It was true. The more so because the heat-haze lingered, turning the hills which lay between the Glen and the world beyond it, into a pale blue, formless wall, which seemed somehow more of an arbitrary division than it would have done had the contours of each successive rise been clearly visible. The fierce sun beat down on the limestone rocks, giving a russet tinge even to their mosses, and Paul Macleod's useless rod lay in its case, since the river was reduced to a mere tinkle of clear water in a moraine of boulders. So he took to haymaking instead, partly because it suited his mood to play the rôle of country proprietor--for to a certain extent he shared his sister's dramatic temperament--and partly because Marjory always brought Will Cameron's tea into the fields. It was quite idyllic to watch her from afar, making it ready on the outskirts of a nut coppice or belt of firs, and then to see her stand out into the rolling, undulating waves of new cut grass which were creeping up the hillsides before the scythes, and call to them in her clear, young voice, for, of course, the laird could not be left out in the heat when his factor was enjoying the cool. So he used to lounge about as Will did in the scented hay, and talk nonsense, with infinite grace and skill, until, with the extinction of his pipe, the latter's tardy sense of duty would take fire, and he would insist on a return to work.
On the whole, it was scarcely what Paul would have expected to amuse him, and yet, after ten years of a land where hay-fields are not, and it is unsafe to sit about for fear of snakes, it was strangely pleasant. And so delightfully innocent! This came home to him one night when, on going to his room, he saw his purse on the dressing-table, and remembered that for a whole week he had not opened it. The world had gone on as if there were no such thing in it as money. He mentioned the fact next day among the hay-cocks, declaring that if someone would only be responsible for his bills, he himself would never care to see a shilling again.
"Not I," said Will, rather dolefully; "for I'm afraid, Gleneira, these masons and carpenters will cost a lot more than we fancied. It is always the way when one touches a place. I remember when Inveresta began he told me I wasn't to exceed a thousand, and before he was half way through his list of absolute necessaries, the figures had passed fifteen hundred. And yet I don't think it can be helped."
He blew disconsolately at his pipe as if it were in fault, for he prided himself on managing the estates in his charge with strict economy, but Paul smiled indifferently.
"My owner will be able to pay, I expect, when I get one. For when the worst comes to the worst, Miss Carmichael, I can always put myself up to auction. Do you think I should fetch a fair price? Item, one Highland estate, seriously damaged by the Crofter Commission, and an ancestral tree, ditto, by Darwinism. N.B.--Property encumbered by several mortgages and one extravagant proprietor." He lay back against a hay-cock with his hands behind his head, looking the personification of lazy content as he watched her face shift and change. "You don't seem to approve of my plan," he went on, in the same light tones, "but the idea has infinite charm for me; it would save so much trouble, and do so little harm. People sell themselves to the devil, we are told, and that may be reprehensible--at any rate, it would be uncomfortable. But what inconvenience or immorality can there be in making yourself over, soul and body, to some virtuous Christian man or woman who, in all probability, is far more capable of running the coach respectably than you are?"
"The same immorality as there is in any other form of suicide, I suppose," she replied coldly; but he was not to be put off.
"And what immorality is there in suicide, Miss Carmichael? I hold that my life is my own, unless I make over the responsibility of it to someone else, which you say is wrong. Therefore, I have a perfect right to do what I please with it."
"Once you have overcome the initial difficulty of discovering what you do please," she retorted sharply. And he smiled.
"You use a detective camera apparently, but I admit it. I am only certain of one thing, it pleases me to please myself. It pleases me now to forget that there is such a thing as money, and to go to bed at ten o'clock."
"Which shows that you are virtuously inclined, and that, therefore----"
"I refuse to be whitewashed by your charity," he interrupted. "I am of the earth, earthy; though sometimes I can lie on my back in the hay and see heaven opening----" His voice, with a sudden cadence in it, ceased as he sprang lightly to his feet.
"Come along, Cameron--you are intolerably long over that pipe--my energy, Miss Carmichael, does not arise from Goodness, but from Greed. If the hay is not in tonight, it may rain; if it rains, the hay will be spoilt. If it is spoilt I shall have to buy more, and if I buy more I shall not have that shilling to spend on myself. It comes to that in the end, even in Arcadia."
