Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 137

They walked up the winding path towards the wood, a path so narrow that two could not go abreast. But Ian went by Olivia’s side through the heather. She asked news of all at Invernacree, and he answered in a dream. She was graver than she had been by the pool; yet surely she could not be greatly displeased, or she would not have vouchsafed what she was vouchsafing.

To go into the pinewood out of the sunshine was like leaving the fair land of what might have been for the region of what really was. It was so much darker and colder here, and the pine stems stood stark and straight, like signposts pointing a man to his duty. Yet the sun did enter, in places, and the wood was beautiful, if with an austere beauty. And when they had walked a little way into its aisles Olivia Campbell stopped and said seriously: “Mr. Stewart, why have you come to Kilrain?”

He said, equally gravely, and quite calmly—at first: “You know why; it is because I could not keep away, knowing that you were here. If I died for it I had to see you again—once again. But there is another reason too. You must know, since that day on Eilean Soa, that I worship you; yet I allowed you to depart next morning without explaining why I could never give you the proof of that worship . . . even though it should mean nothing to you . . . why I could not ask for what I had, doubtless, no chance of obtaining—your hand in marriage.”

Olivia stood with her eyes cast down; she neither flushed nor paled; she appeared to be thinking. Then suddenly she walked on a little way, and Ian did not follow her. He was not here to plead with her, but to tell her, alas, why he never could plead. He stayed where he was under the stern, dark trees and watched her move slowly away. She crossed a glint of sunlight; her blue gown flashed with colour; then she was beyond the bright barrier. And there she came to a standstill, turned her head, and made a little sign for him to come to her. Ian came.

“I thank you for the honour you wished to do me, Mr. Stewart,” she said gently, looking at him much as she had looked that day on the island. “And I thank you for coming all this way to tell me that it was impossible.”

“I hoped you would forgive me for that,” said Ian anxiously.

“Perhaps,” said Olivia, looking away from him, “my forgiveness may depend a little upon the reason for your . . . abstention. You have not yet given me that reason, you know!” There was the faintest glimmer of a smile round her enchanting mouth. “I presume it is the very ordinary one that you are already affianced.”

“Ah no,” said Ian, “it is something more——”

“More irrevocable than that? You are married then—secretly, perhaps?”

He shook his head. “Miss Campbell, don’t play with me! Does not your own heart tell you that one of my name and allegiance could never wed with one of yours, especially——”

“Is that it?” cried Olivia, and her eyes sparkled, with what emotion the young man could not quite divine. “Surely we have buried the old clan hatreds now; and shall bury those between Whig and Jacobite in time! Can it really be that you regard me as someone outcast because my forbears and yours, a hundred years ago——”

“How could I regard you as anything of the sort!” broke in Ian passionately. “You are everything that is lovely and desirable, and I would give the sun out of the sky, if I had it, and walk in twilight all my days if only you were beside me! But there’s a river between us deeper than you know; there’s no bridge can cross it, and no power can turn its course. I can only say farewell to you, and hope that God will bless some man with you who is worthy of you . . . if there be such a man . . . worthier at least than I should have been.” He snatched up her hand and bent to kiss it; bent still further, and flinging himself on his knees, pressed the hand for a moment to his hot forehead.

“Mr. Stewart, what have I done?” asked Olivia, looking down upon him in a very perturbed fashion. “What is there between us, more than our names and our politics? For what am I to blame?”

“You? For nothing, for nothing!” answered the young man in a stifled voice. “But there is my brother Alan’s blood between us. He fell on Culloden Moor, and it was the Campbells——”

Olivia gave an exclamation. “Culloden! He died there! I did not know. And you mean that because my father . . .” She did not finish.

“Yes, that is what I mean,” said Ian. He had loosed her hand, and now got to his feet again; he was very pale.

She too was pale, and put the hand he had released over her eyes. “But,” she said rather pitifully after a moment, “my father only did his duty, and it was not . . . not by his very hand that your brother fell.”

“Not by his hand, perhaps. But by his orders, by his act. There is no difference. I would to God I could see it otherwise! You are Highland too—you must see that it is not possible.”

Yes, Olivia Campbell was Highland too. Yet she did not assent to this doctrine. She said, shivering slightly, “This wood is very cold. I think we will go out into the sun again.”

All the way out of the wood the young man beside her struggled with the desire to snatch her suddenly into his arms. All the fire, the melancholy of the Celtic nature, its passion for the hopeless and the intangible, its willingness to lose everything for a dream, and that not always a worthy dream, all surged up in him as he walked beside his Deirdre, his Bronwen, found at last, when he had thought the chance of it was over—and found in vain. Yet it was just that inheritance which kept him from a ravished kiss.

So they came in silence to the edge of the wood, and saw the sunshine spread over all the scene beyond it like a veil of gold.

“Where are you lodging, Mr. Stewart?”

He told her.

“You are remaining at Kilrain to-night?”

“No,” he said with an effort. “Now that I have seen you I shall continue my journey to Appin this afternoon.”

“I should like to have spoken with you again about this matter,” said Olivia faintly. “There are considerations . . . I cannot bear your thinking of my father in this way . . . If I had not such a headache I think I could make you see it differently.” She put her hand once more to her head, and it was quite plain that she was not acting a part.

But if he stayed, if he stayed! . . . Oh, could he be held to blame when she directly asked him to remain? And did he care if he were blamed? He offered his arm, his heart leaping so wildly that he almost felt its pulsations must quiver down to his finger-tips.

“Allow me to take you back to your lodging,” he said quietly. “And, to avoid the sun, let us descend the hill inside the wood, if it is possible.”

Murmuring some excuse for her “foolishness,” Olivia accepted his arm, and, going back a few paces, they turned and went down the slope through the solemn pine boles. So there she was, walking beside him in the twilight, as he had said. But the sun of heaven was not his, to cast from the sky; he could do nothing, nothing. . . .