Читать книгу Red Rowans - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 10

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People who only know the West Highlands in the rainy months of August and September, when a chill damp, almost suggestive of winter, comes to the air, will scarcely credit the intense heat which June and July often bring to the narrow glens, shut in on all sides by sun-baked mountains. Then the springs fail, and the cattle break through the fences, seeking the nearest point of the river; or stand knee-deep in the estuary water, flicking away the plague of flies with their tails, and lowing seaward to the returning tides. Then the burns, fine as a silver thread down the mountain sides, run with a clear bell-like tinkle through the boulders over which they will dash with a roar and a rush in the coming Lammas floods. Then the cotton grass hangs motionless on its hair-like stem, and the bog myrtle gives out a hot, dry, aromatic scent, to mingle with that of the drying grass. On such days as these, everything having life instinctively seeks the shade. So Marjory Carmichael, on the morning after the laird's return, left the dusty high-road, crossed the fast hardening bogs by the tussocks of gay mosses tufted with bell-heather, and so continued her walk along the alder-fringed bank of the river. Even at that early hour not a leaf was stirring; the very bees hung lazily on the pale lilac scabious flowers, and the faint hush of the river had a metallic sound. Marjory, clambering down a fern-clad bank, sat down beneath a clump of hazels, set with green nuts. Below her the river, between the alder stems, showed olive and gold in sunlight or shade, with every now and again a foam fleck sailing by; for, some fifty yards above her resting-place, the Eira, fresh from a boisterous half-mile scramble among the rocks, rushed through a narrow chasm at racing speed, and fell recklessly, dashing itself into a white heat of hurry in a seething whirling pool set in sheer walls of rock, and thence finding outlet for its passion in a wider basin, and so, with ever clearing face, sliding into peace in the dark oily pool beneath the bank where Marjory sate. Her favourite nook, however, in all the river side, lay higher up, close to the leap, where she could watch the gleaming sea-trout and an occasional salmon patiently trying at the fall, see the flash of the rapids beyond the fringing ferns, or mark the drifting shadows on the opposite hillside. But the single rowan tree, clinging with distorted roots to the heather-tufted cliff, flung its branches over the fall, and gave no shade elsewhere; hence on this hottest of hot July mornings Marjory chose the hazel hollow instead, and leaning back among the flowering grasses, which sent a pinkish bloom of tiny fallen blossom on her curly hair, drew a long, closely written letter from her pocket, turned to its last sheet, and began to read it. Not for the first time, but then Cousin Tom's letters were worth a dozen of most people's, especially when they had something to say, as this one had:--

"What a hurry you seem to be in to begin work; and I am always in such a hurry to begin play. But then you have arrived, or are about to arrive, at the years of discretion, and I am a mere child of forty-one. Twenty years between us, dear! It is a lifetime; and what right have I, or any other old foozle, to dictate to you, Mademoiselle Grands-serieux, who, clever as she is, hardly knows, I think, when her most affectionate and unworthy guardian is attempting a jest. It is an evil habit in the old. Expect to hear from the School Committee in Hounslow before many days are over. I think all is settled fairly, but I hear there is no chance of your being needed before the beginning of November. And this is still July. Three whole months, therefore, ere Mademoiselle need take up the burden of teaching vulgar little boys the elements of Euclid. And yet the momentous coming of age, when Wisdom, let us hope, is to be justified of one of her children, is this week. Marjory, my dear! Fate has given you a real holiday at last! Of course, I am an incorrigible idler compared to you, but, believe me, my heart has ached at times over your sense of duty! Life is not all work, even if it is not all beer and skittles. So take the goods the gods provide (as dear old Wilson would say in the proper tongue--my Latin is merely a catalogue of dry bones)--put away all the books--let two and two be five or five hundred for the time, while you cross the Asses' Bridge with the rest of humanity. Wake up, my dear little girl! or rather begin to dream! Of what? you ask. Of anything, my dear, except Woman's Suffrage. By the way, I have six new reasons against the latter, which I will detail to Mademoiselle Grands-serieux when a detestable bacillus, who will neither be born nor die, permits of my joining her in the earthly paradise. Meanwhile have a good time--a real good time."

Marjory leant back again on a great basket of spreading lastrea which gave out scent like honey as she crushed it. Cousin Tom was delightful, and perhaps he was right. The sudden content with Life as it was which had come to her the day before when she realised its peace, its beauty, its kindliness, returned now. Through the arching hazel boughs the sunlight filtered down in a tempered brilliance restful to the eyes; a grasshopper shrilled in the bents; a yellow butterfly, settling on a leaf beside her, folded its wings and, apparently, went to sleep. An earthly paradise, indeed! Surely if one could dream anywhere it would be here.

Suddenly a faint shwish-shwish broke the silence. Shwish-shwish, at regularly recurring intervals. Marjory, recognising the sound, wondered listlessly who could be fishing the lower pool at this early hour. One of the keepers, perhaps, hopeful of a trout for his master's breakfast; rather a forlorn chance even in the pot above, with that cloudless sky. A jarring whizz, accompanied by a convulsion in the alder branches, broke in on her drowsiness, making her sit up with intelligent appreciation of the cause. The somebody, whoever he might be, was "in" to the tree. Another convulsion, gentler, but more prolonged; another short and sharp, as if somebody were losing his temper. Then a persuasive wiggle to all points of the compass in turn, and finally the whirr of a check reel.