There were similar endings to many conversations in which Marjory tilted bravely at various objects, which, in her heart of hearts, she feared might be windmills. For she was never quite sure if he was in earnest or not, and even when he had palpably played the fool with her pet theories, or scouted a serious thought, a word, even a look, would come to redeem the past, and give a curious zest to the future. Yet in a way it distressed her also by confusing her clear-cut, unswerving outlook on life. A man even professing such atrocious sentiments ought to be unendurable, and this man was not. Far from it. And what was almost more disconcerting, he evidently understood her better than honest Will did; while, as for the Reverend James! the very thought made her laugh. Yet, on the whole, she welcomed a reasonable cause which, despite the holiday she had imposed on herself in obedience to Cousin Tom's wishes, came to make an absence from the hay-fields less marked, and a reversion to the young clergyman's company quite natural. This being nothing more or less than a visit from the Bishop, which, coming as it did in this holiday time, gave to the person who was ostensibly responsible for the pupils' duties towards their neighbours fearful anticipations of failure. For James Gillespie was one of those persons who cannot teach; well meaning, fairly well-educated, people who know the information they wish to impart and cannot impart it, people who, in a repetition, invariably prompt the wrong word, and send the hesitating memory hopelessly astray. And this was a question of repetition, since the Bishop never interfered with the secular teaching, which he left, with a Levite shake of the head, to the Government inspector. So Marjory, relieved she scarcely knew why, spent these afternoons in hammering the necessary precision into the children's heads while the Reverend James sate watching her rapturously and feeling that the whole parish, including himself, would have no excuse for not knowing its duty towards its neighbour if she were the clergyman's wife.
And on the third day someone else seemed bitten with a desire to learn, for Captain Macleod strolled in lazily and sate down on the furthest bench, saying he had come to fetch the letters, and with her permission would await their arrival in the cool. Why his presence should have immediately aroused her to a resentful consciousness of the adoring expression on the face beside her, she did not understand, but the certainty and the uncertainty of it combined made her turn to her companion with an audible asperity of tone:
"I really think, Mr. Gillespie, that you might try and get the little ones perfect in their hymn. You must remember that the last time the Bishop inspected he told the children that the youngest Christian should know one hymn, and the infants are not even perfect in the 'Happy Land.'"
To hear being to obey, Mr. Gillespie retired towards the post-office portion of the room where, with a semicircle of tiny bare-legged lassies and laddies before him, he sate beside Paul Macleod and began his task. It was rather a Herculean one, owing to the fact that his pupils having no English, as the phrase runs, the simple stanzas were to them mere gibberish.
"It is three months they will be learnin' it, whatever," said Mr. McColl, cheerfully, when the last of the semicircle had failed hopelessly.
"It is impossible, quite impossible," retorted Mr. Gillespie, in a white heat of anxiety. "Some of them must have picked up something in that case----"
"'Deed, no, sir. Naethin's impossible with bairnies. And wee Paulie there has it fine, for he is at me to learn it on him many a time, because Miss Marjory was saying he would be a fool if he didn't. Speak up, Paulie," he added, in the Gaelic, "you have it fine."
Wee Paulie hung his close-cropped fair head with its odd little fringe left over the forehead, so that nothing was to be seen but a rising flush, and murmured some half-inaudible words, whereat the biggest boy in Marjory's class said triumphantly:
"He is saying that he will no be saying it to him, but to her."
"Hush! Donald," came the quick, clear, dictatorial young voice; "that is not the way to speak. Stand down two places. Paul, come here."
The big Paul, seated on the back bench, looked up and smiled, feeling it would be rather pleasant than otherwise to obey; and little Paul pattered shamefacedly across to the girl's side, yet with a confident air which raised the sleek head a little, and showed a pair of very long lashes on the flushed cheeks. As he edged close Marjory passed her arm round him, and with the other hand raised his chin square and straight.
"Now, Paul, if you please," she said, in the Gaelic; "clasp your hands, and say it right out--to the whole school, remember. You know it quite well, and you should never, never pretend that you don't know when you do. It is mean."
Big Paul, thinking that even reproof sounded pleasant in that voice, and, at any rate, must be bearable in that position, smiled again, and continued smiling unavoidably, as little Paul reeled off the whole hymn from beginning to end in confused, unintelligible fluency, broken only by hurried gasps for breath.
"A pretty little fellow," said Captain Macleod, in an undertone to his neighbour. "Who is he?"
"Old Peggy Duncan's grandson--Jeanie Duncan's child--you must remember her."
The words seemed to jar the very foundations of happy, idle, careless content, and Paul, even in his surprise, felt aggrieved.
"Of course I remember her; but they told me she was dead. Who did she marry?"
The Reverend James Gillespie put on his most professional manner. "I'm afraid it is a very sad story, but no one really knows the facts of the case. She left home, as you may have heard----"
"Yes! I have heard," put in Paul, suddenly, resentfully. "And I--I can understand the rest. It's a common enough story, in all conscience."
