Читать книгу Almond, Wild Almond - D. K. Broster - Страница 12

At Fasnapoll, in Isle Askay, summer brought many a treasure dear to a child and left them for her on the white sands, or, better still, hid them in the shallow rock-pools of Camus a’ Chaisteil, among the sea anemones or the moss-green water-weeds. On this July morning of 1745, therefore, a sunburnt little girl of five or so, her homespun skirts kilted above her bare, wet sandy legs, was absorbedly dredging with her fingers in one such pool, the ends of her fair hair, which had come unbraided, dipping now and then into the clear water over which she stooped. Delightful and serious work; for one had to lay all one found of shells and coloured stones and small crabs in a neat pattern on the sand round the large starfish . . . only the crabs would not stay there. The child could not imagine why Uncle Ranald should prefer to sit over yonder on a rock, staring out to sea and not saying a word, even when she called out to him, testifying to her successes.

And in truth Uncle Ranald was, for once, paying Miss Helen Maclean scant attention, though he was conscious of her presence among the pools—the child who would wake for years yet with the sound of the waves in her ears, and see from her window the great island peaks of Rum rising all blue and purple from the sea, and was so far from guessing that her existence was a part of the reason that he himself would wake thus and see them no more.

In the year and four months since the great storm at Dunkirk which had shattered Jacobite hopes, Ranald’s circumstances had entirely changed. His uncle at Girolac was recently dead and had left him the estate—on condition that he settled there. The news had come but eight days ago, and since then the young man had been through the most tormented week of his life. Yet there was nothing for it but to accept this inheritance, to try, indeed, to feel overjoyed at his good fortune, since it would not only relieve him of his dependence upon his half-brother’s hospitality and of the idleness which irked Ranald himself so deeply, but would give him a chance of repaying Norman’s unfailing hospitality by supplementing his scanty budget. For in a good season, as he had learnt when he was there, the vineyards of Girolac should bring in a very comfortable sum.

So his sister-in-law had started looking over his clothes and the old shoemaker at the tiny clachan was frowning as he considered the worn corners of a valise which needed more than the one strip of hairy cowhide to make it really serviceable again. Ranald was to set off for his French heritage the day after to-morrow; and at this moment he was almost wishing that to-morrow would never dawn.

Small Helen, the skirt of her little gown weighed down with some treasure or other, came and plumped herself down on the sand at the side of his rock. Fond as he was of the child, Ranald paid her no attention. A gull was complacently riding on the dance of the waves close inshore—happy bird! Aye, and happy bird even in those drear days of winter, when the great grey rollers thundered in with the noise of battle, and the spindrift would fling itself up against the lichens of the ruined tower on the low headland, where the first Maclean of the Askay branch had lived and died a hundred and seventy years ago.

A hand tugged at his coat. “Look, Uncle Ranald, look at my feet!” shrilled Helen.

The young man looked down. On most of the toes of those small, fat feet was perched, like a hat, a tiny shell.

“To keep them dry if it should rain,” explained Helen, glowing with pride, and shaking back her loosened hair, she lifted a sunburnt face to him.

Ranald smiled and put a hand on her head. “Vastly ingenious, mo chridhe!” How yellow the child’s hair was, partly bleached by sun and sea. But it was not of that pure, pale gold, silk-fine . . .

It was most foolish of him, he knew, to intend passing through Western Perthshire on his road to the coast, retracing thus the route he had taken on his homeward way in the spring of last year, instead of setting out for France by way of Glasgow, more usual for dwellers in the West. But, devil take it all, though he was poor enough still, he would be tolerably prosperous this autumn, and what were riches meant for but to enable one to indulge one’s whims? Above all, when riches were purchased so dear as his would be.—But he had not so far told Norman of his intention.

Yet Bride Stewart was by now, quite probably, married to Malcolm Robertson. He would no doubt make an excellent husband, though a thought dull for that bright creature. Not that Bride had shown especial wit or sparkle in Ranald’s two encounters with her; but she was like no other girl whom he had ever seen, and that first impression of her in the dark room at Inchrannoch would always live with him, effacing even the second, less conventional meeting. She was of the blood of the sidhe; she had been cradled in a fairy dun, been lulled to sleep by the fairy songs. That was no doubt why he had so vehement a wish to see her once again, married or no—and meant to indulge it.

A step behind him made him look round, and Helen’s welcoming shriek told him whose it was.

“Dinner’s all but ready, Ranald,” announced his brother, “or so I’m told. So get you in, Helen, and put yourself to rights a little—faith, you look like a tinker’s child!”

“No, no,” protested Ranald, “she’s only a stranded mermaid! And some day, Helen, I will send you from Paris a blue silk gown, with a fine snood for Sundays!”

Jumping with joy, Helen ran off towards the house on the verge of the bay behind them. But Norman’s face was dark. “Ranald, as God sees me, I’d liefer she wore a beggar’s clothes all her life than that I should seem to push you out of Fasnapoll! I’d liefer——”

“Stop, or in another moment you’ll be believing that you are pushing me out, and never was a falser notion in the world than that! Am I not the lucky man to be coming into so fine an inheritance, and ought not I to be counting the hours until I set eyes on it? . . . If I do not, ’tis mere foolishness.”

Norman’s hand was on his shoulder, gripping it hard. After a moment he said, rather huskily: “I were as foolish in your place, I know well,” and the two of them looked in silence at the bright, plunging water.

The call of a woman’s voice came to them, and turning, they could see the mistress of Fasnapoll standing in the doorway of the low weatherbeaten house, the year-old heir in her arms.

“That will be dinner,” said her husband. “Ranald”—he paused a second, glancing at his brother’s face as if to see how he would take it—“Ranald, I hope . . . that is, of course you will follow your own bidding in the matter . . . but ’twould like us better, you’ll well understand, if you did not wed with a French lass.”

Ranald’s expression was inscrutable. He stopped and picked up one of the child Helen’s discarded shells. “Then it would seem that I am not like to wed at all! Would you have me force a Highland girl into exile too?”

“You’d not be saying that if you had set your heart on one—nor would she!”

“Then, by all the rules of logic,” riposted his brother, “’tis clear that I have not so set my heart! I doubt I’ll die unwed, like my uncle.”

“Unwed he was not, but childless.”

“Ay, I had forgot. But he made a French marriage—’twas that which brought him Girolac . . . Well, find me a wife then, Norman, a wife as good as your own, if such an one is to be found, and I’ll make shift to come home and marry her.”