"Die schönste Mädchen sitzet Dort oben wunderbar."
"Die schönste Mädchen sitzet Dort oben wunderbar."
An echo, indeed! and Marjory sat up among the dewberries, feeling indignant.
"Captain Macleod," she called aggressively, "have you caught anything?"
He turned, as if he had been unaware of her presence, and raised his cap. "It is not a question of my catching anything, Miss Carmichael, but of my being caught. There is a syren about somewhere; I heard her just now; did you?"
"I generally hear myself when I am singing," she replied coldly. "Where is Will?"
"Will," replied Paul, cheerfully, "is swearing round the corner. He has just had a splendid rise, and his hook drew. No further description necessary."
She laughed, and Captain Macleod went on in the easy familiar tone which had taken the sting out of so many other remarks which, to Marjory's unsophisticated ears, had savoured of impertinence.
"If we neither of us get another this round, we are going to start over the hills for the fence. I want to see it myself. You will find a splendid place for tea about a quarter of a mile down below the fall. Heaps of sticks--bits of the primeval forest washed out of the moss--so you will manage nicely; besides Gillespie will be here."
It was just such a careless, brotherly speech as Will might have made, and Marjory appreciated it. Besides the thought of an hour or two, absolutely to herself, in those solitudes had an indescribable charm; indescribable because, to those who know it not of themselves, words are useless, and those who do need them not. For her, with a stainless past and a hopeful future, it was bliss unalloyed to wander down the burn-side, resting here and there, watching the ring-ouzel skim from shelter, or an oak-eggar moth settle lazily on a moss-cushion. And yet, as she sate perched on a rock far down the valley above a deeper pool than usual, she amused herself by singing the "Lorelei" from beginning to end, secure from unwelcome echoes. So back on her traces to the baskets which had been hidden in the fern, and the preparations for tea. The relics of the primeval forest burnt bravely aided by some juniper branches, the kettle was filled, boiled, and set securely on a stony hob; and then, free from cares, Marjory chose out a springy nest among the short heather and curled herself round lazily to watch the sky line where before long two figures should come striding into sight, dark against the growing gold of the westering sun. Blissful indeed; extremely comfortable also.
When she woke Paul Macleod was calling her by name, and she started up in a hurry. "I came on as fast as I could lest you should be wearying," he said, and his face showed he spoke the truth. "It was further than we thought for. Where's Gillespie? He can't be fishing still, surely. I didn't see him on the shore as I came past."
Marjory, confused as she was by sudden awakening, remembered one thing, and one thing only--the boat--the old rotten-looking boat.
"You didn't see him--and he hasn't been here! Oh! Captain Macleod, I do hope nothing has happened--the boat----"
"Nonsense!" replied Paul, decisively, "nothing can have happened. Still, it's late--you have been asleep some time, I expect. Perhaps he has missed you, and gone home."
"He could not miss the fire," she said quickly, "and he cannot swim. If he has taken the boat, and if----"
"There is no use imagining evil," put in Paul, drily; "as you are anxious I will go----"
"I will come with you," she said eagerly; "if I put some more wood on the fire----"
"It will be ready for us when we return," remarked Paul, cheerfully, "and Gillespie will want his tea. I expect he is in to the big trout or----" he paused before her anxious face and told her again that nothing could have happened. She surely did not believe in pixies? Still, he grew graver when a look at the boat-house proved it to be empty, and his first shout brought no answer, except a confused, resounding echo.
"If he had gone beyond that bluff into the inaccessible part, which he is likely to have done with the boat--he might not hear. Come on--and don't imagine the worst. If, when we can see all the water----"
He paused, and said no more, as, with her following fast at his heels, he hurried up the brae which hid the further reach of the lake. So, being a step or two ahead, and several inches taller than she was, a view halloo, followed by a laugh, was her first intimation that the search had come to an end. The next instant she had joined the laugh, for a more ridiculous sight than the Reverend James Gillespie presented as he stood up, in full clerical costume, on an uneven rock some two feet square, in the very middle of the loch, could scarcely be imagined. The cause, however, was clear in the half-sunk, water-logged boat, jammed on a jagged rock, which was just visible above the water close by.
"Have you been there long?" called Paul, recovering himself.
"All the afternoon," came back in hoarse and distinctly cross tones. "I shouted till I could shout no more. I thought you had all gone home!"
"Gone to sleep," remarked Paul, aside, as he sate down and began deliberately to unlace his boots. "Now, Miss Carmichael, if you will look after the tea, I'll rescue the shipwrecked mariner, and bring him to be comforted."
Marjory, eyeing the stretch of black water nervously, suggested he had better wait for Will to turn up; but Paul laughed. "I'm relieved to find you have some anxiety left for me--yet it is really absurd. I could swim ten times the distance ten times over; besides, I'll bring him back with the oars if that will satisfy you?"
