Читать книгу While Rivers Run - Maurice Walsh - Страница 9

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“Oh, the wretch!” exclaimed young Margaret. The light from the hanging lamp shone on her hair, and that hair was one shade—or maybe two—redder than red copper. It was closely shingled too, and, whether by art or nature, it curled over her ears and outlined a shapely small head on a lovely shaft of neck. Any man was welcome to dislike that hair and be for ever a poor judge. Probably she knew that.

“Well, now!” said Uncle Aelec; “isn’t he the quick one to bring his dislikes with him in his waking?”

“He is welcome.”

“He wants a lump over his other ear, maybe. Let me try my remedy now. I like the way he opens a conversation.”

The young man spluttered and came alive. “The real hooch,” he muttered, with an intake of breath.

“Well you know it,” said Aelec. “You talk well. Try another taste, now.”

He took it readily, and Aelec let his head drift back on the cushion. Margaret had moved back, and the hurt youth turned his eyes towards her. A twinge of acute pain twisted his features, and very gingerly, and still grimacing, he brought his head to its original position. “Christmas! Who has been doing things to me?”

“A lump of a boulder mostly.”

Without moving his head MacIan turned eyes on Aelec, and most of his faculties were now behind his gaze. “I don’t seem to know you,” he said. “Where am I?”

“Croft o’ Drum. I’m Aelec Brands.”

“Croft o’ Drum—Aelec Brands! I know. Johnny Ross says you’re the cat’s whiskers.”

“The bluidy Turk! What did he call me that for?”

“But how am I here?”

“Accident!” Aelec Brands was not sure if a sudden enlightenment would help. He added cautiously: “Down by the river—at Urdog Pool—you don’t remember? Lying on the stones, you were.”

Alistair turned his eyes to the ceiling and waited for memory to flow. Wait! Where was he? He had left Highland Drum after dinner to walk down to Buntness for a hand at poker—the short-cut by the river it was. Don Webster was with him, and Paddy Joe Long was to follow. My aunt! He had it. Don Webster—the saturnine devil. By heck! what a kick he must have in that right of his. Here he lifted a hand to the side of his head and felt the bump with cautious finger-tips. “Some sockdologer,” he said aloud, and his hand crept to his aching crown piece. “Ouch! What fell on me? Did Don do that too?”

“No, then. There’s where you dunted the stone.”

“You found me lying?”

Aelec Brands nodded.

The lad was silent then, and slowly a frown blackened and blackened on his brow: a troubled frown, more than an angry one.

“I will never believe that,” he said to his own thought.

“You have a gey lump to show for it, anyway,” said Aelec Brands.

“It isn’t that; but Don would never leave me lying.”

“I see! Maybe you’ll mind sitting on the stones with your mouth open?”

“After Don’s haymaker?”

“Just so. He was glowering down at you, and you up at him, and says he, ‘You’re a d——d fool, MacIan, and I’m another,’ and off he went round the shoulder of the pool as if his nose bled.”

“Right! I get that—and then the sky fell on me?”

“No; but whatever was in your head—and I misdoubt it was good—you made a splurge to go after him, and went your length against a lump of stone big as the table there. Your friend—if he was that—was out of sight then.”

The young man sighed with some relief. “That’s better. I would hate to think the worst of Don. But whereabout the ringside were you?”

“Oh, I was looking on with my mouth open too—I bit my tongue when you dunted the stone.”

Alistair MacIan grinned at that. “So did I,” he said ruefully.

“Man!” said Aelec Brands admiringly, “but you’re game”; and the words brought a little colour into the lad’s face.

“How long ago was that?” he asked quietly.

“Half an hour, maybe a bit longer.”

“Don and Paddy Joe will be waiting for me at Buntness. I think I’ll make a shot at getting up.” He tried it before Brands could protest, and made a poor business of it. His ill-used neck muscles protested agonisingly, the room swung and rocked before his eyes, and he barely suppressed a groan behind clenched teeth as he sank back on the couch.

The young woman at the table-side winced. “He can’t leave yet, uncle,” she cried.

“I’m thinking he can’t leave to-night,” said her uncle.

“Sorry to be a nuisance,” excused young MacIan, a hand at his damp brow.

“No trouble at all,” assured Aelec Brands. “You’re no’ beholden, Mr MacIan. I’m one of the clan, and this bit house is yours. Your Uncle Hugh and myself ken each other fine. A night’s rest and you’ll be as right as a trivet. Later on I could send word to Highland Drum.”

“I wouldn’t do that—” He hesitated there.

“I ken, I ken! We can be thinking over that.—Margaret, lass, will you see to things ben the room?”

And so in a little while young Alistair MacIan was resting on a comfortable bed, with cool linen above him and below him and a down pillow beneath his head.

Aelec Brands came back to the living-room. “He’ll do fine now,” he told Margaret.

“When I am done with him. Take you that basin, uncle.”

She had donned a dainty American apron and held a sponge in one hand, a bottle in the other, and carried a towel over a bare arm. Her uncle, without a word, took up the basin and preceded her into the bedroom. “A bit torture coming your way,” he said. The eyes on the bed, turned sideways, smiled at them.

The torture was not too terrible—indeed, not more than a slight discomfort, and that equally shared. For, sensitive as an acute bump may be, it is not any more sensitive than a girl’s feelings, and it takes an experienced nurse to remain equable under eyes that constantly rove. Yet, but for a certain heightening of colour, Margaret Brands gave no hint of embarrassment. She spread the towel under the dark head, sponged the sore places with slow gentleness, applied a cold compress to the crown bump, and then set out to massage the neck muscles, a touch of olive-oil on silken finger-tips.

Suddenly Aelec Brands slapped his thigh and exclaimed, “A thing I forgot! I’ll no’ be long”; and went out into the night.