Читать книгу The Dark Mile - D. K. Broster - Страница 17

June 22nd—24th.

The sun was coming into the bedroom, and Olivia Campbell, lying on her couch near the window, watched it with delight—the sun and the sweet air from the hills. Their presence seemed to dispel the last traces of that haunting memory of darkness and confinement which had hovered over her during the last few days. It had quite lifted now, and she could laugh at it, and say, as she had said to kind Miss Stewart, that nothing less romantic or more ridiculous could happen to any girl than the accident which had brought her to Invernacree. To be imprisoned in an overturned coach with the possibility of being drowned, before she could be extricated, in six inches or so of loch water! And how had she been extricated—how had Mr. Ian Stewart, the actual rescuer, as she had heard from her father—how had this agile young man contrived to extract her from the bottom of her prison without trampling upon her?

Grizel indeed scarcely knew, for her brother had not been expansive on the subject; she could only be thankful that her patient had been extracted. “You were in real danger, dear Miss Campbell, seeing that you were unconscious.” “But in such a ludicrous kind of danger,” Olivia had responded, laughing. “Not, indeed, that I wish to underrate your brother’s skill in getting me out of it!”

Olivia had laughed a good deal in her two and twenty years of life, for she had a happy disposition and a keen sense of the ridiculous. People said that her widowed father loved her, his only daughter, better than any of his four tall sons, whom, like most men, young or old, she could generally charm into doing what she wanted. Wilful she was, more than a little, but at the core of too fine a temper to misuse her power very seriously, and exercising it much too spontaneously to be vain of it. So loth was her father to part with her that, though she had arrived some time ago at full marriageable age, he neither made plans for a match nor smiled on those gentlemen who were so willing to make the plans for themselves. Olivia did not smile upon them either with any permanency, being wont to say that the only man who always pleased her was that friend of her father’s, Mr. Maitland of Strathmory, whom she had known from a child. But she was safe in saying that, for there were three very solid obstacles in the way of her ever uniting herself to that kind and personable gentleman—he was forty-five at least, was a Jacobite, and had a living if bedridden wife, not to speak of a son just grown to manhood. Olivia called him Godfather, though he had no right to that title, nor indeed any kind of relationship with her. Just occasionally it had occurred to her to wonder how Mr. Maitland, holding such very different political views from her father—having, in fact, been “out” in the Forty-five, could be on such friendly terms with him. But it was quite a couple of years now since he had paid them a visit at Cairns.

It was perhaps not surprising that she should suddenly think of her Jacobite friend, here, in a Jacobite, even an ultra-Jacobite household. Before the Rising, so she had been told, relations between the Whigs and the adherents of the White Rose had been much easier, a case of live and let live; but the events of 1745 and 1746 had wiped out that tolerance and hardened the line of cleavage. And Olivia knew, of course, that, as a field officer commanding at Culloden, her father could not be welcome in a house whose men had certainly fought on the opposite side. That its eldest son had fallen there she fortunately did not know. But no trace of political animosity had coloured the kindness and care of the two Miss Stewarts, and it was only when she looked at the very unflattering oil painting of the ill-fated “Pretender’s son” over her mantelpiece that Olivia remembered where she was.

She glanced round the bedroom now in search of something to occupy her. It was not often that she was left thus alone. Grizel had lent her a book, but she was tired of reading—tired, too, of lying on this couch, when she felt perfectly well. She slipped off it and went and sat down by the open window.

How delicious the air was! And, absurd though she might find her adventure, it had not been free from genuine peril. That rocking, swaying coach . . . Yes, indeed there had been a possibility that she might not now be breathing this air, feeling the warm sunlight on her throat, looking at those distant blue and purple mountains . . . nor watching with pleased eyes the dove which suddenly alighted on the sill outside and began to walk about there.

It was this bird which induced Olivia to lean out. “You pretty creature!” she said impulsively, and put forth a cautious hand, hoping to stroke its sleek neck. But, though the pet dove was indifferent to her presence just inside the window, the stretching out of that strange hand alarmed it, and it flew off. Olivia leant out still further to see where it had gone to, and thus became aware of a young man almost immediately below her, who was engaged in fastening up against the wall of the house a detached spray of something or other. And this young man, though his face was a little turned upwards, did not see her. His brow wore a slight frown as he worked, and between his lips was a piece of twine.

