succeeded. Jeanie Duncan grew up in what, to a girl of her class, was luxury, while her mother sold brown sugar, herrings, tarred rope, and tobacco--in fact, kept a general store. Until the girl, like many another, fretted at home, sought service, and disappeared beyond the circle of blue hills; to be followed after a time by her mother.
But though pretty Jeanie Duncan never returned, old Peggy did, bringing with her a baby. Not an unusual sequel to the story; and so, though the neighbours shook their heads, there was no need to question the woman. What else could have been expected from flighty Jeanie Duncan, whose head had been turned by Mr. Paul's painting her picture. And Peggy said nothing, even while she concealed nothing. Silent from her youth, she was more silent than ever as she reverted again to the hard toil of those early days, until one January the cold settled into her ill-clad old bones when she was gathering sticks in the woods and left her a cripple. And then the loss of her independence broke her spirit and turned her into a fretful scold. A dreary, toil-worn, barren youth, desertion, degradation, outrage of love and pride--all this gamut of grief had she sounded without an answering groan. The straw which broke her patience was not the hardness but the charity of her fellow-creatures. A most irrational old lady, no doubt, yet not altogether blameworthy in her self-satisfied appreciation of the tea "that was no from the pairish, praise be to the Lord," and very human, certainly, in her eager desire to hear the news of that parish. Yet her face when Marjory told her of the laird's return seemed to settle into a strange indifference. "The laird! It will be Mr. Paul you're meaning."
"Yes, Mr. Paul; he is the laird now, you know, and he hasn't been here for nine years. He has been away in India with his regiment."
"Lord sakes! as if I did na' know that; he has been the laird these sax years gone. I mind it weel. And I mind him, too; ower weel, maybe. A winsome laddie, fond of painting; but 'Thou shalt not make to thyself the likeness,' ye ken. So he is coming home at last--bonnie nae doot; and she, my Jeanie, is dust and ashes."
It was seldom that Peggy alluded to her dead daughter, and there was a wistful look in the crabbed old face. Marjory, quickly responsive, stroked the crabbed old hand which lay on the coverlet gently; but old Peggy would none of her sympathy and drew it away, while her voice took almost a triumphant tone.
"Ay! Dust and ashes! That's what we a' come to. Young and auld, Miss Marjory, my dear, rich and poor. Ay! and pairish officers, forbye; it's no to be escapit, thank the Lord! And if you're going ye might just open yon drawer in the aumry an' tak' oot my deid claes. There's a bonnie blaze in the fire that maun-na be wasted, and in life we are in death, ye ken, so it's as weel to hae them aired. There's a deal o' sickness comin' frae damp linen, and I'm sae subjec' to the rheumatism."
"That would be one of the ills you would leave behind you, Peggy," suggested Marjory, with a tender smile at the oddity of the old woman's thought.
"I'm sure I hope sae, for it wad be maist terrible in the wings," replied Peggy, gravely. Her eyes, following the girl as she complied with the grim request, lit up with satisfaction, her mouth trembled in the effort for calm indifference.
"Ay! sure enough it's the best of cloth, yon, and there is twa rows back stitchin' as fine as fine, and a frill down the front. Some has a lace edgin', but I'm no sure o' furbelows. It wad no be decent for me to come before my Maker prinked oot like a young lass; though Mary McAndrews, who was a gude four year aulder nor me, had real Valenciennes. But, there! she was ae' flighty, puir thing; her mind set on bows and gum flowers, no on things above. Fine cloth an' a cambric frill's gude eneuch for my funeral; an' the coffin no from the pairish, thank the Lord!"
As old Peggy lay there in the bay bed gossiping over her shroud she was a grim sight; yet a pathetic one, since there is nothing in the wide world which appeals to the humanity within us so much as the tired, toil-wasted hands of old age folded on a coverlet waiting for death. Marjory, with her strong young ones straightening the dead clothes, felt a strange thrill at her heart, even as she thought of the long years of welcome struggle before she, too, would be glad of rest.