"Too true, too true," began his companion, but the laird had risen, and, with a remark that he would wait outside for the tardy letters, left the schoolhouse. Apparently he tired even of that, for when Marjory, after lingering longer than was necessary over the arrangements for the morrow's inspection with Mr. Gillespie, came out with a half-annoyed expectation of finding the tall figure still lounging under the horse-chestnut tree, it had gone, rather to her surprise.
Still, it would ensure her the solitary walk home which she loved; since really it was too much to expect her to devote a whole afternoon to the Reverend James who, curtly dismissed to a neglected parishioner up the Glen, watched her pass down the loch with wistful yet still admiring eyes until she disappeared behind a knoll of ash trees, hiding the bridge which carried the road to the other side of the river, and so down the seashore to Gleneira House and Lodge. A road which, beautiful at all times, was never so beautiful as in the sunsetting. There was one point, however, where its beauty seemed to culminate, where, after climbing a rocky knoll cushioned with bosses of bell-heather and the close oak scrub which springs from the roots of past cuttings, it dipped down to the very edge of the water. Here, on spring tides, the waves crept up to smooth away the wheel marks, and leave a scalloped fringe of seaweed on the turf beyond. And hence you could see straight through the cleft of the Narrowest, where the hills embosoming the upper portion of the loch sloped down into the gentler contours of the lower, right away to the Linnhe Loch, and so beyond the purple bluff of Mull to the wide Atlantic. On that evening the sun was setting into it in a golden glory, guiltless of a cloud. And Marjory, cresting the knoll, thought instantly that here, indeed, was a chance of the Green Ray. For ever since she had read Jules Verne's book the idea of this, the last legacy of a dying day, had remained with her fancifully. Many and many a time, half in jest, half in earnest, she had watched for it, wondering if she would feel different after she had seen it. If, in fairy-tale fashion, the world would seem the better for it. Even if the legend was no legend, and the phenomenon simply a natural one, due to refraction, there must be something exhilarating in seeing that which other people had not seen; in seeing the world transfigured, even for a second, for you, and you only. Unless, indeed, others were watching with you. And, then, what a strange tie that would be! To have seen something together that the rest of the world had not seen; something at which it would laugh, but which you knew to be true. The quaintness of the idea attracted her as she walked over the crisp shingle to sit on a rock close to the incoming tide. Out yonder on the far sea horizon it was a blaze of light, but closer in the loch showed like a golden network of ripples with ever-widening meshes enclosing the purple water till it ended, at her very feet, in a faint foam-edge. There was no sound save the blab-blabbing of the tiny wavelets on the rocks as they whispered to each other of the havoc they had done far out at sea, or met every now and again with a little tinkle of laughter to drown a stone.
To Marjory, looking and listening so intently that consciousness seemed to leave eyes and ears, came a sudden dread, not for herself, but for others different from what she was.
"Drowned--dead, drowned--drowned and cold--dead, dead, drowned!" Those whispering voices seemed to repeat it over and over again, as for the first time in her life she realised that others might not steer straight for the sun across the ocean of life, as she did, unswervingly. Of course, in a scholastic, unreal way she knew well that there were swift currents to betray, big loadstone rocks to make the compass waver, but till she had met Paul Macleod the possibility of anyone deliberately and wilfully weighting his log and depolarising his compass had not occurred to her. It is so, often, with those who, as she was, are almost overburdened with that mysterious outcome of past sacrifices, a sense of duty. But Paul, she recognised clearly, might steer straight for the rocks, though his knowledge of seamanship was equal to her own. On that point she would take no denial. It was her one solace against her own interest in him. But for it what scorn would be too great for the weakness of her tolerance for a handsome face, a soft voice, and the most engaging of manners. No! The charm--for there was undoubtedly a charm--lay elsewhere; in his considerateness, his quick sympathy. This did not come, as he averred, from a mere selfish desire to be liked, a mere selfish consideration for his own comfort. It might suit him to say so, to declare his disbelief in anything higher, to scoff, for instance, at the Green Ray. The girl's thoughts rebounded swiftly to their starting-point, and brought back sight to her dream-blinded eyes.
Too late! Too late! The last outermost edge of the sun had dipped beneath the sea; the fateful moment was past, and with the little chill shudder of a breeze which had crept like a sigh over the water at the Death of Day, the little wavelets at her feet were whispering--
"Drowned--dead--drowned! Who cares? Drowned! drowned! drowned!"
