"Surely then," said he, "The McTavish would let me put a roof on the chapel. I'dliketo," he said, and the red came strongly into his cheeks. "I'll ask her. Surely she wouldn't refuse to see me on such a matter."
"You can never tell," Mrs. Nevis said. "She's a woman that won't bear forcing."
He looked at her for the first time in some minutes. "Why," said he, "you're ill; you're white as a sheet!"
"It's the long walk uphill. It takes me in the heart, somehow."
"I'm sorry," said McTavish simply. "I'm mighty sorry. It's all my fault."
"Why, so it is," said she, with the flicker of a smile.
"You must take my arm going back. Iamsorry."
When they had left the chapel and locked the door, she took his arm without any further invitation.
"I will, if you don't mind," she said. "I am shaken, and that's the truth…. But what," and again the smile flickered—"what would The McTavish say if she saw us—her cousin and her housekeeper—dawdling along arm in arm?"
McTavish laughed. "I don't mind, if you don't."
They returned slowly by the long turf walk to the statue of Atlas.
"Now," said he, "how should I go about getting an interview with TheMcTavish?"
"Well," said Mrs. Nevis, "it will not be for to-day. She is leaving within the hour for Beem-Tay in her motor-car."
"Oh, then I shall follow her to Beem-Tay."
"If you can do that," said Mrs. Nevis, "I will give you a line to my sister. Maybe she could help you. She's the housekeeper at Beem-Tay—Miss MacNish is her name." And she added as if by an after-thought. "We are twins."
"Are there two of you?" exclaimed McTavish.
"Why not?" she asked, with a guileless face.
"Why," said he, "it's wonderful. Does she look like you?"
"Exactly," said Mrs. Nevis. "Same red hair, same eyes, nose, and faint spells—only," and there was a certain arch quality in her clear voice, "she'ssingle."
"And she looks exactly like you—and she's single! I don't believe it."
Mrs. Nevis withdrew her hand from his arm. When they had reached the door of the Great Tower she stopped.
"If you care for a line to my sister," she said, "I'll write it. You can wait here."
"I wish it of all things, and if there are any stairs to climb, mind you take your time. Remember you're not very good at hills."
When she had gone, he smiled his enigmatic smile and began to walk slowly up and down in front of the door, his hands clasped behind his back. Once he made a remark. "Scotland," he said, "is the place for me."
But when at length she returned with the letter, he did not offer her money; instead he offered his hand. "You've been very kind," he said, "and when I meet your mistress I will tell her how very courteous you have been. Thank you."
He placed the letter in the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat. "Any messages for your sister?" he asked.
"You may tell her I hope she is putting by something for a rainy day. You may tell her The McTavish is verra hard up the noo"—she smiled very charmingly in his face—"and will na' brook an extravagant table."
"Do you think," said McTavish, "that your sister will get me a chance to seeTheMcTavish?"
"If any one can, she can."
"Good-by," he said, and once more they shook hands.
A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay and presents the letter before I get there!"
She flowered into swift action, flashed up the turret stairs, and, having violently rung a bell, flew into her dressing-room, and began to drag various automobiling coats, hats, and goggles out of their hiding places. When the bell was answered: "The car," she cried, "at once!"
A few moments later, veiled, goggled, and coated, she was dashing from the castle to the stables. Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?"
"It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully.
"Can you make it?"
"The road—" he began.
"I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you make it?"
"I'm a married man," said he.
"Ten pounds sterling if you make it."
"And if we smash and are kilt?"
"Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in BrigO'Dread—that's all."
She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare. Once she leaned over the driver's seat and spoke in his ear: "I hav'na the ten pounds noo," she said, "but I'll beg them, McDonald, or borrow them—" The car began to slow down, the driver's face grew gloomy. "Or steal them!" she cried. McDonald's face brightened, for The McTavish's money difficulties were no better known than the fact that she was a woman of her word. He opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward.
Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in a roaring smother of dust.
"McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate—that is all."
She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should find McDonald his ten pounds sterling.
She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, should be brought at once to her. McTavish did not come that day, but she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with her own lands. Mr. Traquair, a gentleman as thin as a pipe stem, and as kind as tobacco, had called upon her the second day, in answer to an impetuous summons. He found her looking very anxious and very beautiful, and told her so.
"May the looks stand me in good stead, Mr. Traquair," said she, "for I'm like to become Wandering Willie of the song—Wandering Wilhelmina, rather. There's a man yont, named McTavish, will oost me frae hoose and name."
"That would be the young gentleman stopping at the McTavish Arms."
"Ah," said The McTavish, "he might stop here if he but knew."
"He's no intending it, then," said Mr. Traquair, "for he called upon me this morning to hire the Duke's forest of Clackmanness."
"Ah!" said The McTavish.
"And now," said Mr. Traquair, stroking his white mustache, "tell me what it all means."
"It means that Colland McTavish, who was my great-grandfather's elder brother, has returned in the person of the young gentleman at the Arms."
"A fine hornpipe he'll have to prove it," said Mr. Traquair.
"Fine fiddlesticks!" said The McTavish. "Man," she continued earnestly, "you have looked in his face and you tell me it will be a dance to prove him The McTavish?"
"He is a McTavish," admitted Mr. Traquair; "so much I knew before he told me his name."
"He has in his pocket the bit shirt that wee Colland wore when the gypsies snitched him and carried him over seas; it's all of a piece with many another garment of wee Colland's. I've had out the trunk in which his little duds have been stored these many years. The man is Colland's great-grandson. I look at him, and I admit it without proof."