"So Mr. Paul is to come hame again?" quavered the old voice, softened inexplicably by that chill thought of death. "Aye, aye! he will be bonnie still, for he was aye of the kind to mak' a bonnie corp. And no that bad for a man--not by ordinair. Weel! when ye see him tell him that ould Peggy's gone on the pairish, but that it'll no be a pairish funeral. For there's twa bottles gude whiskey in the draw wi' the deid claes, my dear, and that's eneuch to carry me to my grave as I sou'd be carried."
Will Cameron the grieve, or, in plain English, the land steward of the Gleneira property, was leaning lazily over the shrubbery gate, watching two men mowing a narrow strip of grass on either side of the grand approach leading up to the Big House; a proceeding which gave the whole place a most ridiculous half-shaven air. It had its merits, however, in Mr. Cameron's eyes, seeing that it was supposed to make the roadway look kempt while it preserved the rest of the lawn for hay; an economy sorely needed at the Big House, after the late laird's riotous living. Even now, when matters had mended somewhat, honest Will did not care to think of those times when all he saw of the laird of Gleneira was a signature on I O U's; for, when all was said and done, his own honesty seemed bound up in that of the old place. A gardener was nailing up the creepers covering the porch; the windows of the house were set wide open, and through them a noise of hammering and brushing floated out into the crisp morning air as Marjory came up the road from the lodge; her footsteps crunching in the loose sea-gravel, which not even the coming and going of years had worn into compactness, and leant over the gate likewise. Will shifted a little, almost unconsciously, to make room for her, with loose-limbed easy good-nature, and in so doing revealed the whole attitude of his individuality towards Marjory Carmichael. Briefly she was the dearest girl in the world, but rather apt to make a fellow move on, when he would much rather have stopped where he was. Yet they were the best of friends, almost playmates, although he was double her age and distinctly bald. For the rest a very straightforward simple person, with nothing complex about him. One of those men whom Nature has made firstly a sportsman, secondly a farmer; in other words, a descendant of both Cain and Abel. Marjory herself was very fond of him, and no wonder, since during the years she had spent with his mother he had set himself to make things pleasant for her as a man about a house can do when he has absolutely no ulterior object in view. The mere suggestion of such an object would have filled him with terror, for Marjory's energy was appalling.
"What a pretty place it is after all," she said suddenly, and in so saying spoke the truth. Framed in by an amphitheatre of purple heather-clad hills and dark green fir-clad spurs, Gleneira House with its swelling lawns stretching away to the rocky beach of the loch, its tall silver pines and clumps of rhododendrons looked bright and cheerful despite the nameless want which hangs always round an empty house; the dead look, as if, the soul having passed from it, naught remained save for it to hasten back to the dust whence it came. There was something, however, which struck one as homelike in its low irregular outline, its bow windows set in rose, jasmine, and magnolia; above all in its clustered stacks of chimneys rising without respect to symmetry and suggesting comfortable firesides within. Cosy firesides in corners, not set back to back in pairs after the modern fashion. A conglomerate building altogether, not unlike a two-storied summer-house full of French windows. An airy feminine sort of house, unlike the usual aggressively stony Scotch mansions, yet fitting in strangely with its fairylike background of hills, and woods, and lochs.
"Very pretty, but awfully out of repair," replied Will, disconsolately. "The roof won't last much longer."
"Why doesn't he--Captain Macleod I mean--put on a new one?"
"My dear Marjory! He can't afford it. A man has to spend a lot in an expensive regiment like his, and----"
"Nine years since he was in the Glen," interrupted the girl, bent on her own thoughts. "I don't remember him a bit. What is he like, Will?"
"Awfully handsome; about the handsomest boy I ever saw, and I don't suppose he has changed much."
"I know that--anything more?"
"Spends a heap of money."
"I know--anything more?"