She rose suddenly and stretched her hands out to the fast fading glow, as if in entreaty. But only for a second; the next the voice of someone coming up the opposite side of the knoll carolling a Gaelic song made her turn quickly to see Paul Macleod outlined against the blue of the hills as he paused on the summit to take breath and look up into the child's face above him with a smile; for little Paul was perched on his shoulder.
The western glow, already leaving the earth, fell full on those two faces, and on the firm delicate hands, holding the child secure. It was like a St. Christopher, thought Marjory, with a pulse, almost of pain, at her heart. For it left her bereft of something; of something that had gone out irrevocably to be Paul's henceforth, even though the first glimpse of her standing below made him loosen his clasp almost roughly.
"Is that you, Miss Carmichael?" he called, walking on to meet her; "I'm doing good Samaritan against the grain; but I found the little imp on the road. He had fallen from a rowan tree and sprained his ankle."
She found it easier for some reason to speak to the child in reproof. "I've told you so often not to climb so recklessly," she said in Gaelic.
"He was getting berries for you; there was a bunch half ripe at the very top; at least so he says," replied Captain Macleod in the same language, then at her look of surprise added a trifle bitterly--"you see I remember--we lairds don't often speak it--more's the pity--but I have an uncomfortable memory for the days of my youth."
"It was very good of you," she began, when he cut her short.
"It was least trouble to carry him. He was whimpering like a little cur at the river pool, so I elected to bring him along instead of going back half a mile to ask someone else to do it for me. His grandmother's cottage is just below the point there, isn't it? He can walk as far as that." As he spoke he swung the child to the ground lightly. "And you needn't look so fierce, Miss Carmichael; it won't hurt him."
She took no notice of his remark, except to ask the child if he could manage.
"If you speak in that tone of voice he will say 'no,' of course; but I assure you it is all right. I've tied it up tight, and it wasn't very bad to begin with."
It had indeed been very neatly bandaged with a handkerchief torn into strips, and the sight softened her rising indignation. "Possibly, but it will be none the worse for being put in hot water. Come, Paulie, lean on me, and if it's bad I'll carry you----"
Before she could finish, the child was back on his namesake's shoulder.
"If you will show me the way down, I'll save you the trouble."
The accent he laid deliberately on the pronoun took half the virtue from his action, and yet the certainty that he had purposely put it there showed her that he was alive to something else, and made her lead the way silently to the cottage; and, even when there, the remembrance of the St. Christopher picture joined to the unconscious Highland hospitality, which forbids an unsought parting on the threshold, made her ask if he would not come in and let old Peggy thank him for his kindness.
"I doubt if she would," he replied curtly; "anyhow I won't risk it."
Perhaps he exercised a wise discretion. Marjory herself was inclined to think so, in view of the old woman's general attitude towards the world.
"Pickin' rowan berries, was he," she echoed wrathfully, turning as she so often did when angry to the broader Scotch of her youth; "they're the deil's ain beads for young folk--aye! I mind it was so in the beginning!" Her restless claw-like fingers busied themselves over the coverlid, and her restless eyes followed Marjory, who was attending to the sprained foot, which to say sooth was not a very serious matter. "And Mr. Paul hefted the wean, and wouldna' come in bye to say a word to the auld wife. That was real kind, or maybe it wasn't; but there! he never brocht luck to my hoose, an' he wouldn't raise a finger to do't. It's the way o' the warld, the way o' the warld."
"That is not fair, Peggy," retorted the girl, roused as she always was by injustice. "The laird was speaking of you only the other day. He is much annoyed at your having been allowed to go on the roll, and said----"
The old pauper's hands stopped their uncanny fingerings, and every line of the old face hardened.
"If I choose to be on the pairish, I'll be on the pairish. It's better than Mr. Paul's charity, an' ye may just tell him sae frae old Peggy Duncan. I may be wrang, I may be richt, an' Him above only kens hoo it is, but I was no born on his land, and I'm no his poor."
"All the kinder of him to offer help," persisted Marjory. "And you have no right, just because you are in an evil temper, to speak as if he had done you some wrong."
"Wha says he did?--not I! D'ye think I soud be lyin' here wi' him oot ben if he had. Na! Na! Half deid as they are, my auld fingers wad be at his bonnie fause face." The very vigour of her own voice seemed to choke her, and she fell into a fit of coughing, then lay back exhausted into a more Christian frame of mind. "God guid us, Miss Marjory," she gasped, "but I'm jest an awfu' limmer whiles. If I was to be nippit awa' this nicht I ken fine whaur I'd wauken."