"My dear," said Mr. Traquair, "you have no comprehension of the law. I will fight this claim through every court of the land, or I'm ready to meet him on Bannockburn field, my ancestral claymore against his. A rare laugh we'll have when the pretender produces his bit shirtie in the court, and says, 'Look, your honor, upon my patent o' nobilitee.'"
"Mind this," said The McTavish, "I'll make no contests, nor have none made. Only," she smiled faintly, "I hay'na told him who he rightly is. He claims cousinship. But it has not dawned on him that Colland was to have been The McTavish, that heisThe McTavish, that I am merely Miss Ellen Alice Douglas Cameron Dundee Campbell McGregor Breadalbane Blair McTavish, houseless, homeless spinster, wi' but a drap o' gude blood to her heritage. I have not told him, Mr. Traquair. He does not know. What's to be done? What would you do—if you knewthat he was he, and that you were only you?"
"It's your meeserable conscience of a Church-going Scot," commiseratedTraquair, not without indignation. "What would a Campbell have done?He'd have had himself made a judge in the land, and he'd have condemnedthe pretender to the gallows—out of hand, my dear—out of hand!"
She shook her head at him as at a naughty child. "Where is your own meeserable conscience, Traquair?"
"My dear," cried the little man, "it is storming my reason."
"There," said she, "I told you so. And now we are both of one mind, you shall present these tidings to McTavish together with my compliments."
"First," said Traquair cautiously, "I'll bide a bit on the thought."
"I will leave the time to your meeserable conscience," said Miss McTavish generously. "Meanwhile, my dear man, while the semblance of prosperity abides over my head in the shape of a roof, there's a matter o' ten pound—"
Mr. Traquair rose briskly to his feet. "Ten pound!" he exclaimed.
"Only ten pound," she wheedled.
"My dear," he said, "I don't see where you're to raise another matter o' saxpence this month."
"But I've promised the ten pound on my honor," she said. "Would you have me break my word to a servant?"
"Well—well," temporized Mr. Traquair, "I'll have another look at the books. Mind, I'm not saying it can be done—unless you'll sell a bit timber here and yont—"
"Dear man," she said, "full well ye know it's not mine to sell. Then you're to let me have the ten pound?"
"If I were to employ a wheedler," said Mr. Traquair, "I'd have no choice 'twixt you and Satan. Mind, I make no promises. Ten pound is a prodeegious sum o' money, when ye hay'na got it."
"Not later than to-morrow, then," said Miss McTavish, as though to cap a promise that had been made to her. "I'm obliged to you, Traquair, deeply obliged."
But it was not the matter of the ten pounds that worried Traquair as he climbed into his pony cart and drove slowly through the castle policies to the gate. Indeed, the lofty gates had not been closed behind him before he had forgotten all about them. That The McTavish was not The McTavish alone occupied his attention. And when he perceived the cause of the trouble, strolling beside the lofty ring fence of stone that shielded the castle policies from impertinent curiosity, it was in anything but his usual cheerful voice that he hailed him.
"Will you take a lift, Mr. McTavish?" he invited dismally.
"Oh, no," said The McTavish, "I won't trouble you, thanks."
Traquair's meeserable conscience got the better of him all at once. And with that his cheerfulness returned.
"Get in," he said. "You cannot help troubling me, Mr. McTavish. I've a word for you, sir."
McTavish, wondering, climbed into the car.
"Fergus," said Traquair to the small boy who acted as groom, messenger, and shoe polisher to the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, "ye'll walk."
When the two were thus isolated from prying ears, Mr. Traquair cleared his throat and spoke. "Is there anything, Mr. McTavish," he said, "in this world that a rich man like you may want?"
"Oh, yes," said McTavish, "some things."
"More wealth?"
McTavish shook his head.
"Houses—lands?" Traquair looked up shrewdly from the corner of his eye, but McTavish shook his head again.
"Power, then, Mr. McTavish?"
"No—not power."
"Glory?"
"No," said McTavish; "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not."
"Then, sir," said Traquair, "it's a woman."
"No," said McTavish, and he blushed handsomely. "It'sthewoman."
"I withdraw my insinuation," said Traquair gravely.
"I thank you," said Mr. McTavish.
"I am glad, sir," said Traquair presently, "to find you in so generous a disposition, for we have need of your generosity. I have it from Miss McTavish herself," he went on gravely, "that your ancestor, so far as you know, was Colland McTavish."
"So far as I know and believe," said McTavish, "he was."
"Did you know that Colland McTavish should have beenTheMcTavish?" asked Mr. Traquair.
"It never entered my head. Was he the oldest son?"
"He was," said Mr. Traquair solemnly, "until in the eyes of thelawhe ceased to exist."
"Then," said McTavish, "in every eye save that of the law I amTheMcTavish."
Mr. Traquair bowed. "Miss McTavish," he said, "was for telling you at once; but she left the matter entirely to my discretion. I have thought best to tell you."
"Would the law," asked McTavish, "oust Miss McTavish and stand me in her shoes?"
"The law," said Traquair pointedly, "would not do the former, and," with a glance at McTavish's feet, "the Auld Nick could not do the latter."
McTavish laughed. "Then why have you told me?" he asked.
"Because," said Traquair grandly, "it is Miss McTavish's resolution to make no opposition to your claim."
"I see; I am to become 'The' without a fight."
"Precisely," said Traquair.
"Well, discretionary powers as to informing me of this were given you, as I understand, Mr. Traquair?"
"They were," said Traquair.
"Well," said McTavish again, "there's no use crying over spilt milk. But is your conscience up to a heavy load?"