"Yes; you will like him."
"Why?"
"Women always do."
Marjory turned down the corners of her mouth; a trick which with her meant disapproval, disgust, dislike, disappointment,--such a variety of small d's that Will was wont to say it was quite as reprehensible as the collective big one of his sex.
"He really is an awfully nice fellow," continued Will; "but the place is going to rack and ruin. The farm houses are so poor that the south country men won't take them, and a slack style of tenant only means going from bad to worse. He ought to marry money. It is the only way out of the difficulty, since he won't skin the woods or let the place."
"Why doesn't he come and live here as his fathers did," put in the girl, quickly; "why shouldn't he be satisfied to do his duty to the people as his fathers did?"
"Because his income isn't what theirs was to begin with. The place is heavily mortgaged; everyone knows it, so there is no reason why I shouldn't say so. Then Alick Macleod ran through a heap of money somehow, and left a lot of debts which had to be paid off. I don't say that the Captain mightn't have been more economical, but it isn't all his fault. And then he won't touch the estate. That is right enough in a way, and yet Smith, the hook-and-eye man, offered twice its value for that bit of moor that marches with his forest."
"And Captain Macleod refused?"
"Declined with thanks; and wrote me privately not to bother him again with any proposals of that sort from a bloated mechanic."
Marjory's mouth turned down again. "Indeed! that was very noble of him."
"So it was in a way," replied her companion, sticking to his own ill-concealed satisfaction, "for the man is offensive to the last degree. He has invented a tartan, and has a piper to play him to bed."
"If he likes it, why not? Every man must have invented his own tartan, once upon a time, you know; the Macleods into the bargain."
Will Cameron smiled languidly. "You are a beggar to argue, Marjory. But as I said before, the laird must marry money."
"Sell himself instead of his property?"
"Why not? he is worth buying, and she needn't be ugly."
"Ugly! as if that were the only question! I believe it is all you men think of. Why, Will, you haven't told me anything about Captain Macleod except that he is good-looking; and I knew that before. I wanted to hear what he was like--he himself, I mean."
He looked at her with comical amusement. "You have come to the wrong man, my dear. I never could tell my own character, much less anybody else's. But here is old John, beaming with satisfaction at the thought of coming slaughter among the birds. Ask him!"
"Is it what the laird is like?" echoed the bent but active old man, pausing with a troop of wiry-haired terriers at his heels. "Then he is real bonnie, Miss Marjory; that's what he is."
"So I told her; but she wants to know more." John Macpherson scratched his ear dubiously, then brightened up. "Then it's a terrible good shot he will be. Aye! ever since he was a laddie no higher than my heart. Just a terrible good shot, that's what he is."
"After all," remarked Will, as the old man passed on, "that gives you as good a clue to the laird as anything else would do. Old John meant that as the highest praise. The coachman in all probability would say he was a first-rate rider. I have heard mother call him a good young man, but that was whenIhad lost five pounds at the Skye gathering, and he had won. The fact being that he had a knack of warping people's judgment; it was he, by the way, who advised me to bet on a man who couldn't putt a bit. He used always to twist me round his little finger when we were boys together--and by Jove! he had a temper. Sulky, too, and obstinate as a mule."
"Thank you," interrupted Marjory, drily; "that's quite enough. Well, I hope nobody nice will buy him."
Will Cameron flushed up quite hotly. "Now, I call that really nasty, Marjory, when it can't matter to you. And you know as well as I do that we want money awfully; you, who are always railing at the black huts, and the lack of chimneys, and----"
But Marjory, after a habit of hers when she was not quite sure of her ground, had shifted it, and passed on to the house, whence the sounds of sweeping and hammering continued. Will shook his head at her retreating figure, smiled, and called out cheerfully:--
"Tell mother not to hurry, he can't come till the evening boat."
