Читать книгу While Rivers Run - Maurice Walsh - Страница 23
ОглавлениеI
There was no one in the living-room, and Margaret went through it to the door of the porch. On the gravel outside the white paling squatted a long, low, maroon touring car. Three people had already alighted from it and were talking to Aelec Brands. One was Paddy Joe Long. Another was an under-sized, wide-shouldered old man, with a white bare head and nut-cracker jaws. The third was a young woman in some white film of dress. This young woman was bare-headed too, and the first thing that Margaret noticed was that her hair was not red, but very light and very fine, and with a matt lustre on it. Her eyes went over the garden and the cottage very interestedly, and finally rested on Margaret in the porch doorway without any diminution of interest.
“She is quite frank, anyway, is the great Norrey Carr,” was Margaret’s thought.
Aelec Brands was holding converse with his laird. “The laddie is doing fine, Sir Hugh,” he told him. “A sma’ dunt on the head never hurt a MacIan.”
“Maybe not, then, Aelec,” said Sir Hugh MacIan in his soft Highland drawl. “Was it poaching you were, when you found him?”
“Not at that time, Laird—and even so, you might be grateful, since I might not have come on him and me honest.”
“And make a kirk or a mill of that, you’ll say. Well, let’s in and see him.”
Aelec opened the wooden gate, and the visitors came up the gravelled path, the young woman leading with Paddy Joe, and the old laird and Aelec shoulder to shoulder.
“Miss Brands, this is Miss Carr,” introduced Long.
The two bowed, and Margaret the stiffer of the two. It was Norrey Carr that put forward a hand in greeting.
They made a distinct contrast in everything but the fact that both possessed good looks amounting to beauty. Margaret Brands was fresh and sparkling, crowned gloriously, thought in her blue eyes, and with a skin so clear that it barely veiled the blood that ebbed and flowed beneath it. Norrey Carr gave a curious impression of weariness—weariness, not languor. Perhaps her heavily lashed, slightly hooded grey eyes caused, or added to, that impression. Powder or none, there was a faint peach-bloom of the finest down on her skin, giving it an effect as of pearl barely touched with brown. She was slim, but with a slimness that did not show a bone in her lissome long body, and when she moved she seemed to be moved by some force supremely supple yet supremely strong. And always there was that curious touch of weariness. And through that touch of weariness, through the calmness that was a natural pose, through the remoteness that was not an affectation, emanated another quality, more profound and very much more disturbing. It was not heat, nor electricity, nor what is called voluptuousness, but some subtle physical vibration that gave a sense of warmth. It came through the coolness of her hands; it put into her pearly skin a warmth that pearls never have; it enriched the grey eyes dangerously, and made every fine hair on her head alive. A disturbing quality indeed.
Margaret Brands may not have noticed all this, or, being a woman, she may have noticed much more, but beyond a doubt she was aware of the light fine hair, the perfectly kept skin and teeth, the unusual attractiveness.
“What a lovely cottage, Miss Brands. The red of those tiles is just gorgeous.” Norrey Carr’s voice had a slow, soft huskiness—the huskiness of voices trained to carry to far reaches of auditorium.
“It is nice, isn’t it?” Margaret agreed.
Norrey Carr placed her hand on the Irishman’s arm. “Is this the sort of cottage you are always talking of building in the wilds of Kerry, Paddy Joe?” she asked him.
“ ’Tis so, girl. And much the same vision in the doorway as well.”
“Alas! am I losing you, Paddy Joe?” said the great actress sadly.
“Did you ever find me, woman?” said Paddy Joe.
“Out of my road, people,” interrupted Sir Hugh.—“Margaret, my dear, Sara is going to have your life for neglecting her a whole fortnight, but I am grateful to you for nursing that nephew of mine. Will you let me see him?”
Sir Hugh could be very brusque when he liked. He looked the part, with his lean hawk face, straight mouth, and undershot jaw, but in truth he was the most considerate of men in a countryside that is considerate beyond all other things. He left the others in the living-room and shut the bedroom door behind him.
II
“A nice mess you have made of yourself, Alistair MacIan,” cried Sir Hugh, walking straight across to the bed.
Alistair grinned at him. “Has Paddy Joe been shooting his mouth about it?” he inquired, in his sometimes deplorable slang.
“He has. He said it was lucky that you fell on your head.”
Sir Hugh was beginning to like this strange American nephew of his, and he was also rather shy of him. Brusqueness was his shield. He was an old stay-at-home Highland gentleman who had not been outside his borders once in twenty years, and the incoming of this youth from a nearly incomprehensible new world affected him more than he would say or show. Alistair was heir to Highland Drum too, and Highland Drum was the apple of the old man’s eye. The estate had been developed along certain lines towards a permanent scheme of forestry, and the man who was to succeed Sir Hugh in carrying on this scheme must be considered thoroughly—almost passionately—must be probed and moulded and finally thirled to an ideal. There was the fear. Uncle and nephew were still strangers to one another, looked at life from different angles, could not communicate with each other readily. All there was at this juncture was an instinctive liking, and having that, Sir Hugh had hope also.
“Been talking to Dr Angus,” he told Alistair. “He insists that you lie quiet for a day or two. You’ll do that. Your Aunt Sara will be down to see you in the afternoon, and she thinks that you will be quieter here than anywhere.” His tone implied that the aunt’s opinion was final.
