Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 133

Dougal Livingstone and his brother were the rowers after all, and Ian, steering, was unable therefore to feast his miserable eyes upon the King of Lochlann’s daughter, where she sat beside him in the stern, as well as he could have done had he faced her on a thwart. On the other hand she was so close to him that his miserable body was only too conscious of the fact.

The boat slipped over the hardly rippled loch, stained in the distance by the reflected mountains with hues that had vanished when the spot was reached, leaving the water as clear and colourless as before. Jacqueline chattered, the rowers at Olivia’s request sang a iorram, Grizel told legends of this place and that. All illusion, like this tormenting nearness on the other side of the helm—like the mirage on the water, pretence of what was not and could never be. . . . When he moved the tiller from him his hand all but brushed her; when a stray whisper of breeze caught a ribbon of hers it sent it across his face or knee . . .

“Ian,” said Jacqueline, suddenly leaning forward and pointing, “why should we not land on Eilean Soa and show Miss Campbell the cairn where the ancient king was buried with his treasure?”

Land, and be released from this torturing and intoxicating proximity? No . . . yes . . . which?

His decision was not awaited. “Oh, let us land!” cried Olivia. “Of all things I love a buried treasure!”

“ ’Tis not there now,” observed the practical Grizel.

“We need not go round the point to the flat shore,” pursued Jacqueline. “You know the place this side, with the solitary pine-tree. I have often got ashore there.”

“It might be difficult for Miss Campbell,” said her brother doubtfully.

“Why, Mr. Stewart, are you suggesting that I am less nimble than your sister!” cried the guest. “I am no town lady, and I insist on being put ashore where Miss Jacqueline is accustomed to land.”

Ian yielded, and steered for the nearer side of the island, since to anyone young the place presented no difficulty. A slight spring up to an embedded piece of granite and a tiny scramble thereafter, aided by the tough stems of the tall island heather, and one was there. He got out, and, knee-deep in the heather a little above her, assisted Miss Campbell, half hoping that she would slip, so that he could catch her; but she showed no sign of such a thing.

It was Ian who slipped, or nearly, though it was not his fault. For, having put one foot on the lump of granite to extend a hand to Grizel in the boat below, he felt the stone, to his astonishment, beginning to give beneath him, and sprang back, clutching the heather, just in time to watch it slowly leave its place, slide down, and disappear sedately into the water.

“I had no notion that I was so heavy!” called Olivia’s laughing voice from above him. “I am glad you did not follow it, Mr. Stewart!”

“So am I,” observed Grizel from the boat. “But, Ian, can we land here now?”

“You cannot,” replied her brother. “Go round the point to the beach. Miss Campbell and I will walk across and meet you there.”

There was nothing else to be done, so the boat pushed off again and Ian was left alone with Olivia Campbell—alone, though but for a few minutes, in a world apart. His desire was equally to hasten to the other side of the little island . . . and to loiter here; not to speak or listen to her . . . and to detain her for hours. In this state of mind he preceded her from the landing-place, mechanically holding back a bramble or a branch when necessary, but really not conscious of what he was walking on, grass, rock or heather—till all at once he heard her cry:

“Oh, Mr. Stewart, how beautiful . . . and how very unexpected!”

And because she had stopped, he stopped too, and found that they were both in a little abandoned meadow full of moon-daisies, all swaying and nodding towards them in welcome. But in a few minutes the boat would have rounded the little green headland on their left, and he would never be alone with her anywhere again . . . thank God, thank God!

And was that why he took her hand in a cold, unsteady clasp, and without a word raised it to his lips and kissed the palm of it with a long, forsaken kiss? The touch of her fingers was like cool well-water to the burning lips of fever. She did not pull them away. But Ian dropped her hand, and stood looking at her among the knee-high daisies of Eilean Soa so wildly, so desperately, that for a second Olivia Campbell all but recoiled. She did not, however; she said gently, “The sun is very hot, Mr. Stewart; will you not put on your hat?”

“Do you think I have sunstroke?” Ian spoke so low that she could scarcely catch the words. “You know it is not that! . . . You are going away to-morrow?”

“Yes,” answered Olivia gravely. “To-morrow, when my brother comes for me.” There was pity in her beautiful eyes; that made it harder still. “I did not mean to do this to you—indeed I did not! . . . There is the boat coming to shore. I will wait here.”

He still looked at her, for as long as it took a tiny breeze to run from side to side over the daisy heads and set them quivering. Then he turned, and strode through the flowers towards the shore.

But Olivia stood without moving, pressing her hands tightly together. No, indeed she had not meant to do this! And how had she done it—she had seen him so little, talked with him so seldom! In vain to ask that question of the thousand flower-faces in their white and golden dance; if they knew they would not tell her.

“Oh dear,” said Olivia, “I wish it had not happened!”

And this was strange, for conquests were not distasteful to her.

But Ian continued to stride on, through a tangle of grasses, to the flat strand where the boat had already grounded.

“You have left Miss Campbell behind, I see,” observed Jacqueline as she sprang to land. “Whatever can those flowers be among which she is standing?”

“I do not know,” said Ian. “Are there any flowers?”

“Dear brother, you must be blind! One can see them from here—hundreds of them!” And she ran off.

Ian helped his elder sister out. “If you will forgive me,” he said in a low voice, “I will stay here by the boat while you go to the cairn with Miss Campbell. I . . . my burnt wrist is paining me somewhat; I should be poor company.”

“Dear Ian . . .” said Grizel, looking at him in perturbation. He was so oddly pale beneath his sunburn. “Shall I stay with you? Why should your wrist . . .”