Vain message, since you might just as well have made such an appeal to old Time himself as to Mrs. Cameron, who, despite her seventy years and portly figure, was bustling about, the very personification of order, even in her haste. You felt instinctively that every symptom of hurry was the result of a conscientious conception of the importance of her part in the day's proceedings, and that to be calm would have been considered culpable. Yet, as she trotted about, her voluminous black skirts tucked through their placket-hole, not a hair of her flat iron-grey curls was astray, not a fold of her white muslin kerchief, or frill of her starched lace cap was awry, though her aides-de-camp, a couple of sonsy Highland maids, were generally dishevelled, cross, and hot.
"Eh! Marjory, my dear," she cried, catching sight of the latter, as she entered the large low hall, set round with antlers; "ye're just in the nick to help count the napery while I see to the laird's chamber. He will be for having his old wee roomie, I misdoubt me; he was always for having his own way, too. But he will just no have it, that's all. Folks must accept their position, aye! and maintain their privileges in these days, when every bit servant lassie claims a looking-glass to prink at." The last words were delivered full in the face of a pert South country maid, who, with an armful of towels, passed by in rather an elaborate pink dress. It was merely a snap shot, however, for the old lady hurried on her appointed way, leaving Marjory and the offender, who was quite accustomed to being a target, in charge of the dark lavender-scented linen closet. Pleasant work at all times this, of handling the cool, smooth piles; the only household possessions which never seem to suffer from being laid away, which come out of their scented tomb with their smoothness emphasised by long pressure, their folds sharply accurate, their very gloss seeming to have grown in the dark. No fear of moth here; no hint of decay. Marjory, singling out a fine tablecloth and napkins for the laird's first meal at home, and choosing the whitest of sheets and pillow-cases for his bed, found herself unable to believe that long years had passed since some woman's hand had carefully put them away. It seemed impossible that it should be so, and that they should be ready to begin their work as if not a day had passed. Unchanged in a world of change! But the guest himself would be more changed than his surroundings; for he could only have been a boy--not much older than she herself--when he was last at Gleneira. The thought lingered, and after her task was over she wandered from room to room trying to put herself in his place, and guess how it would strike him. For it was pleasant sometimes, when one had an hour to spare, to spend it in that fanciful world of feeling, with which her practical life had so little to do.
His mother's sitting-room! That could not fail to be sad, even though the fair-haired original of the faded portrait in pastels over the mantelpiece had passed from life when he was still a child. Yet, ifsheby any chance could see even the smallest thing that had once belonged to that mother whose memory was a mere abstraction, who had never really existed for her at all, she would feel sad, and so he must also who had known his. Well, Captain Macleod's mother must have been dreadfully fond of fancy work, to judge by the room! And yet, not so long ago, she herself had been full of childish admiration for that terrible screen in the corner, which now only excited a wild wonder how any responsible human being could have wasted hours--nay! days, months--in producing such a fearful result. It represented a Highlander in full national costume, done in cross-stitch; the flesh was worked in small pink beads, giving a horrible pimply appearance to the face and a stony glare to the eyes; in the distance rose purple silk hills, and the foreground consisted of an over-grown velvet pile mongrel with a tail in feather stitch. In those childish days of admiration, however, it had had a fearful charm of its own, born of its inaccessibility. For, once within a certain radius, the whole picture disappeared into a senseless medley of silk, worsted, and beads. Only distance lent design, making four white beads and a black one a recognisable equivalent for the human eye. As she stood looking at it now, an amused smile curved her lips, with the remembrance that in still more childish days she had mixed up this magnificent Highlander with her conceptions of the absent laird. Probably it was quite as like him now as the crayon drawing, labelled "Paul," of a pallid boy holding a toy ship, which hung on the wall beside the pastel. On