She felt that it ought, yet as she turned to leave him, the keen pang at her heart surprised her, and not even his gay call of reassurance, "Two teas, please, hot, in ten minutes," given, she knew, from such kindly motives, availed to drive away a sudden thought of that gracious face--drowned--dead--drowned. Such irrational fears, when they come at all, come overwhelmingly; since the mind, imaginative enough even to admit them, is their natural prey. Yet this very imagination of her own was in itself startling to the girl, who caught herself wishing she had not sung the "Lorelei," with a sort of surprised pain at her own fancifulness. It was absurd, ridiculous, and yet the sight of Will's loose-limbed figure coming to meet her, brought distinct relief as she bade him go on and help Captain Macleod. Even so, as she blew at the fire and made the tea, the thought would come that a man who could not swim would be of no possible use if--if--if---- So, in the midst of her imaginings, came at last the sight of three figures striding down the brae, talking and laughing; at least, two of them were so engaged, the Reverend James having scarcely recovered his temper, and being, in addition, almost quite inaudible from his previous efforts to make himself heard.
"The pixie wouldn't have him, said he wouldn't suit the place," said Paul, gravely, when, with the aid of several cups of tea, the victim had finished his tale of the big trout, which had deliberately dragged him on to a jag, knocked a hole in the bottom of the rotten old boat, and left him helpless, taking advantage--and this seemed the greatest offence--of the confusion consequent on the manœuvre, to swim away with ten yards of good trout line and an excellent cast. At least, this was Will's view of the situation, the Reverend James attempting hoarsely to give greater prominence to the saving of his own life, while Paul gave a graphic description of their procession down the loch to the landing-place, with the clerical costume packed out of harm's way in the fishing-basket which was swung to the butt end of the rod, and Marjory indignantly disclaimed the slumber of the Seven Sleepers, declaring that the shouting must have gone on when she had been down the burn. So, chattering and laughing, the tea things were packed up, and they started homewards.
"Let us have a race down the level," said Paul, suddenly; "that water was cold as ice."
Five minutes after, when Marjory caught him up, as he lingered a little behind the two others, who were just disappearing behind the bluff at the entrance to the sanctuary, she was startled at his face.
"Ague," he said, in answer to her look. "That is the worst of India. I told you the water was cold enough to give anyone the shivers." He tried to laugh it off, but he was blue and pinched, his teeth were chattering, and with every step the effort to stand steady became more apparent. The sight of his helplessness made the girl forget everything but her womanly instinct to give comfort.
"You had far better sit down for a while," she said, eagerly. "I can easily light a fire, and we have the kettle. Some hot whiskey and water----" But Paul was actually beyond refusal; he sate down weakly, utterly knocked over for the time, and unable to do anything but mutter, between the chatterings of his teeth, that it would not last long--that it would be all right when the hot fit began--that she had better go on and leave him. To all of which Marjory replied, in businesslike fashion, by bringing him a great bundle of bracken as a pillow, spreading her waterproof over him, and piling it over with more fern, till he smiled faintly, and chattered something about there being no necessity for covering him up with leaves--he was not dead yet. Then the fire had to be lit, the kettle boiled, a jorum of hot toddy brewed, a stone warmed and set to hands and feet.
"Now, if you lie still for half an hour," she said magisterially, "I expect you will be much better when I come back." And he was hot--as fire, of course, and shaky still, but minus the cramps, and very apologetic for the delay.
"You couldn't possibly help it," she interrupted quickly. "You looked--you looked----" and then something seemed to rise up in her throat and keep her silent. But it was just this look of utter helplessness which remained in her mind, bringing with it always a tender compassion; and as the remembrance of him with little Paul on his shoulder served to soften her towards his atrocious sentiments, so that of his sudden physical collapse served to lessen the sort of resentment she had hitherto felt to the charm of his great good looks. She could not have explained how either of these facts came about; she was not even aware that it was so, and yet it did make a difference in her attitude towards him. A pity for his weakness, for his faults and failings, came to take the place of condemnation.
So the days passed, until one evening as they trudged home from an unsuccessful raid on the river, Mr. Gillespie remarked that the herring were in at Craignish, and the mackerel often came at the back of the herring, so, maybe, it would be worth while to have a try at them.
"Better than the river, anyhow," grumbled Will, who, even with the red-tailed fly, felt the horrid weight of an empty creel on his shoulders.
Paul looked at Marjory. It had come to that in most things by this time, and as often as not, as now, no words were necessary. "Then I will tell John Macpherson to have the boat ready to-morrow, for it is my last day--of leisure, I mean. My sister comes on Saturday, my guests follow on Monday, and after that--the deluge, I suppose."