“Shall I not be a nuisance to Mr Brands?”
“To Aelec Brands! Why would you? Aelec and I would do more than that for each other, and no favour thought.”
“Mr and Miss Brands have been mighty kind.”
“Of course. They count—you’ll find that out. A dashed nuisance, Margaret’s going off to-day. I don’t know what Dod Brands can be thinking, hauling her back to London in August. Ought to know better—does too.” Sir Hugh stopped suddenly and, after a short pause, said quickly, “Miss Carr’s outside. See her for a minute?”
“Glad to, uncle,” said Alistair evenly.
“I’ll send her in to you.” He placed a hand on Alistair’s arm. “See you this evening,” he said, brusque to the end, and pulled the door open.
Alistair noted speculatively that his uncle had made no inquiry as to how the accident had befallen.
“Will you gladden him with a look, Miss Carr?” Sir Hugh invited, not so brusquely; and she came quickly, with an undulating litheness wholly feminine. Margaret noticed as much with the least little twinge. For once, somehow, she was not content that her own quickness and litheness were boy-like.
Paddy Joe Long strolled after. “He is my friend,” he said, “and I will stand by him against all women, especially this one.”
III
Norrey Carr, holding Alistair’s hand, leant to the bed and scrutinised him. “Not bad, Alistair?” she inquired gently. “Really all right, aren’t you?”
The dry coolness of her hand tingled in him and there was a trace of colour in his cheeks. “Why, yes, Norrey,” he smiled. “You’re a cure in yourself.”
“He has the finest nursing, anyhow,” said Long at the bed-end.
“And a very pretty nurse too,” Norrey added.
“She is going away to-day,” Alistair told her calmly.
“She doesn’t live here, then?”
“She lives to Lunnon Town—like yourself,” the Irishman told her.
“I should have seen that.”
“You shouldn’t,” said Paddy Joe. “That girl is not a London product—too much depth below the polish. But you——”
“My dear,” interrupted Norrey, smiling at him, “whatever I have below you’ll be the last to find out”; and she turned to Alistair. “If your nurse is forsaking you, ’Stair, I’ll take her place.”
“My poor fellow!” Paddy Joe commiserated.
“Don’t let him phase you, Norrey. I’ll stay abed long enough with you for nurse.”
“You will that,” said Paddy Joe.
“Leave my patient alone, Paddy Joe—don’t you see he is tired? Come on and let me consult Miss Brands about his treatment.—I must have you well, ’Stair.”
She patted Alistair’s hand and caught hold of Paddy Joe’s sleeve. She, too, avoided the subject of the accident.
In the living-room Sir Hugh and Aelec were looking out of the wide window and talking intimately. Margaret sat on the arm of a chair, and Norrey Carr came across to her, smiling pleasantly.
“I hear you are away to London to-day, Miss Brands.”
“This afternoon.”
“I am surprised at your father,” said Sir Hugh gruffly, “hauling you back to London this weather, Margaret.”
“But he is not, Sir Hugh,” denied Margaret quickly. “He wants me to stay.”
“You should stay, then.—Make her, Aelec.”
“No,” said Margaret. “Dad will be home from Geneva to-morrow.”
“Geneva, indeed! He might have come to the Drum.”
“But it was not pleasure that took him to Geneva.”
“You see, Mr Long,” explained Aelec, “my brother George is a policeman, same as I was.”
“Give him his due, uncle,” protested Margaret, rising to the bait; “he is Superintendent at New Scotland Yard.”
“He could be no less,” said Paddy Joe. “Thank God, I am an honest man myself.”
“An honest man yourself!” mocked Norrey Carr. “Are you honest with yourself?”
“No, girl; but I am honest with you.”
“I am afraid so, Paddy Joe. Bad as you are, I could not do without you.”
She said it smilingly, with a curious affectionate crinkling of the eyes, and Paddy Joe smiled his queerly sad smile back at her. At once Margaret realised that there was some fine bond of friendliness between the two, and this realisation set Norrey at a new angle.
IV
While the others were getting into the front seat of the big car, Sir Hugh stood at the garden gate with Aelec Brands. “What do you think of the lad in there, Aelec?” he asked, a certain diffident inquiry in his tone.
“Right as a trivet in a day or two,” answered Aelec, patently misunderstanding.
“Of course, of course!” snapped Sir Hugh, looking sideways at him. “Not much of the Highland laird about him, is there?”
“His father was a MacIan—and, anyway, he is a Macdonald on the other side. Blood like that will tell.”
“Not a bad lad, I think?”
“He wouldn’t be. He has spirit.”
“Too much sometimes. He does not hit it off very well with his cousin Don—but that is not very surprising.” Without knowing it, Sir Hugh’s eye turned towards the young woman in the driving seat, and Aelec noted that.
“Yon young lady is no’ a Highlander either,” he remarked casually.
“That is not considered much of a fault these days.” Sir Hugh lifted his broad shoulders. “Ah, well!—I should like him to like the Drum. He doesn’t now, I fear.”
“Give him time, laird, and give us time too. We have him amongst us, and if the core is sound——”
“Thank you, Aelec. It is what I wanted to ask you. I’ll send you across a brace or two of grouse for his dinner.”
“I have a chicken killed for his dinner—but the grouse’ll no’ be wasted.”
The old laird laughed, pressed the heavy shoulder of his friend, and hurried towards the car.