the other side was another pallid boy holding another ship, and labelled "Alick." As far as she could judge Alick might have grown up to be Paul, and Paul to be Alick. Only Paul held his ship in his right hand, and Alick in his left; but that was, of course, only because their portraits had to look at each other across the picture of their mother; because, as it were, of the exigencies of Art. She smiled to herself as she drifted on lazily to what Mrs. Cameron had considered the keystone of the laird's position. It was a dim, dignified room, with a dreadful bed. So large, so square, so evenly surrounded with Macleod tartan hangings that a sleeper immured therein might well on waking lose his airs, and which way he was lying. A bed which might have a dozen ghostly occupants, and the flesh and blood one be none the wiser of those dead and gone lairds of Gleneira. Marjory, oppressed by the very look of it, threw the windows, wide as they would set, to the air and sunshine. Even so, it was a dreary, depressing room, especially to one coming alone, unwelcomed by kindred, to his old home. With a sudden impulse of pity she drew from her belt a bunch of white heather and stag-horn moss which she had gathered that morning, and arranged it neatly in a little empty vase which stood on the wide dressing-table. A poor effort, yet it gave a certain air of expectancy to the room; more appropriate also to the occasion than more elaborate garden flowers would have been, since white heather stood for luck, and the stag-horn moss was the badge of the Macleod clan. A charming little welcome, truly, if the laird had eyes to see! Her face, reflected in the looking-glass as she stood smiling over her task, would, however, have been a more charming welcome still could the laird have seen it. And then the sound of wheels on the loose gravel outside sent her to the window in sudden alarm; but it was only the Manse machine, drawn by the old grey horse, with Father Macdonald on the front seat beside Mr. Wilson, who, as he caught sight of her, stood up with profound bows, disclosing a curly brown Brutus wig. And there was Will lounging at the horse's head, and his mother on the steps with dignified gesticulations. Beyond towards the Strath was the wide panorama of hill and moor and sea, flooded in light. The sudden feeling that it is good to be here, which comes even to untransfigured humanity at times, filled the girl's heart with content as she nodded back to her two devoted old friends who were now both standing up in the dogcart, waving their hats. How good everyone was to her! How happy they all were together in the Glen! And she had never before seemed to realise it so completely.
"Heard I ever the like?" rose in Mrs. Cameron's most imperious tones. "To pass by the house wi' an empty stomach, and it not even a fast! A fast, say I? A feast for Gleneira, and twa glasses o' port wine for Father Macdonald whether he will or no. Marjory, my lass, away with them like good boys to the parlour and cry on Kirsty for the glasses. Will, ye gawk, are there no grooms in Gleneira House that you must be standing there doing their wark. Now, Mr. Wilson, just come you down toterry-firmy, as you would say yourself. You're no golden calf, man, to be put up on a pedestal."
"My dear Madam!" cried he, gaily, clambering down with no small regard to the Graces. "If it is a question of worship, 'tis I who should be at your feet.Facilius crescit quam."
"A cader va chi troppo in alto sale," interrupted Father Macdonald, clambering down on his side. He was a small man with round childish face, possessed of that marvellously delicate yet healthy complexion which one sees in Sisters of Charity; in those, briefly, who take no care for beauty and lead a life of austerity and self-denial. A complexion which a society woman would have given her eyes to possess.
"Hoot away wi' your gifts o' tongues," retorted the old lady, in mock indignation at the perennial jest of strange quotations. "Marjory, just take them ben and stop their mouths wi' cake and wine. And make them drink luck to the auld house that is to be graced wi' its master."
"Ah, my dear Madam," said the incorrigible offender, ambling up the steps, and giving a sly glance at Marjory, "you agree with our friend Cicero, 'Nec, domo dominus sed domino domus honestanda est.'"
Mrs. Cameron treated the remark with silent contempt, and Marjory, leading the way into the morning room where Paul Macleod's portrait hung on the wall, looked back with a kind smile at the two old men who, never having owned chick or child of their own, treated her as a daughter. A sort of dream-daughter, dear yet far removed from the hard realities of every-day familiarity.