"I should not wonder," remarked Will, gravely; "the midges were awful to-day."
Both Paul and Marjory laughed; they could not help it, despite their vague regret that holiday time was over.
Paul's last day was one of those never-to-be-forgotten days, when the mist lies in light wreaths below the mountain tops, which rise clear and sharp against an intense blue sky; when masses of white cloud hang in mid-air, bringing with each new moment some fresh beauty, born of shadow, to sea and shore; when a cool breeze blows unevenly, every now and again darkening the water to a purple, and cresting the waves with foam-streaks edged with turquoise.
"None too soon," said Paul, briefly, as the "Tubhaneer" (so called from her washing-tub-like build) cast off her moorings, and stood out for the middle of the loch. "I told you it would be the deluge after to-day, Miss Carmichael. We shall have rain to-morrow."
Will nodded his head.
"Oh, don't talk of to-morrow!" said Marjory, quickly; "to-day is enough, surely."
Paul, from amid-ships, applauded softly, and she attempted a frown, which ended feebly in a smile. And wherefore not? Sufficient, indeed, unto that day was the pleasure thereof. The red-brown sail drew bravely, the long line lay curled up forward, the oyster dredger rested athwart, the rifles were with Paul amid-ships, the lithe rods swept out astern behind Marjory as she leant lightly over the tiller, her eyes upon the quivering sail; for it needed every inch she could gain to avoid a tack, even though the current of the outgoing tide was aiding them to slip through the Narrowest to the open sea beyond.
"Where will the white rock be?" she asked of Donald Post, who, being learned in banks and baits, would often set his wife to carry the bag while he was off and away after the sea fishing. He was now opening mussels with a crunching sound, regular as a machine.
'"Deed an' she will be right ahead of us whatever," he replied, without a pause.
"There will be plenty of water, I suppose?"
'"Deed she will no be havin' much on her, anyhow."
"Then how shall I steer?"
"Just as she is, Miss Marjory, just as she is; she will be doing fine, I'm thinking."
"A miss is as good as a mile," murmured Paul, engaged in stretching his long length comfortably over some ballast kegs. "Can you swim?"
Marjory nodded. "Then save me, please; I really am not inclined to exert myself."
"So it appears," remarked Will Cameron, in an injured tone. He and the Reverend James were forward, busy over the tangled lengths of the long line, and the necessity for restraining his tongue before the cloth was telling even on the former's easy temper; for a long line in a tangle is quite indescribable in Parliamentary language.
"Keep her in a bit, Marjory. We must anchor over the fishing-house bank for a while, and get bait for this--thisthing."
"Then I shall have to tack."
"Tack, indeed! If you don't like it, I'll steer and you can tackle this--thisthing. Look out, Donald!--two trees and the white stone."
Round went the tiller. "Now, John!" said the girl; the sail came down with a clatter, the way slackened, the anchor, poised in Donald's watchful hands, splashed overboard, and the "Tubhaneer" drew up to it with her mast, and the two trees, and the white stone in a line.
"Well done, Miss Marjory; that was well done, whatever," rose Donald's voice softly, between renewed crunching; and two minor splashes following close on each other told that the Parson and Will had their hand-lines down. Then came a silence, broken only by the fitful gurgle of the water against the "Tubhaneer" as she swung round to the tide, and that monotonous crunch, crunch of the mussel-knife.
"John Roy, he wass takin' five whitin's from the bank last week," rose Donald's voice once more, quite causelessly. "It wass a bit of himself he was catching them with. It iss nothin' the whitin's iss liking so much as a bit of himself."
Then silence again, his hearers being too much accustomed to the intricacies of Donald's style to be startled by this novel fact in natural history. So, amid the stillness, a sudden jerk of the Reverend James's right hand, a pause of intense expectation--to judge by the rapt look on his comely face--then disappointment from bow to stern, and a general slackness.
"It will just be ain o' they pickers," mused Donald, recovering from his momentary idleness; "or maybe a sooker. It iss the pickers and sookers in this place that just beats all. Oo-aye! If it wass not a picker, it will be a sooker."
"What is the difference between a picker and a sucker, Donald?" asked Marjory, severely practical.
"'Deed, then, Miss Marjory, and it iss not any difference there will be between them at all. It is a sooker that will not be caring a tamn for the hook, and it is the picker that will not be caring a tamn either."
"Ahem!" interrupted Mr. Gillespie, with reproachful glance at Donald's unconscious back; "I believe, Miss Marjory, that pickers or suckers is really only the local name for young codlings, lythe, or cuddies. In fact, for all young fish."