“Because I wrenched it,” he lied, “when that stone gave way. The pain will go off in a little, but I think I will stay here. Go after Jacqueline and explain.”

She looked at him again dubiously and obeyed; and Ian, after a careless word or two to the rowers, walked to a rock a little way off, sat down there and was very still. If only he could have left the island, and gone home by himself. But he could not take the boat and abandon the ladies, even for a time; and though the swim to land was not beyond his powers it would have seemed the most extraordinary proceeding, calling for investigation, and above all things he wished no one of his family to know what had befallen him.

For there could be no doubt of it—he loved Olivia Campbell to distraction, and fight against the avowal of that passion as he had done, he was glad in his heart that she knew it. He ought not to have betrayed his love, because of the long and bitter racial feud almost as much as because of the blood which cried from the ground between them, but she was too generous, too noble, to make of that avowal a subject for triumph or for mockery. She might soon forget his mad and wordless confession—he hoped she would—but she would never misuse it.

And now, a supreme effort, it only remained during the homeward voyage to behave as naturally as he could, and to lay any blame for his recent defection upon yesterday’s now fortunate injury. Olivia, in her divine kindness and comprehension, would support him in that pretence.

Even if the young man were already attributing to the enchantress all sorts of noble qualities of whose existence he could not possibly have been aware, he was right as far as the homeward voyage was concerned. Miss Campbell made it as easy for him as she could, contriving somehow to change places with Grizel so that the latter, and not she, sat next the tiller; and encouraging Jacqueline to talk, to tell her again, for instance, about the empty cairn and what it had once contained.

“But the burial chamber was so small,” she objected at one point. “I should have thought a king would have been taller! Were they dwarfs in those days?”

“It was only the burnt bones of the king—or his ashes, I forget which—that they found,” explained Jacqueline, looking a little surprised, for she had distinctly heard Grizel already informing the visitor of this fact. “Isn’t that so, Ian?—Ian, what are you dreaming about there?”

“You were talking of ancient kings,” answered her brother slowly, his eyes fixed on the point for which he was steering, “and I was thinking of one, that is all. Yes, I believe that nothing but ashes was found in the cairn. None of us, after all, kings or king’s daughters, can leave behind more of ourselves than that.”

“What a horrid speech!” cried Jacqueline; and Grizel, also disliking the macabre trend which he had given to the conversation, observed drily, “You certainly made an effort to reduce yourself to that condition yesterday evening;” and began to talk about the prospects of a fine sunset. And at last, as all ordeals must, the voyage came to an end.

A surprise awaited them all at Invernacree, where they were informed that Miss Campbell’s brother had already arrived, in order to be able to make an early start with his sister next morning. He had come to the house to pay his respects, finding no one, not even the laird himself, at home, and had, the domestic understood, taken up his quarters at the tiny inn down by the loch.

“But Mr. Campbell must not remain there!” exclaimed Grizel on hearing this news. “Ian shall go and bid him come up to the house for the night—will you not, Ian?”

Without waiting to find his father Ian went off. He had no desire at all for the company of a male Campbell, and his father, he was sure, would have still less; yet he knew that Invernacree would not be satisfied to leave the traveller to the mercies of the inn, more especially when his sister was already staying beneath his roof. And after all, thought the young man, nothing mattered very much to-night. His outburst had by now numbed him; he felt nothing. To-morrow the world would come to an end for him . . . if it had not already done so over there on Eilean Soa among the daisies.

He found at the inn Mr. Colin Campbell, a tall, fair young man of about his own age, who at first refused to put the laird of Invernacree to the trouble of receiving him for one night, and was stiff even when, unable to do anything else, he finally yielded. The two of them walked together up to the house, neither finding much to say to the other.

And through the evening, while Ian watched Olivia in a kind of dream, still numbed, but every now and again waking to a stab of pain, as though the blood was beginning to run once more in a frozen limb, it seemed to him not unfortunate, perhaps, that Colin Campbell was here, for the atmosphere was changed by it. The presence of that typical son of Clan Diarmaid seemed to draw Olivia so much further away from them, back into the circle to which she belonged; it showed things as they really were. It was better so.

She left early next morning with her brother in their father’s coach, which by now had been repaired. Ian had no word alone with her. But as old Invernacree was about to hand her in she said, “I shall never ride in this carriage again, sir, without the most grateful thoughts of what I owe to you and . . . your family.”

For a moment her gaze went past him to that member of it for whom no doubt her thanks were specially intended, where he stood by Jacqueline’s side, saying nothing and not, apparently, looking at any one.

“My dear young lady,” replied the old man, with an air at once courteous and paternal, “anything which my family has been able to do for you is their good fortune. God bless you, and may you have a better journey than the last!”

Their good fortune! Ian could have laughed out loud. If his father only knew!

Mr. Colin Campbell, a little less stiff than last night, but still not at ease, got into the coach and slammed the door, the postillion chirruped to the horses, and that fatal vehicle drew away from the old white house among the oak trees. Grizel and Jacqueline stood on the steps for some time, Jacqueline waving a handkerchief, to which, as the coach turned just outside the gate, there was an answering flicker of white. But Ian had not stayed to see that.

So she was gone, the enchanted, the enchanting. Up in his own room he had only to shut his eyes, and he was back in the flowery meadow where he had kissed her hand. His heart still lay there among the daisy stems, in the place where the King of Lochlann’s daughter had stood. But now that she was gone from Appin he had a half hope that it might creep back to his breast, even if it should never be the same heart again, but remain what it seemed now, as much ashes as any in the ancient tomb on Eilean Soa.