Somebody being evidently about to try conclusions with Nature, Marjory leant forward in deep interest, knowing by bitter experience that it was two to one against humanity. At last, as she expected, there came a series of short, sharp jerks; then something she had not expected. On the morning air one comprehensive monosyllable--"Damn." That was all. No affix, no suffix; without nominative or accusative; soft, but trenchant.

"A gentleman," said Marjory to herself, without a moment's hesitation, as she rose to peer through the thick tangle of alders. If so, the laird, of course. Yes! It must be he, on the opposite bank, standing irresolute; weighing the pros and cons of breaking in, no doubt. Marjory's experienced eyes following the taut line, rested finally on the cast looped round a branch just above her, and apparently within reach. The mere possibility was sufficient to make her forget all save the instinct to help.

"Don't break, please, I can get it."

Her eager voice, unmistakably girlish and refined, echoed across to Paul Macleod, who, after a moment's astonished search, traced it to a face half-seen among the parting leaves. He took off his hat mechanically, for though it might have been a pixie's there was no mistaking its gender, and the sex found a large measure of outward respect in Paul Macleod. For the rest, help offered was with him invariably help accepted; a fact which accounted for a large portion of his popularity, since people like those around whom the memory of their own benevolence can throw a halo. So he stood watching Marjory settle methodically to her task, wondering the while who the girl could possibly be. For that she had white hands and trim ankles was abundantly evident, and neither of these charms was to be expected in the rustic beauties of the Glen.

"I am afraid I am giving you a lot of trouble," he said sympathetically, as for the third time the branch flew back from Marjory's hold with a sudden spring.

"Not at all," she gasped jerkily; one cannot speak otherwise on tiptoe with both hands above one's head.

"Perhaps I had better help."

"Perhaps you had," she answered resentfully, desisting for a moment after a fourth rebuff. "There is no positive necessity for you to remain idle. You might for instance reel in as I pull."

His faint smile was tempered by respect. The young lady on the opposite bank knew what she was about, and, perhaps, might even be good looking, if she were not quite so red in the face. So he obeyed meekly, and was rewarded by a gasp of triumph.

"There! I've got it. I knew you could help if you tried."

"I'm immensely obliged," he began; then the girl's foot slipped, the branch sprang from her hand, she made an ineffectual jump after it, and the next instant the all but disentangled cast, flung into the air by the rebound, was hard and fast in a higher twig.

Marjory could have stamped with despite; thought it wiser to laugh, but found the opposite bank full of silent, grieved sympathy.

"I'll get it yet," she called across the water, with renewed determination.

"I think, if you'll allow me, I will break in," came the deferential voice after a time. "It really must be very tiring to jump like that."

"Not at all; thank you," she retorted, without a pause. "I never--give in."

"So it appears. Will you allow me to come over and help?"

Come over and help, indeed! Marjory's growing anger slackened to contempt. As if he could come over without a detour of half a mile down or quarter of a mile up the river; and he must know it, unless he had no memory. "You can't," she jerked between her efforts. "You had--better slack line--and sit down--I'll get it somehow."

Very much "somehow." Her hat fell off first. Then, after a desperate spring, in which she succeeded in clutching a lower branch, a hairpin struck work. Hot, dishevelled, exasperated, yet still determined, she persevered without deigning another reference to the silence over the way, until an arm clothed in grey tweed reached over hers and bent the branch down within her reach. She looked round, and, even in her surprise, the great personal charm and beauty of the face looking into hers struck her almost painfully; for it seemed to soothe her quick vexation, and so to claim something from her.

"I jumped," he said, answering the look on hers. "It is quite easy by the fall."

Something new to her, something which sent a lump to her throat, made her turn away and say stiffly: "I am sorry I gave you the trouble of coming. It would have been better if you had broken in. Good morning."

He stood grave as a judge, courteous, deferential, yet evidently amused, still bending down the bough.

"Will you not finish the task you began? You said you never gave in; besides, I can hardly do it for myself." The fact was palpable; it required two hands to disentangle a singularly awkward knot. To deny this would be to confess her own annoyance, so she turned back again. Rather an awkward task with a face so close to your own, watching your ineptitude. And yet she forgot her impatience in a sudden thought. If he had fallen! If that face had had the life crushed out of it!

"You ought not to have jumped," she said, impulsively. "It was very dangerous."

"Pardon me; I have done it hundreds of times when I was a boy."

"Boys may do foolish things."

He smiled. "And men should not; but are dangerous things necessarily foolish?"

"Needlessly dangerous things are so, surely?"

"In that case, what becomes of courage?"

She paused, frankly surprised both at herself and him. How came it that he understood so quickly, that she followed him so clearly? Yet it was pleasant.

"Courage has nothing to do with the question."

His smile broadened. "Thanks. I began by saying so. The fact being that the jump is not dangerous."

"No one else jumps it," she persisted.

"Pardon me for mentioning that I am an unusually good jumper. Besides--