"'Tis a meeserable vehicle at best," protested Traquair.
"You must pretend," said McTavish, "that you have not yet told me."
"Ah!" Traquair exclaimed. "You wish to think it over."
"I do," said McTavish.
Both were silent for some moments. Then Traquair said rather solemnly: "You are young, Mr. McTavish, but I have hopes that your thinking will be of a wise and courageous nature."
"Do you read Tennyson?" asked McTavish, apropos of nothing.
"No," said Traquair, slightly nettled. "Burns."
"I am sorry," said McTavish simply; "then you don't know the lines:
'If you are not the heiress born,And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,' etc.
do you?"
"No," said Traquair, "I do not."
"It is curious how often a lack of literary affinity comes between two persons and a heart-to-heart talk."
"Let me know," said Traquair, "when you have thought it over."
"I will. And now if you will put me down—?"
He leaped to the ground, lifted his hat to the older man, and, turning, strode very swiftly, as if to make up for lost time, back toward the castle gate.
McTavish was kept waiting a long time while a servant took his letter of introduction to Miss MacNish, and brought back an answer from the castle.
Finally, midway of a winding and shrubby short cut, into which he turned as directed by the porter, he came suddenly upon her.
"Miss MacNish—?" he said.
"You're not Mr. McTavish!—" She seemed dumfounded, and glanced at a letter which she carried open in her hand. "My sister writes—"
"What does she write?" asked McTavish eagerly.
"No—no!" Miss MacNish exclaimed hastily, "the letter was to me." She tore it hastily into little pieces.
"Miss MacNish," said McTavish, somewhat hurt, "it is evident that I give diametrically opposed impressions to you and your sister. Either she has said something nice about me, and you, seeing me, are astonished that she should; or she has said something horrid about me—I do hope it's that way—and you are even more surprised. It must be one thing or the other. And before we shake hands I think it only proper for you to tell me which."
"Let bygones be bygones," said Miss MacNish, and she held out her hand.McTavish took it, and smiled his enigmatic smile.
"It is your special wish, I have gathered," said Miss MacNish, "to meet The McTavish. Now she knows about your being in the neighborhood, knows that you are a distant cousin, but she hasn't expressed any wish to meet you—at least I haven't heard her. If she wishes to meet you, she will ask you to call upon her. If she doesn't wish to, she won't. Of course, if you came upon her suddenly—somewhere in the grounds, for instance—she'd have to listen to what you had to say, and to answer you, I suppose. But to-day—well I'd not try it to-day."
"Why not?" asked McTavish.
"Why," said Miss MacNish, "she caught cold in the car yesterday, and her poor nose is much too red for company."
"Why do you all try to make her out such a bad lot?"
"Is it being a bad lot to have a red nose?" exclaimed Miss MacNish.
"At twenty-two?" McTavish looked at her in surprise and horror. "I askyou," he said. "There was the porter at Brig O'Dread, and your sister—they gave her a pair of black eyes between them, and here you give her a red nose. When the truth is probably the reverse."
"I don't know the reverse of red," said Miss MacNish, "but that would give her white eyes."
"I am sure, Miss MacNish, that quibbling is not one of your prerogatives. It belongs exclusively to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. As for me—the less I see of The McTavish, the surer I am that she is rather beautiful, and very amusing, and good."
"Are these the matters on which you are so eager to meet her?" asked Miss MacNish. She stood with her back to a clump of dark blue larkspur taller than herself—a lovely picture, in her severe black housekeeper's dress that by contrast made her face and dark red hair all the more vivacious and flowery. Her eyes at the moment were just the color of the larkspur.
McTavish smiled his enigmatic smile. "They are," he said.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss MacNish.
"When I meet her—" McTavish began, and abruptly paused.
"What?" Miss MacNish asked with some eagerness.
"Oh, nothing;I'mso full of it that I almost betrayed my own confidence."
"I hope that you aren't implying that I might prove indiscreet."
"Oh, dear no!" said McTavish.
"It had a look of it, then," said Miss MacNish tartly.
"Oh," said McTavish, "if I've hurt your feelings—why, I'll go on with what I began, and take the consequences, shall I?"
"I think," said Miss MacNish primly, "that it would tend to restore confidence between us."
"When I meet her, then," said McTavish, "I shall first tell her that she is beautiful, and amusing, and good. And then," it came from him in a kind of eager, boyish outburst, "I shall ask her to marry me."
Miss MacNish gasped and stepped backward into the fine and deep soil that gave the larkspur its inches. The color left her cheeks and returned upon the instant tenfold. And it was many moments before she could find a word to speak. Then she said in an injured and astonished tone: "Why?"
"The Scotch Scot," said McTavish, "is shrewd, but cautious. The American Scot is shrewd, but daring. Caution, you'll admit, is a pitiful measure in an affair of the heart."
Miss MacNish was by this time somewhat recovered from her consternation. "Well," said she, "what then? When you have come upon The McTavish unawares somewhere in the shrubbery, and asked her to marry you, and she has boxed your ears for you—what then?"
"Then," said McTavish with a kind of anticipatory expression of pleasure, "I shall kiss her. Even if she hated it," he said ruefully, "she couldn't help but be surprised and flattered."
Miss MacNish took a step forward with a sudden hilarious brightening in her eyes. "Are you quizzing me," she said, "or are you outlining your honest and mad intentions? And if the latter, won't you tell me why? Why, in heaven's name, should you ask The McTavish to marry you—at first sight?"
"I can't explain it," said McTavish. "But even if I never have seen her—I love her."