"She is not them at all," retorted Donald, scornfully. "It iss sookers and pickers, and not young fish they will be, and it iss not a local name, whatever." The last came with such a glance of sovereign contempt for the offender, that Paul, from his ballast kegs, smiled up at Marjory, who smiled back at him.
"Got him at last! and a good one too!" sang out Will, ending the discussion by a new topic of all-absorbing interest, which held the boat's crew in suspense till the rasping rub of the line over the side and the drip of water falling back on water ceased in a disgusted exclamation from the captor of a small flounder, hooked foul.
"Little deevil," murmured John Macpherson, in such a self-communing tone, that the Reverend James felt the observation must pass.
"It iss pulling like that they are," commented Donald, affably. "John Roy he was fishin' at the ferry-house, and thinkin' it wass askatachhe got, and cryin' on me for the gaff he wass, but it was two flukies he was hookin' by their tails."
Marjory looked as if she were inclined to dispute the fact, then joined in the dreamful silence, which, with spasmodic awakenings as fish after fish came over the side, lasted until there was enough bait, and Will gave the word to move on. Then the anchor came up laden with a root of oarweed, in which strange shells and starfish lay entangled; so it was handed aft for Marjory to see.
"It is squeakin' like a mice yon beast will be," said Donald, pointing to a sea-urchin. "Aye! an' bitin' most tarrible he is."
"That is quite impossible," interrupted the girl, cutting short various other facts which trembled on Donald's lips. "They couldn't bite if they tried."
"Then it is squeakin' like a mice they are, whatever," he retorted doggedly; "for John Roy wass tellin' it to me." John Roy being Donald's Mrs. Harris, the subject admitted of no further discussion, and the ensuing pause was broken by a sudden question from Paul.
"Do you ever find niggerheads about here now? I remember when I was a boy in petticoats----"
He took the tiny cowrie of dazzling whiteness she handed him by way of answer, and said no more. How many years, he wondered, was it since he had last thought of niggerheads? Truly the world was a strange place, and a man's brain stranger still.
And now the long line, duly baited for skate and haddock, was being paid out and left drifting, moored to floats which seemed to dance away on the waves, as the "Tubhaneer" with sail full spread made for the last, low, sunlit point, and so, entering the Linnhe Loch, headed straight for the blue Kingairloch Hills. To the left lay Lismore, a glimmering strip of green and gold amid the shining sea; behind was Port Appin, with its heather-crested bluff, and spidery-black pier; before them the serrated line of Ardnamurchan, and beyond, faint in the distance, the headland of Mull jutting into a glint of the Atlantic. To the right rose Shuna with its swelling grassy slopes and cross-signed pebble shores, like a fairy island in the summer sea. So further afield Appin House, set in fir knolls, Ardgour lighthouse glimmering to the left, and beyond, all the hills rising clear and cloudless to the peak of Ben Nevis.
On Ami's bay a cluster of boats in shore told that the herring were in.
"They never come to Loch Eira now," remarked Will, idly. "It is funny, but they don't."
"It will not be funny at all, sir," expostulated Donald. "It wass comin' they were every year, sure's I sit here, but it wass old John Mackenzie he wass going after them on the Sabbath, and it wass not coming any more after that they were."
"And that is a fact, of course?" asked Will, gravely.
"It will not be a fact at all, sir," echoed Donald, "but it was old John himself wass tellin' it to me."
"I believe it to be quite true, Mr. Cameron," put in the Reverend James; "indeed I remember the Bishop commenting upon the circumstance in a sermon. He brought it in most beautifully, and so conclusively."
"It wass a burnin' shame of the oldbodach, whatever," grumbled John Macpherson. "Ay! Ay! a dirty trick, whatever."
Marjory, watching the sea-pyots wheel and veer against the blue of the distant hills, smiled to herself. The mere thought of the Bishop in his lawn sleeves seemed unreal out there in the sunshine. Everything was unreal save the boat skimming with a little hiss through the water.
"There's a steamer rounding the point below Lismore," said Will. "What will she be, I wonder?"
"She will be the salt ship from Glasgow for the harrin'," replied Donald, after prolonged deliberation. "That iss what she will be, an' ferry welcome. I mind when the harrin' were in Glen Etive, and the salt ship she wass not comin' at all, the people wass diggin' holes in the peat, and fillin' them with the harrin'. It wass not keepin' ferry well, but it was eating them were. A terrible year for sickness it wass, though the harrin' was that plenty, they wass takin' them in buckets."
"'Deed an' it was a dirty trick of that oldbodachsto be driving them away," grumbled Macpherson, "a dirty trick--Gorsh me!--yon's a seal--quick, Mr. Paul!"
