Читать книгу While Rivers Run - Maurice Walsh - Страница 10

Table of Contents

There are surely many currents that flow out of finger-tips and out of eyes, currents that curve and twist and strike deep to that central sea where sensation becomes aware—which explains why Margaret, usually so calm, felt the flush in her cheeks. She was at a disadvantage, of course. The dark eyes in the white face of Alistair MacIan had nowhere to look but at her, and that they did industriously. And she knew exactly the roving journey they made. The bed-side lamp was on a small table at her left hand and showed the exquisite fairness of her skin, but it also lit her hair to splendour, and that splendour had much of red in it. A young woman may be slightly embarrassed by eyes that rove from ear-curls to dimpled cheek, to nose not quite guiltless of powder, to lips, to firmly rounded chin, to slenderly moulded neck with a heart-catching small hollow at its base—and back again. But if these eyes notice that eyelashes might be a shade darker than they are, and that eyebrows are a shade darker than they might be, something must be done about it. And so a single drop of water oozed from a compressed sponge, gathered to a head, and fell plump on a roving dark eye. And before that physical eye could wink itself clear, she, so to speak, squeezed a further drop on the inner eye by casually remarking, “I wonder why you never did like red hair?”

He started and gave himself a sore twinge. “How in glory did you know that?”

The naïveté of the question pleased her. “Can I not see it in your eye?”

“I’ll be shot if you can.”

That emphatic denial pleased her too. “How could I know, then?”

He lay mind-searching, while she, putting aside the sponge, extracted the cork of the olive-oil bottle.

“My great aunt!” he exclaimed. “I seem to remember. Did I say it that way?”

“Why not?”

“You know, when a fellow comes out of a long count, he acts as if he had been drugged, and says a lot of fool stuff.”

“Frank stuff, rather,” she countered, and silenced him, for he was honest.

She was massaging his neck downwards with a gentle stroking motion and with an evident knowledge of the sheathing muscles. “I should prefer moulding this neck of yours,” she said easily. “My trade, you know!”

“Neck moulder? Masseuse?”

“Sculptor. Well, no! Just out of my student course at Kensington.”

“You don’t stay here, then?”

“No; I’m for London to-morrow.”

“And mighty glad too, I’ll bet a hat!” He felt himself on firmer ground now.

“In a way. Father’s work is in London; and mine too, of course. And yet I’ll be sorry to leave uncle. He is out catching a salmon—” She caught her lip in a quick flash of teeth, but the young man did not seem to notice the implication.

“A tough job that,” he said. “Johnny Ross, the keeper, says it would tak’ the deil himself to land a fish this month.” He got the Doric twist quite decently.

“My uncle must be that one,” asserted Margaret. “He would get you a salmon out of a whin-bush. A holiday with him is ideal.”

“Do you like staying in this hole?”

She straightened up and looked at him in very complete surprise. “This hole!” she exclaimed incredulously. “Do you not like it?”

“Slow as a church. But for Paddy Joe Long, and Don Webster, and——”

“Mr Don Webster makes it lively enough, doesn’t he?”

“I should smile,” he agreed quaintly, and his own smile twisted amusedly. “What have I said now?”

“That anyone should call Highland Drum a hole——”

“Sorry. Perhaps I did not meet the real people—till to-night.”

She refused to rise to that. She felt strangely disappointed at this estimate of a spot so perfect, and even felt militantly disposed to confute and confound, but she also felt that this was not the time nor the place. The youth was in no fit state for castigation. He had suffered a really severe shock, and all the sensitive nerve centres were only now readjusting themselves. The recuperative forces were furiously at work, and their reaction flooded the brain with an overwhelming weariness. Under the soothing motion of Margaret’s fingers his eyelids began to weigh heavily, and a delicious drowsiness drowned him in its deep sea. Gradually she eased the massage to a halt. Already the towel had been slipped from below his head, and now she moved the down-quilt up to his neck, turned low the lamp, lifted the basin noiselessly, and tiptoed to the door. There a whisper halted her.

“Thanks, Miss Red-Head.”

“Good-night,” she whispered back, and shut the door between them. But she was not actually sure if she had had the last word after all.