"I have heard of love at first sight—" began Miss MacNish.
But he interrupted eagerly. "You haven't ever experienced it, have you?"
"Of course, I haven't," she exclaimed indignantly. "I've heard of it—often. But I have never heard of love without any sight at all."
"Love is blind," said McTavish.
"Now, who's quibbling?"
"Just because," he said, "you've never heard of a thing, away off here in your wild Highlands, is a mighty poor proof that it doesn't exist. I suppose you don't believe in predestination. I've always known," he said grandly, "that I should marry my cousin—even against her will and better judgment. You don't more than half believe me, do you?"
"Well, not more than half," Miss MacNish smiled.
"It's the truth," he said; "I will bet you ten pounds it's the truth."
Miss MacNish looked at him indignantly, and in the midst of the look she sighed. "I don't bet," said she.
McTavish lowered his glance until it rested upon his own highly polished brown boots.
"Why are you looking at your boots?" asked Miss MacNish.
"Because," he said simply, "considering that I am in love with my cousin, I don't think I ought to look at you any more. I'm afraid I got the habit by looking at your sister; but then, as she has a husband, it couldn't matter so much."
Miss MacNish, I'm afraid, mantled with pleasure. "My sister said something in her letter about your wishing to see the house of your ancestors. Miss McTavish is out now—would you like to look about a little?"
"Dearly," said McTavish.
Miss McTavish sent for Mr. Traquair. He went to her with a heavy conscience, for as yet he had done nothing toward raising the ten pounds. At her first words his conscience became still more laden.
"Traquair," she said, "you mustn't tell him yet."
It was all Traquair could do to keep countenance. "Then it's fortunate I haven't," said he, "for you gave me a free hand."
"Consider it tied behind your back for the present, for a wonderful thing is going to happen."
"Indeed," said Traquair.
"You wouldn't believe me when I tell you that the silly man is going to fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him!"
"Although you haven't offered me a chair, my dear," said Traquair, "I will take one."
All in a burst then, half laughing, half in a grave kind of excitement, she told her old friend how she had played housekeeper first at Brig O'Dread and later at Beem-Tay. And how, on the latter occasion, McTavish had displayed his admiration so openly that there could be but the one climax.
"And after all," she concluded, "if he thinks I'm just a housekeeper, and falls in love with me and asks me to marry him—I'd know the man was sincere—wouldn't I, Traquair?"
"It seems to me," said Traquair, "that I have never seen you so thoroughly delighted with yourself."
"That is unkind. It is a wonderful thing when a girl of position, and hedged in as I have been, finds that she is loved for herself alone and not for her houses and lands, and her almost royal debts."
"Verra flattering," said Traquair, "na doot. And what answer will you give?"
"Traquair," she said, "I'm not a profane girl; but I'm hanged if I know."
"He is a very wealthy man, and I have no doubt a very kind and honest man."
"He is a very cheeky man," smiled Miss McTavish.
"No doubt—no doubt," said Traquair; "and it would leave you to the honest enjoyment of your houses and lands, which otherwise you propose to hand over to him. Still, it is well for a Scot to be cautious."
"For a Scotch Scot," said Miss McTavish. "I should be an American Scot if I married him. He tells me they are noted for their daring."
While they were thus animatedly conversing, word came that Mr. McTavish had called in the hope of seeing Miss MacNish.
"There," said Miss McTavish, "you see! Go down to him, Traquair, and be pleasant, until I come. Then vanish."
Traquair found McTavish smoking a thick London cigarette upon the steps of the side entrance, and gazing happily into a little garden of dark yew and vivid scarlet geraniums with daring edgings of brightest blue lobelia.
"Will you be making any changes," asked Traquair, "when you come into your own?"
McTavish looked up with a smile and handed his open cigarette case to the older man.
"Mr. Traquair," he said, "I'm young and a stranger. I wish you could find it in your heart to be an uncle to me."
Traquair accepted a cigarette and sat down, first assuring himself that the stone steps were dry.
"If I were your nephew," said McTavish, "and came to you all out of breath, and told you that I wished to marry Miss McTavish's housekeeper, what would you say?"
"I would say," said Traquair, "that she was the daughter of a grand family that had fallen from their high estate. I would say, 'Charge, nephew, charge!'"
"Do you mean it!" exclaimed McTavish.
"There's no more lovely lass in the United Kingdom," said Traquair, "than Miss—Miss—"
"MacNish," McTavish helped him; "and she would be mistress where she had been servant. That's a curious twist of fate."
"You have made up your mind, then," said Traquair, "to claim your own?"
"By no means—yet," said McTavish. "I was only speculating. It's all in the air. Suppose uncle, that Miss MacNish throws me down!"
"Throws you down!" Traquair was shocked.
"Well," said McTavish humbly, "you told me to charge."
"To charge," said Traquair testily, "but not to grapple."
"In my country," said McTavish, "when a girl refuses to marry a man they call it throwing him down, giving him the sack, or handing him a lemon."
"Yours is an exceptional country," said Traquair.
Miss MacNish appeared in the doorway behind them. "I'm sorry to have been so long," she said; "I had to give out the linen for luncheon."
McTavish flung away his cigarette, and sprang to his feet as if some one had stuck a pin into him. Traquair, according to the schedule, vanished.
"It seemed very, very long," said McTavish.
"Miss McTavish," said Miss MacNish, "has consented to see you."
"Good Heavens!—when?"
"Now."
"But I don't want to see hernow."
"But you told me"—Miss MacNish looked thoroughly puzzled—"you told me just what you were going to say to her. You said it was all predestined."