There was a sudden, still stir in the crew, and all eyes turned to where a smooth brown head slipped oilily through the water. Marjory held her breath half-shrinkingly, yet said no word. Not even when Paul whispered "Ready, Cameron?" and, heralded by a little flash and puff, the simultaneous report of the rifles frightened the sea-pyots into screaming flight. The head disappeared as the bullets went ricocheting over the water in softping-pings.
"Too high," said one voice, mournfully.
"Yes! but the direction was good."
These remarks, which in constant substance but varying form follow most unsuccessful shots, appeared satisfactory to the speakers; for Paul retired to the thwarts again, and Will resumed his pipe, while Macpherson looked pensively through one of the rifles to see if it had leaded, and the general excitement died down.
"It is curious," remarked Marjory, disdainfully relieved, and speaking, as it were, to the circumambient air, "how even a remote prospect of killing something will rouse a man's love of destruction."
Paul, leaning one arm on the thwart, looked up at her solemnly.
"True--too true. We are destructive, or rather, accurately speaking, we should like to be destructive--only we aren't. That was a bad miss of mine. But if we like to destroy, you women love to annex. Witness that pile of seaweed and shells beside you. You don't really want it, and ten to one when it comes to the bother of carrying it home, you will leave it behind you."
"Pardon me," remarked the girl, "you shall carry it for me."
"A foregone conclusion, if you wish it, of course; but in that case you will simply add my services to your possessions. And in like manner you will dispense with them when I cease to be amusing. Woman all over!"
"Thanks, Gleneira!" laughed Will. "It does me good to hear Marjory kept in order. She bullies me awfully about shooting seals, and I fully expected her to sneeze or cough. She generally does."
"I knew you wouldn't hit," retorted Marjory, scornfully, "and it pleased you."
"'Pleased 'er and didn't 'urt me,' as the navvy said when his wife beat him," put in Paul. "By Jove! Miss Carmichael, if I had known what you thought, I would have put a bullet----"
"Hist!" cried Marjory, holding up her hand. There, within a stone's throw, was the smooth brown head, with large, liquid, confiding eyes turned towards the boat. Not a ripple, not a sound, showed that it was in motion, and yet it slipped past rapidly.
"Gorsh me! but the beast's tame," whispered John, unable to contain himself in the inaction; but the whisper might as well have been a clap of thunder, for the round head sank noiselessly into the water, leaving scarcely a ripple behind it.
"Why didn't you shoot, Captain Macleod?" asked Marjory, with an odd little tremor in her voice, at which she herself was dimly surprised; "you might have hit that time, for it couldn't have been more than fifteen yards off."
"I never thought of it," he replied quietly; "the beast looked so jolly."
"It looked quite as jolly when it was far away, no doubt."
"But I couldn't see it. And if we discuss that point I shall find it as much out of my range as the seal was. So give me a good mark for refraining when I did see its jolliness."
"Besides, it would have been no good trying. It would have been down like a shot if we had stirred a finger," said Will, philosophically.
Paul Macleod sighed. "There goes my last claim to saintship. You are a perfect devil's advocate, Cameron."
"But, really, Miss Marjory," put in the Reverend James, who had, as usual, been left far behind in the quick interchange of thought, "I do not see why you should object to shooting a seal. Man is permitted by a merciful Creator to destroy animal life----"
"In order to preserve his own, and even then it seems a pity," interrupted the girl, eagerly. "Oh, I daresay, Captain Macleod, the feeling isn't strong enough to make me turn vegetarian, but itiswanton cruelty to kill a poor seal which is of no use to anyone!"
"There you go!" grumbled Will. "Why! I wanted its paws awfully for tobacco pouches--mine is quite worn out."
"Your remark, Cameron, is childish and unreasonable," replied Paul, from his lounge. "You cannot expect Miss Carmichael's tolerance of humanity to extend to tobacco pouches. Let us be thankful it concedes mutton chops."
"A seal is a ferry clever beast, whatever," put in Donald. "It wass John Roy wass walking on the rocks at Craignish, and he wass seeing a big seal, and heavin' stones at it, and--gorsh me!--but it wass takin' the stones and fro'ing them back at John. And, tamn me! but the creature wass a better shot than John--oo--aye! a far better shot whatever."
"And that is a fact, Donald?" asked Will, solemnly.
"Not a fack at all, sir; but John Roy he wass tellin' it to me."
"Not so clever as the Kashmir bear, Donald?" put in Paul. "When it has to cross a stream in flood it carries a big boulder on its head to keep itself steady."
"An' is that a fack, sir," asked Donald, readily.
"The people were telling it to me, anyhow!"
"Then they were big liars whatever," said Donald, with such an inimitable air of shocked conviction that a general shout of laughter rose on the sunny air.