"And quite right, too," replied her visitor, severely, recognising the half-apologetic tenor of the last remark, and, seizing the opportunity for a bit of her mind before old Peggy, with some sidelong sally, should escape deftly from the difficulty, after her wont.
"Aye, aye! The tongue is an unruly member, and yet I bridle it whiles for fear o' findin' myself in the same mansion wi' the pairish officer. Eh! yon's an awfu' man, Miss Marjory, for sweerin', and I just couldna' thole him. So, if ye like, ye may give old Peggy Duncan's thanks to the laird, when you see him, for bringing the laddie hame. Maybe it was kind o' him."
"It was kind of him, very kind," said the girl, stoutly, feeling dimly pleased to hear herself say so, and know that there could be no mistake about that. And yet she felt vexed when she found him waiting for her on the road when she came out into the darkening dusk.
"I thought it was the proper thing to do," he replied, to her little stiff expression of regret that he should have troubled himself so far.
"What was the proper thing?" she asked captiously. "I am quite accustomed to walking home in the dark."
"Proper to act up to your opinion of me, and be self-sacrificing, perhaps." He paused, then said, suddenly, "Don't let us quarrel, Miss Carmichael; it is such a lovely evening."
True a thousand-fold! True beyond measure! The light had left everything, save the sky and the sea as they walked on side by side silently.
"How's the patient?" he said, at last, reverting somewhat to the old, airy, half-bantering tone.
"Well; thanks to you. If he had walked home he might have been laid up for days."
"I did as little as I could, I assure you."
"On the contrary, you did more than was necessary. Paul told me how you comforted him, and sang songs all the way to cheer him up."
She would not allow him this denial of his own virtues, or accept his estimate of himself.
"That was to cheer myself up, and forget my dislike to carrying a dirty little boy, I expect. The study of one's own motives, Miss Carmichael----"
He got no further, for she turned to him with a quick gesture of pained denial. "Don't--please don't. Why should you slander yourself?"
Something in her tone roused a response in him for a moment, but the next he had smothered it in a sort of reckless desire to shock this girl with the intelligent, trustful eyes--to force her from her belief in him.
"Slander," he echoed; "there is no slander, I assure you. What do you know about my life? Would it help you to understand my complicated state of mind about that boy, for instance, if I told you that I was once madly in love with his mother, and that I still think her the most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
He had not intended this confidence; yet now he had given it, he did not regret the impulse, nor did he wonder at it, since the thought of that past idyll had been interfering so much with the present one during the afternoon, that he felt inclined to get rid of both once and for all.
"I have always heard she was very beautiful," replied Marjory, slowly; "but, of course, I did not know----"
He burst into a hard laugh. "That I fell in love with her! Really, Miss Carmichael, you are most disconcertingly cool!"
"I was going to say," she put in, unmoved, "that I did not know she was the sort of person----"
"I would fall in love with? Indeed! Perhaps, as you appear to have formed some sort of estimate as to the qualities likely to attract me, you might give me a hint or two. It might help me in the selection of a wife." He hardly knew what he was saying, for his temper had got the better of him; indeed, he did not care for the moment what he said, save that it should be something that would put an end to this confidence of hers. But he had reckoned without her absolute unconsciousness; what is more, without her fearlessness and high spirit.
"I said nothing about a wife," she replied quietly. "Why should I? You were talking of love, and I knew that you had made up your mind to marry for money."
"So I have; what then?"
"Nothing, except this--that since you can set love aside so easily, I fail to see what effect the memory of a past one could have on your present life--that is all."
He looked at her in the growing darkness, wishing that he could see her face more clearly; wishing still more keenly that he could see straight into her mind and satisfy himself that this calm indifference was simply cold-bloodedness. But what if it was something more? If here, at last, he had found that of which most men dream at times; the refuge from themselves. And when he spoke again his voice had changed its tone, though the bitterness remained in the words.
"You make no allowance, then, for the power of a sentiment, especially when it is morbid and unhealthy. And yet such things mean more to most of us than right or wrong; because they are more human."
There was a pause; then she turned to him with a smile, which he felt, more than saw.
"I am afraid I don't understand what you mean."
"Perhaps it is as well you do not," he replied; and changed the subject.