"Miss MacNish, it was not Miss McTavish I was thinking of—I'm sure it wasn't. It was you."
"Are you proposing to me?" she asked.
"Of course, I am. Come into the garden—I can't talk on these steps, right on top of a gravel walk with a distant vista of three gardeners and a cartful of sand."
"I must say," said Miss MacNish, "that this is the suddenest thing that ever happened to me."
"But you said you believed in love at first sight," McTavish explained. "You knew yesterday what had happened to me—don't say you didn't, because I saw you smiling to yourself. You might come into the garden and let me say my say."
She didn't budge.
"Very well then. I will make a scene—right here—a terrible scene." He caught her two hands in his, and drew her toward him so that the keys at her belt jangled and clashed.
"This is preposterous!" she exclaimed.
"Not so preposterous as you think. But what's your first name?"
"I think I haven't any at the moment."
"Don't be ridiculous. There—there—"
She tore her hands from him and struck at him wildly. But he ducked like a trained boxer.
"With everybody looking!" she cried, crimson with mortification.
"I had a cable," he said, "calling me back to America. That is why I have to hurry over the preliminaries."
"The preliminaries," she cried, almost in tears. "Do you know who I am that you treat me like a barmaid?"
"Ladies," said McTavish, "who masquerade as housekeepers ought to know what to expect."
Her face was a blank of astonishment. "Traquair told," she said indignantly. "Wait till I—"
"No," said McTavish; "the porter at Brig O'Dread told. He said that you yourself would show me the chapel. He said not to be surprised if you pretended to be some one else. He said you had done that kind of thing before. He seemed nettled about something."
In spite of herself Miss McTavish laughed. "I told him," she said, "that if you crossed my hand with silver, I would give it to him; but if you crossed my hand with gold, I would keep it for myself. That made him furious, and he slammed the door when he left. So you knew all along?"
"Yes—Mrs. Nevis MacNish McTavish, I did; and when you had the faint spell in the chapel, I almost proposed then. I tell you, your voice and your face, and the way you walked—oh, they did for this young man on the spot! Do you know how much hunger and longing and loving can be crowded into a few days? I do. You think I am in a hurry? It seems to me as if there'd been millions of years of slow waiting."
"I have certainly played the fool," said Miss McTavish, "and I suppose I have let myself in for this." Her voice was gentler. "Do you know, too, why I turned white in the chapel?"
"Yes," he said, "I know that."
"Traquair told you."
"Yes."
"And if you hadn't liked me this way, would you have turned me out of house and home?"
He drew her hand through his arm, and they crossed the gravel path into the garden. "What doyouthink?" he asked.
"I think—no," said she.
"Thank you," said he. "Do you read Tennyson?"
"No," said she, "Burns."
McTavish sighed helplessly. Then a light of mischief came into his eye."AsBurnssays," said he:
"'If you are not the heiress born,And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,We two will wed to-morrow morn,And you shall still be Lady Clare,'"
"I love every word Burns wrote," she said enthusiastically, andMcTavish, though successful, was ashamed.
"McTavish," she said, "the other day, when I felt that I had to get here before you, I promised my driver ten pounds if he beat your car,"
"Yes," said McTavish, "I guessed what was up, and told my man to go slower. It wasn't the psychological moment for either of us to break our necks, was it?"
"No; but I promised the man ten pound, McTavish—and I hay'na got it."
"Ten pounds ought to have a certain purchasing power," said he.
"Then shut your eyes," she commanded.
"And after all," she said, "you'll beTheMcTavish, won't you?"
"I will not," he said. "Do you think I'm going to take you back to America with me Saturday, and have all my friends in New York point their fingers at me, and call me—The?"
He had been so buffeted by fortune, through various climates and various applications of his many-sidedness, that when I first met Leslie it was difficult to believe him a fellow countryman. His speech had been welded by the influence of alien languages to a choice cosmopolitanism. His skin, thick and brown from blazing sunshines, puckered monkey-like about his blue, blinking eyes. He never hurried. He was going to Hong-Kong to build part of a dry-dock for the English Government, he said, but his ambitions had dwindled to owning a farm somewhere in New York State and having a regular menagerie of birds and animals.
His most enthusiastic moments of conversation were in arguing and anecdotalizing the virtues and ratiocinations of animals and birds. The monkey, he said, was next to man the most clever, but was inferior to the elephant in that he had no sense of right or wrong. Furthermore, monkeys were immodest. Next came certain breeds of dogs. Very low in the scale he placed horses; very high, parrots.