Oh, bright, glad day! Oh, careless, foolish talk! Oh, deep abiding sense of peace and good-will in all that sea-girt mountain world which rose around them, havening their little boat! Could it be that there was trouble, or toil, or tears, yonder where the mist floated so tenderly, or there, where cottage and castle, meadow and moor, wheat and tares were blended into one purple glory? There were not many such days in life, so let us cherish the mere memory of them!
The mackerel, it is true, were not to be beguiled, but what matter? The boat skimmed over the blue water; two red-brown sails stood out to the West or East.
"No use trying any more," said Will at last, with a shake of the head over Paul's placid repose; for lunch had come to fill up the measure of content, and the laird was back among the ballast with a large basket of strawberries. "I think, Donald, we might try the big lythe off Shuna."
"The tide will no be answerable awhile, sir, but there will be no excuse for thebedach ruachsat the rocks; no excuse at all."
"Let us hope the fish will have a sense of duty," murmured Paul from the strawberries; "cold-blooded creatures generally have."
They anchored out of the tide race in a backwater of the current, and Marjory, looking over the side, could see far down into the green depth where pale, pulsating Medusas came floating by, and every now and again a flash of light told of a passing fish.
"Too much tide," began Paul, eyeing the set of the lines from his retreat, when four mighty and coincident strikes silenced his wisdom for a while. But only for a while, since amid the rasp and rub of wet lines against the side came Will's voice despondently.
"I'm in to some of you others."
"So am I--and I----" echoed Marjory and the Reverend James. Only Donald Post whispered softly, "It is the deevil is on mine whatever," and Paul, without stirring hand and foot, suggested the mainland of Scotland. But it was neither. The lines passed to the stern produced conjointly a codling, which after swallowing two baits had tried at a third, and so hooked itself foul in the fourth.
"There's an object lesson for you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, teasingly. "How about your theory of the cruel hook and the poor fish?"
"It is not feeling a tamn, fish is," commented Donald, calmly disgorging the baits. "It was fishin' forbodachsold John Boy was, and he was catchin' her foul by the eye, and the eye she come out. But John Roy wass leavin' it on the hook and thebodachwas comin' again an' takin' his own eye."
"And there is a fact for you," continued Paul.
"No! No! sir," protested Donald, with a twinkle in his eye; "it will no be a fack whatever, but John Roy he wass tellin' it to me." Whereat there was laughter again.
So, as the day drew down, they landed on Shuna to boil the kettle for tea with driftwood gathered from the shore, and wonder idly as the flames leapt up to shrivel the lowermost leaves of the rowan tree by the spring, whence the wreckage which burnt so bravely had come; for storm and stress seemed far from their world.
Then, while the boatmen took their turn at the scones and cake, the jam and toast, they climbed the grassy slopes, and, sitting down by the old tower, watched the sunset idly; for all things, even pleasure, seem idle on such days as these. The clouds had pricked westwards, as if to aid the Atlantic in a coming storm, but below their heavy purple masses lay a strip of greeny gold sky, into which the sun was just sinking from a higher belt of crimson-tinted bars.
"No Green Ray for us to-night," said Marjory, with a smile.
Paul raised his eyebrows. "No Green Ray on this or any other night, in my candid opinion."
The Reverend James looked puzzled. "I have often heard you mention this Green Ray, Miss Marjory, but I am not quite sure to what you allude."
"To a fiction of Jules Verne's, that is all," put in Paul, quickly.
"Nothing of the sort; people have seen it," corrected the girl, eagerly.
"Say they have seen it," murmured Paul, obstinately, and Marjory frowned.
"I will explain it to you, Mr. Gillespie," she went on, with assertion in her voice. "It is a green ray of light which shoots through the sea, just as the topmost curve of the sun touches the water. I watch for it often. I intend to watch for it till I see it, as others have done."
"And what good will it do to you when you have seen it?" asked Paul. They were speaking to each other, despite the pretence of general conversation; but it was so often.
"I haven't the least idea," she answered airily; "for all that, I look forward to seeing it as a great event in my life."
"Great events are dangerous; like some very valuable medicines, uncertain in their effects. Birth, for instance--you may be born a fool or a wise man. Marriage--a chance of the die--so I'm told. Death." He pointed dramatically upwards and downwards with a whimsical look on his anxious, gracious face.
"I deny it, I deny it altogether," cried the girl, forgetting herself and him in her eagerness. "You are either in existence before birth, or you are not. In the one case you must remain yourself, in the other you, being nonexistent, cannot suffer chance or change. It is the same with death. If there is noyouto survive, death itself ceases to be since you are non-existent. If there is, you must remain yourself."
"Surely, my dear Miss Marjory," said the Reverend James, breaking in on the girl's half-questioning appeal, "we are to be changed in the twinkling of an eye?"