But from that day their mutual attitude towards each other altered, perhaps unconsciously. To tell the truth, the remembrance of the St. Christopher rose up between her and Paul in his less admirable impersonations. All the more so, perhaps, because of his strange, impulsive confidence regarding his love for the boy's mother. He must have been quite a boy himself at the time, she thought; no older than she was now, and boys were so much younger than girls for their age. She felt vaguely sorry for that young Paul and his fruitless love; for Marjory, like most girls who have been much in contact with the poor, accepted the facts of life calmly, looking at them straight in the face, and calling them by their names fairly, ere she passed them by. And so no doubt of that past to which Paul had alluded so frankly ever crossed her mind. She felt, almost unconsciously, that he would not have spoken about it to her had there been any cause for such suspicion. So the only effect of his attempt to shock her was to bring into stronger relief her confidence in his gentlemanly instincts. And Paul, seeing this, metaphorically took off his shoes before the holy ground which she prepared for him, even while he fretted against the necessity imposed upon him by that better part of his nature, which, in environments like these, would have its say. And then, even as he discussed the matter with himself cynically, telling himself at one and the same time that she was not human enough to see, and that it would be cowardly to open her eyes, there would come with a rush a fierce resentment at all reason. This was holiday time, and it would soon be over for him. A week or two more and Gleneira would be full of London ways and London talk; it would be time enough then to remember the world, the flesh, and the devil.
There was some excuse for his refusal to face a struggle, for in the sunshiny days which followed, Nature herself held high holiday, and the most prosaic might well have found it impossible to avoid falling in with her gracious mood. The heather-flush was beginning to creep over the curves of moor, the rowan berries ripened under the sun's kiss, the juicyguiennecherries purpled the children's mouths, and the oat fields hid their poverty in a cloak of golden marigold. Down in the shady nooks the stately foxgloves still lingered, while on the sunniest spots the bracken was gathering the sun-gold into its delicate tracery against the coming gloom of winter. Such times come rarely; times when it is possible to forget the world of toil and trouble, of sin, sorrow, and shame, which lies beyond the circle of the everlasting hills; times when one is content to let life slip past, without counting its pulse-beat; times when one seems to enter in spirit with that divine rest, because the whole world seems good in our eyes.
Paul, dulled as he was by world-tarnish, felt the charm; Marjory, fresh from her sober youth, yielded to it gladly. Will Cameron, with the hay safe housed and harvest secure in the future, said the weather was too good for farming, and gave himself a holiday, and even Mr. Gillespie, free from inspection anxieties, and rejoicing in the Bishop's praise, fell back for a while on college sermons, and studied future ones in stones and running brooks. Only Mrs. Cameron, despising the heat, bustled from kitchen to store-room, from store-room to dairy, indignant over the irregular meals, and the still more irregular milk. It was enough, she said, to turn that of human kindness sour to have charge of five Ayrshires and two Jerseys in such weather, with an English cook coming, or a Frenchman maybe--the laird was equal to that iniquity--who would use crocks on crocks of powdered butter. She knew them! graceless, godless creatures, and Will, instead of wandering like a tinkler about the place, should be at the markets buying pigs, to eat up the sinful waste of good victuals which would begin ere long at the Big House. It was very well of William to smile, and for the laird to say he didn't mind; but what would Lady George say to the cook? And how did William expect to supply the Big House as it should be supplied, when every crofter body was asking one and eightpence a pound for butter she wouldn't look at? And it all trysted, every pound of it, to the English folk over at the Forest, who were coming down like a flight of locusts, devouring the land with pipers and bad whiskey, and a set of idle, pasty-faced, meat-eating English maids, ruining the country side with bad examples! There would have to be a judgment, nothing less, when Sheenach--barefooted Sheenach from the blackest hut on the property--Marjory would mind it, seeing that she held it to be a disgrace to a Christian landholder--set her up for new-fangled notions indeed!--had actually spoken to her, Mrs. Cameron, about beer-money! The kitchen girl over at the Forest, forsooth, got it, and three shillings a week for washings. Heard one ever the like! a barefoot lass that had not spent three shillings on washings since she was born, and would have to look to it for white robes in the future. And Mistress Mackenzie at the ferry house saying calmly that her prices would be doubled from the 10th August.
"It is too true, mother," Will would say consolingly. "I'd like to see the Commission have its way, and destroy the Forests altogether, if only to teach the people what it would mean. But there! parcel post is only twopence a pound, and we can get butter from Devonshire. They pay high rents there, you know, so they can afford to sell produce cheaper." But even this paradox would not soothe the old lady's ire, and the three idlers would escape from the butter-problem into the wilderness of beauty beyond the fat pastures which fed the dairy; in so doing, no doubt, following the example of the offending English folk, who do not care to trouble their holiday with thoughts of the dishonesty and greed they foster and encourage.