"Concerning parrots," he said, "people are under erroneous impressions, but copying and imitation are not unreasonable processes. Your parrot, under his bright cynical feathers, is a modest fowl that grasps at every opportunity of education from the best source—man. In a native state his intelligence remains closed: the desire to be like a woodpecker or a humming-bird does not pick at the cover. Just as a boy born in an Indiana village and observing the houses of his neighbors might not wish to become an architect, but if he were transported to Paris or Vienna, to a confrontation of what is excellent in proportion, it might be that art would stir in his spirit and, after years of imitation, would come forth in a stately and exquisite procession of buildings. So in his native woods the parrot recognizes nothing but color that is worthy of his imitation. But in the habitations of man, surrounded by taste, which is the most precious of all gifts, his ambition begins to grow, his ignorance becomes a shame. He places his foot on the first rung of the educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of perfection in each trivial stage of progress? What creature remembers so faithfully and so well? We know not what we are, you and I and the rest of us; but if we had had the application, patience, and ambition of the average parrot, we should be greater men. But some people say that parrots are mean, self-centred, and malignant. They have, I admit, a crust of cynicism which might lead to that impression, and not unjustly, but underneath the parrot's crotchets there beats a great and benevolent heart. Let me give you an instance:
"In '88 my luck was down, and as a first step to raising it I shipped before the mast in an English bottom outward bound from Hong-Kong to Java. Jaffray was the cook, a big negro who owned a savage gray parrot—a mighty clever bird but to all intents and purposes of a most unscrupulous and cruel nature. Many a time her cleverness at provoking a laugh was all that saved her from sudden death. She bit whom she could; she stole what she could. She treated us like dogs. Only Jaffray could handle her without a weapon. Him she loved and made love to with a sheepish and resolute abandon. From him she endured the rapid alternations of whippings and caressings with the most stoical fortitude and self-restraint. When he whipped her she would close her eyes and say: 'I could bite him, but I won't. Polly's a bad girl. Hit her again,' When the whipping was over she would say: 'Polly's sore. Poor Polly! How I pity that poor girl!' Love-making usually succeeded a whipping in short order, and then she was at her best. She would turn her head to one side, cast the most laughably provoking glances, hold one claw before her face, perhaps, like a skeleton fan, and say: 'Don't come fooling round me. Go away, you bad man,'
"I tried my best to be friends with her. But only to prove that the knack that I am supposed to have with birds and beasts has its limitations. With one long day following another and opportunity constantly at hand, I failed utterly in obtaining her friendship. Indeed, she was so lacking in breeding as to make public mockings of my efforts. There was no man before the mast but stood higher in her graces than I. My only success was in keeping my temper. But it was fated that we should be friends and comrades, drawn together by the bonds of a common suffering.
"I will tell you the story of the wreck another time. In some ways it was peculiar. I will only tell you now that I swam for a long time (there was an opaque fog) and bumped my head against one of the ship's boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the boat. And presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had failed. Polly sat in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her—she was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was nearer to tears.
"It was cold for that part of the world, and rain fell heavily from time to time. Polly complained bitterly all night and said that she would take her death o' cold, but in the morning (I had fallen asleep) she waked me in her pleasantest and most satisfied voice, saying, 'Tumble up for breakfast.' I pulled myself out of the rain-water into which I had slipped, and sat up. The sky and sea were clear from one horizon to the other and the sun was beginning to scorch.
"'Bully and warm, ain't it?' said Polly.
"'Right you are, old girl,' said I.
"She perched on my shoulder and began to oil and arrange her draggled feathers.
"'What a hell of a wreck that was!' she said suddenly, and, after a pause: 'Where's my nigger?'
"'He's forsaken you, old girl,' said I, 'for Mother Carey's chickens.'
"'Poor Polly,' said she; 'how I pity that poor girl!'
"Now I don't advance for a moment the theory that she understood all that she said, nor even a part of what I said. But her statements and answers were often wonderfully apt. Have you ever known one of those tremendously clever deaf people whom you may talk with for a long time before discovering that they are deaf? Talking with poor Jaffray's parrot was like that. It was only occasionally—not often, mind—that her phrases argued an utter lack of reasoning power. She had been educated to what I suppose to be a point very close to the limit of a parrot's powers. At a fair count she had memorized a hundred and fifty sentences, a dozen songs, and twenty or thirty tunes to whistle. Many savages have not larger vocabularies; many highborn ladies have a less gentle and cultivated enunciation. Let me tell you that had I been alone in that boat, a young man, as I then was, who saw his ambitions and energies doomed to a watery and abrupt finish, with a brief interval of starvation to face, I might easily have gone mad. But I was saved from that because I had somebody to talk to. And to receive confidence and complaint the parrot was better fitted than a human being, better fitted than a woman, for she placed no bar of reticence, and I could despair as I pleased and on my own terms.
"My clothes dried during the first day, and at night she would creep under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my ears with a sharp 'Take your time! Take your time!'
"At sunrise every day she would wake me with a hearty 'Tumble up for breakfast.'
"Unfortunately there was never any breakfast to be had, but the rain-water in the bottom of the boat, warm as it was and tasting of rotting wood, saved us from more frightful trial.
"Here is a curious fact: After the second night I realized and counted every hour in all its misery of hunger and duration, yet I cannot, to save my soul, remember how many days and nights passed between the wreck and that singular argument for a parrot's power of reasoning that was to be advanced to me. It suffices to know that many days and nights went by before we began to die of hunger.
"In what remained of the rain-water (with the slow oscillations of the boat it swashed about and left deposits of slime on her boards) I caught from time to time glimpses of my face as affected by starvation. And it may interest you to know that it was not the leanness of my face that appalled me but the wickedness of it. All the sins I had ever sinned, all the lies I had told, all the meannesses I had done, the drunks I had been on, the lusts I had sated, came back to me from the bilge-water. And I knew that if I died then and there I should go straight to hell if there was one. I made divers trials at repentance but was not able to concentrate my mind upon them. I could see but one hope of salvation—to die as I had not lived—like a gentleman. It was not a voluminous duty, owing to the limits set upon conduct by the situation, but it was obvious. Whatever pangs I should experience in the stages of dissolution, I must spare Polly.
"In view of what occurred it is sufficiently obvious that I read my duty wrongly. For, when I was encouraging myself to spare the bird I should rather have been planning to save her. She, too, must have been suffering frightfully from the long-continued lack of her customary diet, but it seems that while enduring it she was scheming to save me.