"And marriage, Miss Carmichael?" put in Paul, quietly, passing by the last remark as if it, too, had been non-existent. "You left out marriage in your philosophy."
Her face fell, yet softened.
"I do not know; it is like the Green Ray, something to dream about."
"To dream about! Ah! that sort of marriage is, I own, beyond the vision of ordinary humanity."
"But indeed there is nothing scientifically impossible in the Green Ray. You have only to get the angle of refraction equal to the----"
"Spare me, please. If I have to swallow romance I prefer it undisguised. Even as a boy I refused powders in jam."
"Wish I had," grumbled Will, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "I have never been able to eat black-currant jelly in consequence. And it is awfully nice in itself. Come, Marjory, we ought to be going."
"It is very hard to get rid of acquired tastes," muttered Paul, in an undertone, as he rose, and quite familiarly held out his hand to help Marjory to her feet also. "For instance, it will be difficult to forget the flavour of the past fortnight."
"Why should you forget it?" They were standing apart from the others, who were looking eastward to see if the boatmen were ready.
"Because the pleasure of it has been demoralising."
"I don't believe in the demoralising effect of pleasure."
"Perhaps not. You are one of the virtuously constituted whose pleasure consists in behaving nicely. Mine doesn't."
Her hand went out in an impulsive gesture of denial.
"Why should you say that? You are not----"
"How can you know what I am?" he began bitterly, yet indifferently; his eyes, not upon her, but fixed far on the distant horizon, as if arraigning some unseen power which had made him what he was. Then he paused abruptly, and infinite surprise drove everything else from his face.
"Look!" he cried.
"Look?--what?--where?"
"Look!" His hand was on hers now, and its trembling touch seemed to give her sight.
It was a new heaven and a new earth! For, on the outermost edge of the world, the last beam of light from the sunken sun shot through the waves, flooding sky, and sea, and shore, with a green light, soft and pellucid as the heart of an emerald. But only for an instant. The next he had loosed her hand and the light was gone.
"What are you staring at so, Miss Carmichael?" His mocking tone jarred her through and through. She looked at him in sheer bewilderment.
"The--the Green Ray!"
"The Green Ray!" he echoed, in the same tones. "I say, Cameron! Here is your cousin declaring she has seen the Green Ray. Did you see anything?"
"Only the seal you were watching out on the rocks yonder," called Will. "Splendid shot, wasn't it?"
"The Green Ray!" echoed the Reverend James, bustling up. "Dear me, how interesting, and I missed it, somehow. What was it like, Miss Marjory?"
The girl stood with her clear, cold eyes fixed on Paul's face. "I scarcely know. You had better ask Captain Macleod. If I saw anything, he saw it also; and saw it first!"
"But you have such a much more vivid imagination than I," he replied easily, "that what would be to me merely an unusually beautiful effect, might be to you a miracle. It is simply a question of temperament, and mine is severely practical. In fact, Cameron, if we are to get home to-night, it's time we were going."
"By George!" said Will, when, with a general scramble, they had stowed everything on board, "it's later than I thought, the tide has turned, and the wind is almost down. We must take the sweeps, I am afraid."
"All right," said Paul. "Hand us over an oar."
He was a different man; the lazy content was gone, and he gave a stroke from a straight back which made Donald gasp between his efforts--"Gorsh me! but he is a fine rower, is the laird!"
But there was silence--the silence of hard work--for the most part, as they toiled home with wind and tide against them. Yet the scene was beautiful as ever in the growing moonlight.
"We are not more than a mile from the house here, Marjory," said Will, as they rounded a point below the Narrowest; "but it will take us a good hour to get her to the boat-house, and I can't leave her here; it's spring tides, and the painter's not long enough. But I'll land you on that rock, and the laird will see you home. Mother will be getting anxious."
"I would rather stay," she was beginning, when Paul cut her short.
"Back water, bow; pull, Donald. Luff her a bit. Miss Carmichael, please. That will do." They were alongside the little jetty of rock, and he was out. "Your hand, please, the seaweed is awfully slippery. Donald, pass up those shells, will you, they are in my handkerchief. All right, Cameron. Give way."
It had all passed so quickly, and this masterful activity of Paul's was so surprising, that Marjory, rather to her own surprise, found herself following close on his heels as he forced a way for her through the dense thickets of bracken, or held back a briar from the path in silence. Yet the silence did not seem oppressive; it suited her own confusion, her own vague pleasure and pain. She had seen the Green Ray, but she had seen it through Paul Macleod's eyes. Yes; whether he would or not, they had seen it hand in hand. He might deny it, but the fact remained. He was one of those who could see it!
