Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 136

Though Olivia Campbell had written to her late hostess of her probable exceeding boredom when “at the goats’ milk,” it was only because she felt the absurdity of going there. It was fashionable to pretend to ennui, but in reality she hardly knew the meaning of the word, either in its French form or in its English.

Least of all did she know it this morning as she knelt by the little mountain pool which an eager burn, slackened in its course by a sudden outward thrust of the slope, had amused itself by forming on this kind of escarpment. She was watching the antics of a couple of kids who, in the intervals of staring at her across that mirror, sprang about it the most ridiculous gymnastics or butted each other with infantile fury. Olivia knelt there in a blue gown and a large shady hat and laughed; securely seated on a big stone, with a cloak folded beneath her, Mrs. Elspeth MacUre, who had been her nurse, knitted busily, and from time to time relaxed into a smile. And it was fine weather; fine with that loveliness-waking magic of the Western Highlands, which can wipe clean from the memory the days of mist and rain and storm, long and many though they be. Highlanders both, the two by the pool were not unmindful of this, though Mrs. MacUre, who was of a stout habit, had already remarked rather ungratefully upon the heat.

“You’ll fall in, you wee thing!” warned Olivia, addressing one of the kids. “And I doubt you can swim. Are you prepared to wade in after this featherbrain if necessary, Elspeth?”

Mrs. MacUre shook her head with decision, but replied not in words. She was counting stitches.

“I see a man coming up the path who can act rescuer if one is needed,” said Olivia in a lower voice. “But do not be so rash, creature,” she went on, addressing the kid in Gaelic, as if she thought it could better understand that tongue. . . . “Although,” she added with a little quick intake of the breath, “he who comes is something skilful in rescue . . . especially from water!” And, the colour leaping into her face, she rose to her feet. “Mr. Stewart, how . . . how come you here?”

Hat in hand, Ian stood on the other side of the pool. Everything in the scene was painted on his brain with pigments that would never fade, he thought—the azure pool, the crystal burn that fed it, the glowing heather, miles upon miles of surging mountains, clouds like ships in full sail, and soaring, limitless sky—and yet he only saw one figure, Olivia’s.

“Kilrain lay upon my road yesterday,” he replied, repeating what he had carefully rehearsed, “but I was belated in my arrival last night. And I bethought me this morning that you had written to Grizel of your intention of being here in August; and so I resolved that, if you permitted it, I would pay my respects to you.”

If she had been alone, would she have sent him about his business, he wondered. And how much was she conscious of what had been virtually their last meeting, among the moon-daisies? He could not tell. She turned to her attendant, who was still knitting, and said with a smile, “Elspeth, this is Mr. Stewart of Invernacree, to whom I owe my rescue from that horrible coach, as you know. Pray, Mr. Stewart, come round to this side of the lochan and let Mrs. MacUre have a good look at you!”

Ian came round the pool—a very ordinary little Highland tarn, but more wonderful to him than all the stretch of the long sea-loch by which he dwelt, because she was upon its brink. Mrs. MacUre rose and curtsied to him. Even she shared in the enchantment, though to be sure he could have wished her away. And yet—she had perhaps her uses.

“And so you are travelling, Mr. Stewart,” remarked Miss Campbell. “You have very fine weather for your journey. May one ask whither you are bound—for Perth perhaps?”

“No, I am upon my way home,” confessed Ian. “I have been to Glasgow upon affairs.”

“To Glasgow?” said the girl, and he saw those delicate eyebrows of hers lift a trifle. She recognised then that his homeward road had been by no means of the most direct. Indeed she showed her realisation of it next moment by adding, with a spice of mischief, “You too have perhaps been ordered to the goats’ milk, Mr. Stewart, for your health?”

Before Mrs. MacUre Ian would not take up the challenge. He replied soberly, “No, Madam, that is not the case. I had a fancy to see Kilrain, that is all, and came this way, but it was almost dark last night when I reached it.”

“Well, now you see it!” said Olivia, waving her hand towards the great sweep of view. “This is the prospect for which you have, I imagine—though indeed I am no geographer—come a good many miles out of your way!”

“And is there no other?” asked Ian, venturing to look at her rather directly. “Cannot one see more of the place from the pinewood yonder, for instance?”

On her answer to that simple question hung balanced, it seemed to him in some crazy fashion, the very continuance of the mountains in their solid majesty, the very preservation of the sun in the sky. He held his breath lest all should go crashing. . . . And though Olivia could scarcely have guessed at that exaggerated conviction of his, at any rate she weighed his suggestion before rejecting it—and did not reject it.

“One might perhaps see a little further down the valley from the other side of the wood,” she conceded. “Shall we walk up that way? I will come back to you here, Elspeth; but if you find the sun too hot, do you return to the cottage.”

Ian did not know what Mrs. MacUre said to this proposal, nor did he care. The sun still shone, and the hills were secure. Miss Campbell, when she could easily have avoided it, had granted him an interview alone; that was all that mattered.