Many a tramp had these three over hill and dale. Sometimes climbing the boulder-strewn heights whence sea and land showed like a map; more often lingering by the river lazily, as it made its way through the grassy uplands in a series of foamy leaps and oily pauses. For here the sea-trout were to be beguiled by patience; if not by that, then by the red-tailed fly which Will used with the consummate skill of the real pot-fisher. Paul, on the other hand, beset by lingering prejudice, would lounge on the bank intermittently, offering the rod to Marjory in order to bring him luck; while she, engaged in collecting a perfect herbarium, would deprecate her own past skill in the Long Pool.
"And the admirable underhand cast was a chance also?" he retorted drily. "Really, Miss Carmichael, my modesty is catching."
Marjory laughed. "Oh, no! I learnt that from Will. I never could make out whither he went on Sundays, till one day I came upon him in that little strip of pasture in the middle of the larch plantation, flicking at dandelions with his ten-foot rod. Then he confessed that it was his usual occupation of a Sabbath afternoon, because it was so deadly dull with nothing to do at home. So after that I flicked, too. We used to do it against each other for hours, didn't we, Will?"
"Ten for a dandie, twenty for a daisy, fifty for a bumble-bee," murmured Will from under his tilted hat, as he lay on the grass.
"An instance of the deceit which the irrational worship of the Sabbath is apt to produce," remarked the Reverend James Gillespie, whose conscience invariably assailed him when he had not made a professional remark for some time.
"It is so refreshing to hear you accuse Miss Carmichael," said Paul, gravely. "Deceit is a mortal sin, isn't it, Mr. Gillespie?"
The Reverend James hesitated. He looked sorely out of place amid the wilderness in his black garments, with Paul in his loose Indian suits, and Will guiltless of coat and waistcoat.
"Deceit, cheating--whoever doth wickedly, etc.--generally comes under common theft--non-bailable," murmured the tilted hat softly; for Will, in his youth, had studied law.
"I congratulate you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, still gravely, "on having attained the position of a real criminal. I have a sneaking admiration for them."
"Why?"
"Because they have done--what I have been afraid to do!"
So the day would slip by in idle talk and idler work, until the lengthening shadows warned them they were far from home, and Will would grow restless over the prospect of dinnerversusthe tea, with which he had more than once been put off on occasions of gross irregularity. While Paul would boast of his freedom from all control, or offer to stand in the breach by begging a meal at the Lodge; since even Mrs. Cameron's tongue softened when it spoke to the laird, and a vein of humour ran through her blame.
"It's clean reediklous, Gleneira," she would say. "Here it is gone ten, and supper was bidden at eight. An' if you expec' me, a Christian woman, to tell Kursty thatmyson is even as them who mocked Elijah, or that it was I that made a mistake, you're just wrong. An' a' for a wheen trouties, that's no good for kipper or for anything but to cocker yourselves up wi' at breakfast, instead of being contented with good porridge, as your fathers were. But there! we ken find that Esau sold his birthright for a mess o' pottage."
"And I don't wonder at it," Paul would reply gravely; "if he was half so hungry as I am. How much was it, Cameron, that the hook-and-eye man offered me for Gleneira? A man must eat, you know."
Whereupon the old lady would remark that, as she at least knew her duty, his father's son should never lack bread in her house, and so bustle away good-humouredly to hurry on supper. The unpunctuality was not, however, always their fault; and on one occasion followed on an incident which had a curious effect in still further softening Marjory's judgment on handsome, idle, kindly Paul, and introducing that vein of pity, which, in women of her type, seems an almost necessary ingredient of affection. It may be only a triviality, the half-humorous despair of a buttonless shirt, the possibility of dirty tablecloths, or it may go further into uncared-for sickness and loneliness, but the thought of personal discomfort to a man whom she likes is always grievous to women who have not been educated out of their housewifely instincts.
It came about in this wise. There was a certain Loch of the Fairies which, despite its great beauty, Marjory had seldom seen, for this reason. It lay hidden in the highest corries of the deer forest, accessible only by the burn watering the sheltered glen which, from time immemorial, had been the sanctuary; and not even for Marjory would old John Macpherson disturb his deer, or allow them to be disturbed. But Paul thought differently when he found that the girl's face brightened at the idea of an excursion thither; for, to him, the nearest pleasure was invariably the best.
"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," he said, with a laugh. "We will start early and make a day of it. And I'll ask Gillespie to come. He is always telling cock-and-bull stories about the big fish there, so we will set him to catch one. I never did."
And Will Cameron agreed also, saying he would take the opportunity to meet the forest keeper on the march, and settle the position of a new fence to keep the hinds from straying. Only old John shook his head, with mutterings regarding future sport and old traditions.