And Paul, as he walked on, felt that the silence intensified his clear pleasure and clearer pain. For there was no vagueness inhisemotions. It was not the first time that the touch of a woman's hand had thrilled him through and through, as Marjory's had done as they looked out over the sunset sea; but it was the first time that such a thrill had not moved him to look upon the woman's face! And they had stood still, hand in hand, like a couple of children, staring at the Green Ray! What a fool he had been! What did it mean save something at which he had always scoffed, at which he meant always to scoff! And then the Green Ray? Was his brain softening that he should see visions and dream dreams? He, Paul Macleod, who loved and forgot all, save his own physical comfort. As everyone did in the end. And yet it was a familiar pleasure to be in love again honestly, a pleasure to feel his heart beating, to know that the girl he fancied was there beside him in the moonlight, that he could tell her of his heart-beats if he chose. But he did not choose. Love of that sort came and went! Did he not know it? Did he not know his own nature, and was not that enough? And yet, when they reached the high road a sudden desire to make her also understand it, made him say, abruptly:
"When do you begin work? In London, isn't it?"
"Yes; in November."
"And you are really going to waste life in a dull, dirty school, teaching vulgar little boys and girls."
"I shall teach them not to be vulgar."
He shrugged his shoulders. "You cannot fight against Nature, Miss Carmichael; as we are born, we remain. You will only kill yourself in your efforts at regeneration."
"I think not. I am very strong to begin with, and then I hate rusting in idleness."
"Rust may be better than tarnish. When I think of you here in this paradise--a fool's paradise, perhaps--and of what you must encounter there, it seems preposterous for you to mix yourself up. But you do not understand; you never will." He had forgotten his new outlook in the old resentment at her unconsciousness.
"Understand what? I can understand most things if I try."
"Can you? I doubt it. You cannot understand me, for instance, but that is beside the question. The only comfort is that real life will disgust you. Then you will return to the home you should never have left."
"I have no home--you know that."
"You can make one by marrying, as other girls do."
"I am not like other girls, thank you----"
"Do you think I can't see that?" he broke out quite passionately. "Should I be talking to you as I am if you were--why, I can't even speak to you of what some of them are. It is because you are not as other girls----"
"Then you wish me to behave as they do. You are scarcely logical." Her tone was as ice, and, chilling his passion, sent him back to his cynicism.
"Logic and love do not generally run in double harness, Miss Carmichael; but if you prefer the former, I am quite prepared to stick to it. Someone wants a wife, someone wants a home. It is a mere case of barter. What can be more natural, sensible----"
"And degrading."
"Pardon me, not always. I will take my own case if you will allow me. We have touched on it often before. Let us speak frankly now. I need money, not for myself alone; for the property. You have hinted a thousand times that I am a bad landlord; so I am. How can I help it without money?"
"You could be a better landlord than you are."
"If I chose to live on porridge and milk; but I don't choose, and I don't choose to sell. I prefer to stick to champagne and devilled bones, and give up another personal pleasure instead. And you say it is degrading."
"I said nothing of the sort. I spoke of myself. It would degrade me. I do not presume to speak of you."
"But you think it all the same."
"And if I do, what is that to you?" she cried suddenly, in hot anger. "I do condemn you, if you will have the truth. I think you will deliberately turn your back on the best part of life if you marry for mere comfort--and, what is more, that you will regret it."
"Possibly. I regret most things after a time. Let us wait and see whether you or I find the greatest happiness in life. Only we are not likely to agree even there, for we shall not see the world in the same light."
"Unless High Heaven vouchsafes us another Green Ray," she said coldly.
The allusion aroused all his own vexation with himself, all his impatience at her influence over him. They were passing the short cut leading to the Lodge, and he paused.
"I don't think I need intrude on Mrs. Cameron tonight," he said. "Good-bye, Miss Carmichael." Then suddenly he turned with a smile of infinite grace. "Let us shake hands over it to show there is no ill-feeling. It is my last holiday, remember; and, according to you, I am going into penal servitude for life. But I'll chance my ticket-of-leave. I am generally fairly virtuous when I have enough to eat and drink. And we have had a good time, haven't we?"
"Very," said Marjory. And though he tried hard to get up another thrill as their hands met, he failed utterly. He might have been saying good-bye to his grandmother for all the emotion it roused in him; and as he strode home he scarcely knew if the fact were disconcerting or satisfactory. The latter, in so far that it proved his feeling for Marjory must be of a placid, sentimental form, to which he was unaccustomed. What else could it be in such surroundings, and with a girl who hadn't a notion what love meant?
And Marjory, as she crossed the few yards between her and Mrs. Cameron's comments, felt vexed that she was not more angry with the culprit. But once again the thought of the St. Christopher, and of Paul's blue, chattering lips, when he had the chills at the Pixie's Lake, came to soften her and make her forget all but admiration and pity.