And so Olivia looked down upon her rescuer’s countenance as he had looked upon hers—though not in this case exactly upside down nor for nearly so long a period. In fact it was only for a moment or so. Some instinct caused Ian to look up, and he instantly beheld Miss Campbell gazing down upon him. A blush sprang into the lady’s cheek, and she made a movement to withdraw. Ian stepped backwards; he could not doff his hat, since he was already bareheaded. But he removed the string from his mouth, bowed, and said rather formally:

“Good morning, madam. I am glad to see you recovered.”

“I . . . I was trying to stroke that dove,” said Olivia, with a natural idea of accounting for her situation at the window. “But it flew away.” (It was to be hoped that Mr. Stewart did not know the number of seconds which had elapsed since its flight, but he probably did.) “I think I see it in the cedar tree yonder.”

“My sister Jacqueline could catch it for you,” Ian assured her gravely. “It will not come to me. I will find her.”

“No, no, Mr. Stewart,” said Olivia in haste. “I do not want the bird. I want . . . when shall I have the opportunity of thanking you for what you did for me?”

“Thanking me!” exclaimed the young man, looking up at her more fully. “Miss Campbell, you have nothing to thank me for. I fear my sisters have been exaggerating a very simple and natural action, and one that in no way warrants gratitude.”

“But I think differently,” replied Miss Campbell in a soft voice—she had at all times a very pleasing one. And from the window she gave young Invernacree a glimpse of the charm of her smile, which, though he knew it not, was reported in the neighbourhood of Cairns—and further than that—to have the power to coax a man’s heart out of his breast. Then she withdrew from the window rather suddenly, for Grizel had just come into the room behind her.

“I have been talking to your brother, in the most romantical fashion, out of the window,” confessed Olivia, laughing. “When, dear Miss Stewart, will you allow me to go downstairs and thank him in proper form for his rescue of me?”

Grizel looked at her standing there. For a Campbell, she was dark; tall and of a beautiful shape, and held herself like a princess. She wore on her simple grey gown a plain muslin kerchief; but the gown had little green paniers too. Good, homely Grizel thought it very pretty. She smiled back.

“The doctor said that you might leave your room on the third day. To-morrow, then, if you sleep well to-night.”

Olivia Campbell slept well enough when the time came. Strange to say, Mr. Stewart the younger did not. The recollection of a glance, a smile, sent down from a window, had been with him all the rest of the day, and he resented the impression which he could not shake off. There she had stood in that grey gown, grey like the dove’s plumage—but she did not at all remind him of a dove—and had given him that smile which seemed to smite down from the window into his very vitals. “The girl’s a finished coquette!” he said indignantly to himself. “Thank God she will soon be gone!”

But, saints above, she was lovely—lovely beyond a dream! Yet he did not thank God for that.

Miss Campbell’s leaving her room next day was something of an event. Alexander Stewart, forewarned of her approach, met her at the foot of the stairs, made the most paternal enquiries after her health, and gave her his arm to the drawing-room, where Jacqueline awaited her with a cordial, and an English spaniel which she had never seen before—it was Ian’s—greeted her, after the manner of its kind, as a dear and seldom-seen friend.

After a little while dinner was announced. The spaniel’s owner came into the dining-room and duly kissed her hand. She sat upon her host’s right, Grizel upon his left, young Invernacree at the bottom of the table. The light from the window was behind him, and Olivia observed how well his head was set upon his shoulders. They ate roast muirfowl, but the old laird had broth. The spaniel sat by her side throughout the meal, and gazed up at her with eloquent but sycophantic eyes. Young Mr. Stewart did not say much. Was he shy, or sulky?

Olivia herself was neither, and Jacqueline, who already thought her the most beautiful being she should ever behold, was equally enraptured with her conversation. Even Invernacree, who was not accustomed to hearing brilliant talk from ladies, though at first a trifle mistrustful, ended by being subjugated by it too. After dinner the convalescent was allowed to take a turn in the garden, the old laird with his stick on one side, Jacqueline on the other, Grizel and Ian more or less in attendance. Miss Campbell was delighted with the view over Loch Linnhe, and asked the names of all the mountains she could see. Ian had to supply the names of some which his father’s old eyes could not quite distinguish; he did so with a polite readiness, but nothing more. But the old man was pleased with her enthusiasm for Appin, and forgot what blood it was which coursed through the veins of the little hand lying so lightly upon his arm. He was sorry to deliver her over to his eldest daughter, who then bore her off to her bedchamber again.

Without Miss Campbell’s presence, something seemed lacking at supper that night; old Invernacree went so far as to put the lack into words. Ian neither agreed nor dissented; and his spaniel lay heavily on his feet under the table. But his light burnt late that night, and he read himself almost into a state of stupor before he ventured to get into bed.