"She had been sitting disconsolately on the gunwale when the means struck suddenly into her tortuously working mind and acted upon her demeanor like a sight of sunflower seeds, of which she was prodigiously fond. If I follow her reasoning correctly it was this. The man who has been so nice to me needs food. He can't find it for himself; therefore I must find it for him. Thus far she reasoned. And then, unfortunately, trusting too much to a generous instinct, and disregarding the most obvious and simple calculation, she omitted the act of turning around, and instead of laying the egg that was to save me in the boat, she laid it in the ocean. It sank."
* * * * *
Long voyages make for dulness. I had listened to the above narrative with so much interest as to lose for a moment my sense of what was patent. In the same absurd way that one man says to another whom he knows perfectly well, "What—is this you?" I said to Leslie very eagerly, "Were you saved?" And he answered, "No; we were both drowned."
Last winter was socially the most disgusting that I remember ever having known, because everybody lost money, except Sally's father and mine. We didn't, of course, mind how much money our friends lost—they always had plenty left; but we hated to have them talk about it, and complain all the time, and say that it was the President's fault, or poor John Rockefeller's, or Senator So-and-so's, or the life insurance people's. When a man loses money it is, as a matter of fact, almost always his own fault. I said so at the beginning of last winter, and I say so still. And Sally, who is too lazy to think up original remarks, copied it from me and made no bones about saying it to all the people she knew who she thought needed that kind of comfort. But perhaps, now that I think of it, Sally and I may have contributed to making the winter socially disgusting. Be that as it may, we were the greatest sufferers.
We moved to Idle Island in September. And we were so delighted with what the architects, and landscape-gardeners, and mosquito doctors had done to make it habitable; with the house itself, and the grape-house, and greenhouses, and gardens, and pergolas, and marble columns from Athens, and terraces, and in-and-out door tennis-courts, and swimming-pools, and boat-houses, and golf links, and all the other country-place necessities, and particularly with a line of the most comfortable lounging-chairs and divans in the world, that we decided to spend the winter there. Sally telephoned to my father's secretary and asked him to spend the winter with us, and make out lists for week-end parties, and to be generally civil and useful. The secretary said that he would be delighted to come if he could persuade my father and mother to go abroad for the winter; and later he called Sally up, and said that he had persuaded them.
Well, from the first our week-end parties were failures. On the first Friday in October the President of the United States said that he hated cheats and liars (only he mentioned names) and the stock-market went to smash. Saturday it was still in a messy state, and the people who came out Saturday afternoon couldn't or wouldn't talk about anything else. They came by the 4:30 to Stepping-Stone, and were ferried over to the island in the motor boat. Sally and I rode down to the pier in the jinrikishas that my father's secretary had had imported for us for a wedding present; and, I give you my word, the motor-boat as it slowed into the pier looked like an excursion steamer out to view the beauties of the Hudson. Everybody on board was hidden behind a newspaper.
"Fong," said Sally to her jinrikisha man, "take me back to the house."
He turned and trotted off with her, and they disappeared under the elms.
"Just because your guests aren't interested in you," I called after her, "is no reason why you shouldn't be interested in them."
But she didn't answer, and I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings; so I said to my man, or horse, or horse-man—it's hard to know what to call them:
"Long Lee, you go back to the house, clip-step."
Clip-step soon overtook Sally, and I asked her what she was mad about.
"I'm mad," she said, "because none of those people have ever seen this beautiful island before, and they wouldn't look up from their dirty old newspapers. What's the matter with them?"
"They're worried about the market," said I, "and each one wants the others to think that he's more worried than they are. That's all."
"But the women!" said Sally. "There we sat waving to them, and not so much as a look for our pains. My arm is all numb from waving hospitably."
"Never mind," I said. "I'll—I'll—ask your maid to rub it for you. And then we'll send the motor-boat for the very latest edition of the papers, and we'll have Blenheim and Windermere fold them like ships and cocked hats, the way they do the napkins, and put them at each person's place at dinner. That will be the tactful way of showing them whatwethink about it."
Sally, naturally enough, was delighted at this idea, and forgot all about her poor, numb arm. But the scheme sounded better than it worked. Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, or rather if it didn't keep up. And nobody admired the new furniture or the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said anything pleasant and agreeable.
"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to buy water enough to fill it."
"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never saw such a lot of oafs. I—"
"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House—"
"If you must tell me again—" I began.
"Oh," he said disgustedly, "youcan't be serious about anything. You're so da—a—ah—urn—rich that you never give a thought to the suffering of the consumer."
"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the Clarion's ball last winter?—I thought about the consumer then, I can tell you."
Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they kept saying very loud, and both at once:
"I tellyou!" and they made that beginning over and over, and never got any further.
At two o'clock the next morning Mrs. Giddings turned to Sally and said:
"And now, my dear, I can't wait another moment. You must show me all over your lovely new house. I can think of nothing else."
"Can't you?" said Sally. "I can. It's two o'clock. But I'll show you to your own lovely room, if you like."
In the morning I sent for Blenheim, and told him to take all the Sunday papers as soon as they arrived and throw them overboard. All I meant to be was tactful. But it wouldn't do. The first thing the men asked for was the papers; and the second thing. And finally they made such a fuss and threw out so many hints that I had to send the motor-boat over to the main-land. This made me rather sore at the moment, and I wished that the motor-boat was at the bottom of the Sound; but it wasn't, and had to be sent.
Later in the day I was struck with an idea. It was one of the few that ever struck me without outside help, and I will keep it dark for the present. But when I got Sally alone I said to her:
"Now, Sally, answer prettily: do you or do you not know what plausible weather is?"
"I do not," she said promptly.