"As ifthatwere not worth all the sport in the world," said Paul, almost exultantly, as, climbing the last bracken-set knoll, and leaving the last Scotch fir hanging over a wild leap of the burn, they filed past a sheer bluff, and saw in front of them a long, narrow, almost level glen, through which the stream slid in alternate reaches and foaming falls. On either side almost inaccessible cliffs; in front of them, cutting the blue sky clearly, a serrated wall of rock closing up the valley. Great sharp-edged fragments from the heights above lay strewn among the sweeping stretches of heather, whence a brood of grouse rose, blundering to the anxious cackle of the hen.
"There they are," said Will, from force of habit in a whisper, "up on the higher pasture. I thought they would be; so we shan't disturb them a bit if we keep to the burn."
Marjory, shading her eyes from the sun, stood looking on one of the prettiest sights in the world; a herd of red deer dotted over a hill slope, or seen outlined against the horizon line. Paul, from sheer habit also, had slipped to the ground, and had his glass on them. "Splendid royal to the left, Cameron--wonder if we shall get him this year--and, by George, there's the old crooked horn! I remember, Miss Carmichael, trying to put a bullet into him--well, we won't say how many years ago."
"What a slaughterhouse a man's memory must be," remarked Marjory, with her head in the air.
"Not in this case, at any rate," retorted Paul. "Sometimes I am merciful--or miss; which answers the purpose quite as well." As he spoke the memory of Jeanie Duncan rose quite causelessly to his mind, and he started to his feet impatiently; for somehow little Paul's existence had taken the bloom off his self-complacency in regard to that episode.
"Now for the Pixie's loch," he cried gaily. "The ladies have it all their own way there in destruction, if tales be true. I wonder which of us three unfortunate males she will choose as her victim to-day?"
Marjory, looking down as they crested the last boulder-strewn rise on the almost black and oily sheet of water in the crater-like cup of the corrie, felt that she did not wonder at the legends which had gathered round the spot. The very perfection of its loneliness, its beauty, marked it as a thing apart from the more familiar charm of the world around it. There seemed scarce foothold for a goat on those pillared cliffs which sank sheer into the dark water, and the streak or two of snow lingering still in a northern recess marked, she felt sure, some deep crevasse hidden from sight by the innocent-looking mantle of white. Nor could one judge of the depth of the lake by the jagged points of rocks which rose here and there from the surface of the water, for, as she stood, she leant against a fragment of some earlier world, which looked as if it must have fallen from the sky, since the vacant place left by such a huge avalanche must have remained visible for ever in the rocks above. So those out yonder might go down and down, forming vast caves where the Pixie might hold her court of drowned, dead men. She turned to look at Paul suddenly, apprehensively; perhaps because, even in her innocence, she recognised instinctively that there, with all its gifts, with all its charm, lay the nature to which the syren's song is irresistible. But he, stopping on the brink to dip his hand into the water, was looking back at her with a laugh.
"By Jove!" he said, "isn't it cold? Enough to give anyone the shivers."
As he spoke, far out on the glassy glint of water came a speck of stronger light, widening to a circle, widening, widening ever, in softening ripples.
"There! I told you so!" cried the Reverend James, excitedly; "a five-pounder at least!" After which, naturally, there was no time for sentiment, no time for anything but an unconfessed race as to which of the three should have his fly on the water first. Marjory, left to her own devices, wandered as far as she could round the level edge, which to the south lay between the lake and the cliff, until she came to the moss-clad moraine, through which the water found its way to new life in the first long leap of the burn below; for the loch itself was fed by unseen springs. She could hear the stream beneath her feet tinkling musically, and gurgling softly, as if laughing at something it had left behind, or something it was going to meet; and the sound oppressed her vaguely. Here, in an angle of sand, stood a half-ruined boat-house, and within it a boat painted gaily, yet with an air of disuse about it which made Marjory go inside and look at it more closely. It seemed sound enough, and yet, as she wandered on, she hoped that the fishers might not be tempted to use it out on those unknown depths. Then, coming on a great bank of dewberries, she sank down into the yielding heather and gave herself up to enjoyment, finally stretching herself at long length on the springy softness, and watching the lake through her half-closed eyelids. Suddenly, with a smile, she began to sing, and then as suddenly ceased. Cliffs could give back an echo, certainly, but not so clear an one as the tenor tone which followed close on that first phrase of the "Lorelei." An instant after Paul's figure showed round a rock below, busily engaged with a swishing trout rod.