"I'm so glad you were passing to-day, father," she said eagerly; "I found a little Neapolitan song among some old music here, and I want you to see if I sing it right."
Mr. Wilson, seated in the armchair, his legs disposed elegantly, straightened his necktie, and made a remark to the effect that the Neapolitans were the most debased Christian population in Europe. And that despite the fact that they lived, as it were, under the very nose of the Pope. An attack which was the result of an ever-green jealousy in regard to the little Jesuit's superior knowledge.
"Neapolitan! Ah! my dear young lady, the patois is almost beyond me. If it had been Roman!" The smooth childlike face grew almost wistful thinking of the days so long ago spent in the still seclusion of the Scotch college, or out in the noisy colour of the Roman streets; a quaint memory for the old man who for fifty years had never seen a town, whose very occupation was passing away from his life, as, one by one, the old adherents to the old faith still lingering among the mountain fastnesses, died and were buried by him.
"Ah! you will manage," said Marjory, cheerfully. "It isn't as if you didn't know the subject, for it is sure to be all about love. Songs always are."
So, while the cake and wine were coming in, she sate down to the piano and sang, guided by the two old men, of love; for Mr. Wilson, great on philology, had his views on the mutations of vowels and consonants, and stood beside the little priest beating time to the phrases with his gold eyeglasses.
Mrs. Cameron found them so, and rallied them on their taste when there was good port-wine on the table.
"My dear Madam," retorted Mr. Wilson, positively shining with delight at his own opportunity of showing that his acquaintance was not confined to dead languages. "We have only put the 'Weib und Gesang' before the 'Wein'; and I am sure anyone who had the privilege of hearing Miss Marjory sing would do the same."
She made him a little mock curtsey, but Mrs. Cameron would none of it, and cut a huge slice of cake. "No! no! minister; from the very beginning o' things men-folks cared more for their stomachs than their hearts. If Eve, poor body, had only given Adam a better dinner he wouldna have been wantin' to eat apples betwixt whiles, and a deal o' trouble might have been saved. But a woman's different. She takes it ill if a man doesn't fall in love with her; she's aye wantin'----"
"I'm sure I don't want anything," put in Marjory, with her head in the air.
"Don't be talkin' havers, child. I tell ye a woman's aye wantin' it. Auld as I am----"
"My dear Madam," expostulated Mr. Wilson.
"Haud your whist, minister," interrupted Mrs. Cameron, tartly; "what will you be knowing o' a woman's heart? I tell you she may be auld and grey, she may hae left half the pleasures o' this world behind her, she may hae been a wife for two score years, and spent her heart's bluid in rearing weans, but what's left o' the heart will be turnin' wi' regret to the time when the auld body who sits on the tither side o' the fire--girding at his food, maybe--was courtin' her. Or, maybe, when some ither auld body that's no at the tither side of the fire was courtin'. There's no sayin'."
There was a silence: and then the old priest said under his breath: "Amor a nullo amato amor perdona."
Mr. Wilson nodded his brown Brutus wig in assent. He did not mind that sort of Italian. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the humanities could understand so much. So they were merry over the cake and wine; merry even over the parting with it in obedience to the minister's Horatian order: "Lusisti satis, editsi satis, alque bibisti, Tempus abire ibe est"--which Mrs. Cameron insisted on having explained to her word by word. It was a complete exposition, she asserted, of the whole duty of man as viewed by men. To eat, to drink, to amuse themselves, and then to run away.
That same evening, in the mirk end of the gloaming, Marjory, walking in the garden between the great borders of clove pinks which were sending out their fragrance to meet the coming night, heard thefeu de joie, arranged by old John Macpherson to greet the laird's arrival, go off like the beginning of a battle. Half an hour afterwards Will Cameron returned, calling loudly for his supper, and full of enthusiasm.
"Upon my word, Marjory, I think he is handsomer and more charming than ever."
"Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain," said the young lady, taking a leaf out of Mr. Gillespie's book.