"Of course, you do not," I said, "you miserable little ignoramus. It has to do with an idea."
"No, Sam!" cried Sally.
"One of mine," I said.
"Oh, Sam!" she said. "Can I help?"
"You can."
"How?"
"You can pray for it."
"For the idea?" she asked.
"No, you silly little goat," I said. "For the plausible weather."
"Must I?" she asked.
"You must," I said. "If you have marrow-bones, prepare to use them now."
Sally looked really shocked.
"Knees," I explained. "They're the same thing. But now that I think of it, you needn't use yours. If anybody were looking, it would be different, of course. But nobody is, and you may use mine."
So Sally used my knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather.
But it was months coming.
Think, if you can, of a whole winter passing in Westchester County without its storming one or more times on any single solitary Saturday or Sunday or holiday! Christmas Day, even, some of the men played tennis out-of-doors. The balls were cold and didn't bounce very high, and all the men who played wanted to sit in the bar and talk stocks, but otherwise it made a pretty good game. Often, because our guests were so disagreeable about the money they had lost or were losing, we decided not to give any more parties, but when we thought that fresh air was good for our friends, whether they liked it or not, of course we had to keep on asking them. And, besides, we were very much set on the idea that I have referred to, and there was always a chance of plausible weather.
It did not come till May. But then it "came good," as Sally said. It "came good" and it came opportunely. Everything was right. We had the right guests; we had the right situation in Wall Street, and the weather was right. It came out of the north-east, darkly blowing (this was Saturday, just after the usual motor-boat load and their afternoon editions had been landed), and at first it made the Sound, and even the sheltered narrows between the island and the main-land, look pancake-flat and oily. Then it turned the Sound into a kind of incoming gray, striped with white; and then into clean white, wonderfully bright and staring under the dark clouds. I never saw a finer storm come up finer. But nobody would go out to the point to see it come. The Stock Exchange had closed on the verge of panic (that was its chronic Saturday closing last winter) and you couldn't get the men or women away from the thought of whatmighthappen Monday. "Good heavens," said Billoo, "think of poor Sharply on his way home from Europe! Can't get to Wall Street before Wednesday, and God knows what he'll find when he gets there."
"What good would it do him to get there before?" I asked. "Wouldn't he sail right in and do the wrong thing, just as everybody has done all winter?"
"You don't understand, Sam," said Billoo, very lugubriously; and then he annihilated me by banging his fist on a table and saying, "At least he'd be on the spot, wouldn't he?"
"Oh," I said, "if you put it that way, I admit that that's just where he would be. Will anybody come and have a look at the fine young storm that I'm having served?"
"Not now, Sam—not now," said Billoo, as if the storm would always stay just where, and as, it was; and nobody else said anything. The men wanted to shout and get angry and make dismal prophecies, and the women wanted to stay and hear them, and egg them on, and decide what they would buy or sell on Monday.
"All right, Billoo-on-the-spot," I said. "Sally—?"
Sally was glad to come. And first we went out on the point and had a good look at the storm. The waves at our feet were breaking big and wild, the wind was groaning and howling as if it had a mortal stomach-ache, and about a mile out was a kind of thick curtain of perpendicular lines, with dark, squally shadows at its base.
"Sam!" cried Sally, "it's snow—snow," and she began to jump up and down.
In a minute or two flakes began to hit us wet slaps in the face, and we took hands and danced, and then ran (there must have been something intoxicating about that storm) all the way to the pier. And there was the captain of the motor-boat just stepping ashore.
"The man himself," said Sally.
"Captain," said I, "how are we off for boats?"
By good-luck there were in commission only the motor-boat, and the row-boat that she towed behind, and a canoe in the loft of the boat-house.
"Captain," I said, "take theHobo(that was the name of the motor-boat) and her tender to City Island, and don't come back till Wednesday morning, in time for the Wall Street special."
"When you get to City Island," said Sally, "try to look crippled."
"Not you," I said, "but theHobo."
"Tell them," said Sally, "if they ask questions, that you were blown from your moorings, and that you couldn't get back in the teeth of the gale because—because—"
"Because," said I, "your cylinders slipped, and your clutch missed fire, and your carbureter was full of prunes."
"In other words," said Sally, "if anybody ever asks you anything about anything—lie."
We gave him a lot more instructions, and some eloquent money, and he said, "Very good, ma'am," to me, and "Very good, miss," to Sally, and pretty soon he, and theHobo, and the engineer, and theHobo'screw of one, and the tender were neatly blown from their moorings, and drifted helplessly toward City Island at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour. Then Sally and I (it was snowing hard, now) climbed into the loft of the boat-house, andfixedthe canoe.
"There," said Sally, putting down her little hatchet, "I don't believe the most God-fearing banker in this world would put to sea in that! Well, Sam, we've done it now."
"We have," said I.
"Will Monday never come?" said Sally.
"Stop," said I; "the telephone."
Idle Island was moored to the mainland by a telephone cable. It took us nearly an hour to find where this slipped into the water. And we were tired and hungry and wet and cold, but we simply had to persevere. It was frightful. At length we found the thing—it looked like a slimy black snake—and we cut it, where the water was a foot deep—the water bit my wrists and ankles as sharply as if it had been sharks—and went back to the house through the storm.
It was as black as night (the weather, not the house), snowing furiously and howling. We crept into the house like a couple of sneak-thieves, and heard Billoo at his very loudest shouting:
"I had Morgan on the wire all right—and the fool operator cut me off!"
Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face.
"Hello, fool operator," she said.
"Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer."
"To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged.