Читать книгу Red Rowans - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 5

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"Love took up the Harp of Life and .... smote the Chord of Self."

"Am I really like yon?"

A small brown hand pointed peremptorily to a finished drawing on a sketcher's easel hard by, and a pair of blue eyes frowned somewhat imperiously at a young man, who, with one knee on the ground, was busily searching in the long grass for a missing brush, while palette and colours lay beside him ready to be packed up. The frown, however, was lost on the back of his head, for he gave a decisive denial, without turning round to look at the questioner.

The girl's eyes shifted once more to the drawing, and an odd, wistful curiosity came to her face as she took a step nearer to the easel. What she saw there was really rather a clever study of herself as she had been standing a few moments before, erect, yet with a kind of caress towards the branch full of scarlet rowan berries, which one round firm arm bent down from the tree above, against her glowing face. There was a certain strength in the treatment; the artist had caught something of the glorious richness of colouring in the figure and its background, but the subject had been too much for him, and he admitted it frankly. In truth, it would have needed a great painter to have done Jeanie Duncan justice as she stood under the rowan tree that autumn evening, and Paul Macleod was at best but a dabbler in art. Still, it was a truthful likeness, though the nameless charm which belongs to one face and not to another of equal beauty of form--in other words, the mysterious power of attraction--had escaped pencil and brush. There was nothing spiritual in this charm; it was simply the power which physical beauty has sometimes to move the imagination--almost the spiritual nature of men; and, such as it was, it breathed from every curve of Jeanie Duncan's face and form. She was very young, not more than seventeen at the most, and, as yet, in that remote Highland glen, where every girl, regardless of her appearance, had a jo, the pre-eminence of her own good looks had never dawned upon her. So there was no mock humility in the words which followed on rather a long pause.

"I'll no be sae bonnie, I'm thinking."

Something in her tone struck through even her companion's absorption; for Paul Macleod was given to forgetting his world over trivialities. He looked up sharply, rose hastily, stepped across to where she stood, and laid his hand on her shoulder in easy familiarity.

"Why, Jeanie, what's the matter now?"

She moved away impatiently from his touch, and, as if from habit, her arm, showing white under the russet bedgown she wore, went up to the branch above her head. And there she stood once more with the ripe red berries against her ripe red lips.

"I'm sayin' I'll no be sae bonnie as yon."

"Your eyes are not quite so blue, certainly; your cheeks not quite so pink, your hair not quite so golden, nor your----"

"That's enough, sir; ye needn't fash yourself more. I'm no for sale by public roup. I was sayin' myself that I'll no be near sae bonnie as yon."

The rowan berries were being viciously stripped from their stems, and allowed to fall in a defiant patter on the ground; yet there were audible tears in the young voice.

"You little goose! I didn't know you were so vain, Jeanie," he began.

"I'm no vain," she interrupted, sharply. "It's no that, Mr. Paul. I dinna care--at least no much--but if a lassie's bonnie----" she paused suddenly and let the branch go. It swung back, sending a red shower of overripe berries pattering round the girl and the man.

"Well, Jeanie! If a lassie's bonnie?" repeated Paul Macleod, watching the rapid changes in her vivid face with amused admiration; "if a lassie's bonnie, what happens?"

She confronted him with a certain dignity new to his experience of her.

"Ye ken fine, Mr. Paul, the difference it makes to a lassie if she is real bonnie. Wasn't it yourself was lilting the 'Beggar-Maid' at me the morn?"

"Gracious Heavens, Jeanie! Ambitious as well! On which of the crowned heads of Europe have you set your young affections? Tell me, that I may kill him!"

His arm slipped easily to her waist, and he bent to look in the face which fell as it were before his touch. Yet it was paler than it had been; for Jeanie Duncan neither giggled nor blushed.

"It's no matter where I set my heart," she said, curtly, "when I'm no bonnie."

"Who said so? Not I," he remarked, coolly.

"You said my eyes were no sae blue, my lips no sae red, my hair----"

"Thank heaven they're not! Why, Jeanie! You must surely know that you are a thousand times more beautiful than that--that chromo-lithograph over there, which is only fit for a second-class Christmas number or an undergraduate's room!"

She withdrew herself from his arm, looking at him doubtfully, ready to flare up in an instant.

"You're no pokin' fun at me?"

"Poking fun! Why"--his voice deepened suddenly, he stretched his hand towards her again--"you are simply the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

There was no mistaking the ring of reality in his tone, and yet there was nothing emotional about it. He seemed to be asserting the fact as much for his own benefit as for hers; and she also was lost in herself, in her own eagerness, as she looked again at the portrait.

"But it's real bonnie, Mr. Paul! Will it be as bonnie as the Beggar-Maid?"

"Still harping upon kings!" he said, coming back to her lightly. "Take my advice, Jeanie, and be content with commoners."

"But if I'm no content?"

"Uneasy lies the head! Don't you remember my reading that to you the other day?"

She flashed round on him in an instant, superb in her quick response, her quick resentment.

"I mind mony a thing ye've read, mony a thing ye've said, mony a thing ye've done. I've a deal to mind; too much, may be."

It came as a shock to Paul Macleod. For his heart had, as yet, an uncomfortable knack of acknowledging the truth. His head, however, came to the rescue as usual, by swift denial that those long days spent in painting Jeanie's portrait under the rowan tree were hardly wise.

"One can't have too much of a good thing, and it has been pleasant, hasn't it?"

"Mither says it's bin a sair waste o' time," replied the girl, evasively.

"I haven't wasted mine," retorted the young man airily. "Just look at that masterpiece! And I've been as good as a quarter's schooling to you, little one; think of the information I've imparted to my model, the books I've lent, the--the things I've taught----"

"Aye. You've taught me a deal. I ken that fine."

He gave an impatient toss of his head as he turned away to pack up his belongings; the girl helping him silently as if accustomed to the task.

Not a soul was in sight, though a wreath of blue peat smoke behind a neighbouring clump of firs showed the near presence of a cottage. Save for this one sign there was no trace of humanity in the scene except those two in the foreground; both in their way types of youth, health, and beauty--of physical nature at its best. But the solitude was not silent. A breeze coming up with sunsetting rustled the rowan leaves, and surged among the silver firs, in echo, as it were, to the long hush of distant breakers on a rocky shore which came rhythmically to mingle with the nearer rush of the burns streaking the hillside; while far and near the air was filled with the wailing cry of lambs newly separated from the ewes; most melancholy and depressing of all sounds, especially when the sadness of coming night settles over earth and sky, sending the shadows to creep up the hillsides and drive the sunshine before their purple battalions. A veritable battle, this, of assault and defence; each point of vantage, each knoll held by the besieged until, surrounded by the enemy, the sunlight dies by inches, gallantly, hopelessly, and the struggle begins again higher up.

The girl and boy--for Paul Macleod was still in the early twenties--felt oppressed by their surroundings, and after the manner of youthful humanity they resented a feeling which had no foundation in themselves. Were they not happy, alive to the uttermost, ready to face the unknown, eager for the experience which the world seemed to find so dreary? Why should they be saddened by things which were not as they were; which had had their day, or did not care to have it?

"Come with me as far as the gate, Jeanie," he said, impatiently. "Ah! I know you don't generally, but you might to-day. Then you can lock it. If any of old Mackenzie's lambs were to get through to their mothers he would lay the blame on you."

"Why not to you, Mr. Paul?"

He laughed rather contemptuously. "Because the road leads to your croft, not mine; besides, no one ever lays blame to me. I never get into trouble, somehow. I have all the luck that way, it seems, while my brother--who is really no worse, I suppose--is always in hot water. I never saw such a fellow."

"They're saying," began Jeanie--half to cover the fact that she had taken the first step down the sheep track--"that the laird----" she stopped abruptly and looked furtively at her companion.

"You may as well tell me what they are saying, Jeanie," he remarked, coolly. "You always have to in the end, you know, and so there is no use in making a fuss."

She was not a girl to be at every one's command, but sooner or later most women find it pleasant to be under orders, for a time, at any rate; doubtless as the result of that past slavery of which we hear so much nowadays. The feeling will be eradicated in the next generation or so, but it must be allowed for in this.

"They're sayin' Gleneira will have to sell the place, and"--she looked at the face beside her critically, as if to judge how far she might go--"they're sayin' it's a pity you were no the laird, Mr. Paul, for you love every stick and stone about, and he is never coming near it at all, at all."

The young man walked on in silence.

"Did ye know that I've never seen the laird, Mr. Paul, though me an' mither has lived at the croft since I can mind anything; but, then, she is no going down the strath, and he is no carin' for the fishin', as you are; you're knowin' every stone in the river, I'm thinkin'."

He turned to her with a quick laugh as if to dismiss the subject. "And every face beside it; for I like pretty things, and some of them are pretty. I'll tell you what it is, Jeanie, Gleneira's the most beautiful place I ever saw; and you are the most beautiful girl in it. Beggar-Maids haven't a chance, so I shall expect to be invited to your nuptials with King Cophetua; a poor laird's Jock like myself can't compete with a crowned head." The bitterness of his tone had more to do with the prospect of having to let Gleneira go, than to the manifest difficulty of appropriating Jeanie Duncan without offending his head or her heart.

"There's better worth having than crowns, maybe," said the girl, doggedly.

"Right! crowned heads may be penniless; let us say an old monarch wi' siller."

"There's better worth having than siller, maybe."

Paul looked at her curiously. Apparently it was not for nothing that he had amused his sitter by reciting the almost endless repertoire of old ballads and songs in which he had taken delight since his earliest boyhood. For it was part of his rather complex nature that he should admire the romance and sentiment in which, with the easily adopted cynicism of a clever lad, he professed to disbelieve. It suited him as a refuge from himself; and yet the fact that Jeanie Duncan had accepted this admiration as a proof of eternal truth did not displease him.

"Better worth than siller!" he echoed, wilfully provoking the answer which he knew would come. "Why! there is nothing better worth than siller--in the end."

"Aye, there is," she put in confidently, "there's love. You've tell't me the sang, many a time;--It's love that gar's the world gang round."

Was it? They stood at the gate together, she holding it open for him to pass, and the question came upon him suddenly. The old question which comes to most men. Was it worth it? Should he, or should he not, go the commonplace way of the world, and take what he could get? Yes, if he could take it without bringing something into his life for ever, which in all human probability he would not care to keep--for ever. Even memory was a tie; and yet--his heart beat quicker, and the knowledge that passion was beginning to disturb the balance of his reason came home to him, bringing with it the same quick denial with which he had met his own doubt as to the wisdom of the past. It was his way of defending the emotional side of his nature.

"Take care, Jeanie!" he said, seizing on the first commonplace detail which met his eye, "that gate is newly tarred; you'll dirty your hands."

For the first time the girl challenged him deliberately.

"I'm no carin'," she said defiantly, "my hands is used to dirt. I'm not like you. It'll no hurt me."

She closed the gate behind him sturdily, fastening the padlock, and then without another word turned to go. In so doing she roused in an instant all his obstinacy, all the imperious contrariety which would not tolerate the decision of another, even though it tallied with his own.

"Are you going without saying good-bye, Jeanie? That's rude," he began, stretching his hand over the gate, and once more wilfully provoking a situation. "Nonsense! The least you can do is to shake hands, and say thank you for all the benefits----"

He paused, and the next instant had vaulted over the gate and was kissing away her tears and calling everything to witness that he had not meant to be unkind, that she was the dearest little girl in creation. Both of which assertions were absolutely true to him at the time; she had looked too bewilderingly sweet in her sudden burst of grief for prudence.

For the next half-hour, if there be another motive power besides Love behind the veiled mystery of Life bidding the world go round, these two young people did not trouble themselves about it. The descending mists crept down to meet the shadows, the shadows crept up to meet the mists, but sea and sky and land were full of light for the boy and girl absorbed in the vast selfishness of passion. So lost in the glamour with which the great snare for youth and freedom is gilded, that neither of them thought at all of the probable ending to such a fair beginning. Jeanie, because to her this new emotion was something divine; Paul, because her estimate of it aided a certain fastidiousness which, in the absence of better motives, had served hitherto to keep him fairly straight. So, in a measure, the idyllic beauty of the position as they sate, side by side on a lichen-covered stone looking into each other's eyes, and supremely satisfied with each other's appearance, served to make Paul Macleod's professions more passionate than they would have been had she been less innocent.

It was not until with a wrench he had acknowledged that it really was time for her to be going home, and he was striding down the road alone, that a chill came over him with the question--

"Que diable allait il faire dans cette galere?"

It was one which, like a floating log after the rapids are past, always came to the surface of Paul Macleod's life when the turmoil of emotion was over. This time it brought an unpleasant surprise with it, for to tell truth he had imagined himself secure against assault. He had considered the situation calmly; had, so to speak, played with it, asserting his power of evading its natural consequences if he chose, of accepting them if he considered it worth while. And now, with his heart still beating, his face still flushed, and with Jeanie's kisses still tingling on his lips, it was no use denying that he had been taken by storm. And it annoyed him. Suddenly the thought that it was just the sort of scrape his brother would have fallen into came to enhance the odd contempt which Paul Macleod's head always had for his heart. The certainty, however, that he shared that brother's extremely emotional nature was so unwelcome that it served for a time to strengthen him in denial of his own weakness of will. After all, impulse was the essence of passion. Had he not, recognising this, voluntarily bade reason and prudence step aside. Would not any man have been a fool to think twice of the future with Jeanie Duncan's face ready to be kissed? It was worth something; in a way it was worth all the rest of the world put together. So the serio-comedy might have ended as such serio-comedies usually do but for the merest triviality; nothing more nor less than the perception that he had tarred his hands in vaulting over the gate! The offending stains sobered him, as no advice, no reasoning, no reproof, could have done. To begin with, there was no possibility of denying to himself that, be Love what it may, he, Paul Macleod, would never in a calm moment of volition have dirtied his hands in that fashion. He hated to be touched or soiled by common things, without, as it were, a "by your leave." Then there was a prophetic tinge in the consequences of his setting barriers at defiance which appealed to his imagination. After all, would it be worth while to carry about for the rest of your life an indelible mark of a past pleasure, which could scarcely fail to become a disagreeable reminiscence, no matter what was the denouement of the present situation? Marriage? Hardly that. Not only was he too poor to marry for love, but was it by any means certain that such love as this was worth the sacrifice of freedom. On the other hand, the only possible alternative was, to begin with, such shocking bad form. The Macleods of Gleneira had always kept straight in Gleneira itself. Besides, if he harmed the girl in any way, he knew perfectly well that the regret would be a tie to him all his life. That was the worst of having an imagination. Other men might do it; he could not, if only for his own sake. Then there was Jeanie, to think of poor little Jeanie, who didn't even grasp the fact that she was in danger--who would----

Ah! Was it worth while? The question came back insistently, as, with a plentiful supply of the salt butter recommended by the housekeeper at Gleneira, he tried to get rid of the tar. He was no milksop, though he liked delicate surroundings, and found a certain refinement necessary to his comfort, but, if he had no objections to soiling his hands in obedience to his own sovereign will and pleasure, he was always eager to have them clean again. And so it was with his life.

Poor little Jeanie Duncan! She in her innocent self-abandonment would have welcomed anything which would have marked her as his indelibly. And yet a real regard for her prompted his calculations. If he had held her cheaper he would not have dreaded the remorse which would be a tie to him all his life. It never occurred to him that this squeamishness had come too late, or that the fine-weather flirtation had in itself done the mischief; that the injury to an innocent girl lies in the mind only.

"Tell Donald that I shall want the light cart at five to-morrow morning. I have to catch the Oban steamer," he said to the astonished housekeeper as he sate down to his solitary dinner; for he had come to Gleneira with the intention of spending long-leave in pottering about the old place with gun and rod.

So while Jeanie Duncan slept the sleep of perfect content, her lover drove past the cottage in the grey mist of a rainy autumn morning feeling intensely virtuous; and all the more so because his heart really ached, even at the sight of the tarred gate. And no doubt nine-tenths of the men he knew would have applauded his resolution in running away, patted him on the back, told him he was a very fine fellow, and said that but for his self-control the affair might have ended miserably. Perhaps they would have been right; though, as a matter of fact, Paul Macleod was running away from the natural consequence of his own actions.

Jeanie Duncan read his note of farewell with a scared white face. It was gentle, regretful, kindly, and it killed her belief in Love for ever. And unfortunately Love had not come to her in its sensual guise. It had represented to her all the Truth, and Goodness, and Beauty in the world. So she lost a good deal; and naturally enough a great restlessness and desire for something to fill the empty space took possession of her. Finally, when Spring drew on, and the first broods were trying their wings, she--to use the phrase adopted by those who tired of life in the remote glens--"thought of service in Glasgow." Vague euphemism for much seeing of that unseen world beyond the hills.

But while Paul Macleod in his travels carried with him the consciousness of virtue, she had for memory the knowledge that she had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Two very different legacies from the same past.