Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books (New York Public Library) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=N48nAAAAMAAJ (New York Public Library) 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. RED ROWANS RED ROWANS BY MRS. F. A. STEEL AUTHOR OF "MISS STUART'S LEGACY," ETC. New York MACMILLAN AND CO. AND LONDON 1895 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1894, By MACMILLAN AND CO. RED ROWANS: A LOVE STORY. PROLOGUE. "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. CHAPTER I. Within the long, low cottage the black smoke-polished rafters rose in inky darkness above the rough whitewashed walls, and the mud floor showed the traces of past leaks in many a hill and hollow. The two tiny windows were set breathlessly agape, and through the open door a flood of hot bright sunshine threw a bar of mote-speckled light across the room, gilding the heads of the scholars who sat swinging their legs on the benches and sending a sort of reflected glint from the white wall up into the sombre shadow of the roof. Such was the Episcopal Grant-in-Aid School of Gleneira one July day, some ten years after Paul Macleod had driven down in the mist to catch the Oban steamer. Without, was a pale, heat-blanched sky set in tall spectral-looking hills which had lost contour and individuality in a haze, blending rock and heather, grass and fern, hollows and heights, into one uniform tint of transparent blue. Between the mountains there was a little level growth of green corn flecked by yellow marigolds, white ox-eyes, and scarlet poppies; then a stretch of dusty road, ending in cool shadows of sycamore and pine, beside the school-house garden. A wonderful garden this. Of Liliputian size, yet holding in its tiny clasp a specimen of almost every plant that grows and blows. Three potato haulms, four cabbages, a dozen onions, half a yard of peas; a tuft of parsley, two bronze-leaved beet-roots, a head of celery. This, flanked by a raspberry cane, a gooseberry bush, and supported by an edge of strawberry plants, constituted the kitchen garden. Beyond, in the trim box-edged border leading to the school-house door, were pansies, roses, geraniums, lilies, and peonies; every conceivable flower, each family represented by one solitary scion. Last, not least, the quaint drops of the Dielytra; which the children with awestruck voices call "The Bishop." For when you strip away the pink, sheathing petals, is there not inside a man in full white lawn sleeves? And is not a man in lawn sleeves a disturbing element in a remote Highland glen, where half the people are rigid Presbyterians? Here in this little garden the bees hum lazily and the butterflies come and go; sometimes one, misled by the stream of sunshine pouring through the open door, floats in among the yawning scholars, rousing them to momentary alertness and a faint wonder as to the ultimate fate of the wanderer; whether he will philosophically give up the enterprise or, foolishly persistent, lose himself amid the smoke-blackened rafters. The passing interest, however, dies down again into the sleepy stolid indifference which is the outward and visible sign of that inward desire for freedom felt by each child in the school. No keen longing, but simply a dull wish to be out on the hillside, down by the burn, under the trees; anywhere away from catechisms, collects, or shoes and stockings. The last being the worst infliction of all to these wild little Highland colts accustomed for six days of the week to bare feet, since the coarse knitted hose and hobnailed boots belonging to the seventh are a direful aggravation of the tortures of Sunday school; while even the glorious gentility bestowed by a pair of side springs is but poor compensation for the discomfort to the wearer. Perhaps that was the reason why each pair of legs on the benches swayed helplessly to the rhythm of a singularly unmelodious hymn which the scholars were singing, led by the master in a muffled nasal chant. The tune itself was old and quaint, having in its recurring semitones a barbaric monotony which a lighter phrase here and there showed was not so much due to the composition in itself as to its present interpreter. The words were still more quaint, forming a sort of Litany of the Prophets, with innumerable verses and many vain repetitions. Nevertheless, it was an evident favourite with the children; partly, it may be hoped, from its own intrinsic merits, mostly, it is to be feared, from the startling novelties in Scripture history which it was capable of promulgating when, as in the present case, the schoolmaster was engaged in his secondary profession of postmaster. As the tune rose and fell, there came every now and again a pause, so sudden, so absolute that a passer-by on the dusty road might well have asked himself if some direful catastrophe had not occurred. Nothing of the sort. A glance within would have shown him everything at its usual; the scholars in rows, from the kilted urchin of four--guiltless of English--to whom school is the art of sitting still, to the girl of fourteen, blissfully conscious of a new silk handkerchief and the admiration it excites in the bashful herd-boy on the opposite bench. In the corner, at a table with a slanting desk, the master was busy sorting the letters which Donald Post, as he is called, has just brought in; the latter meanwhile mopping his hot face and disburdening his bag of minor matters in the shape of tea, sugar, and bread, and himself of the budget of news he has accumulated during his fourteen-mile walk; in an undertone, however, for the hymn goes on. "_Whair is noo' the pro-phet Dan'l?_" droned the master, followed by a wavering choir of childish trebles and gruff hobbledehoy voices, "_Whair is noo' the pro-phet Dan'l?_" The exigencies of the tune necessitated a repetition of the momentous question again and yet again, the tune dying away into a pause, during which the master's attention wandered to a novel superscription on a letter. The children held their breath, the hum of the bees outside became audible, all nature seemed in suspense awaiting the answer. "I'm thinking it will be from Ameriky," hazarded the master thoughtfully to Donald Post, and, the solution seeming satisfactory, he returned with increased energy to the triumphant refrain "_Safe intil the Pro-mised Land_." The children caught it up _con amore_ with a vague feeling of relief. A terrible thing indeed, to Presbyterians or Episcopalians alike, if the Prophet Daniel had been left hanging between heaven and another place! So great a relief, that the gay progress of the tune and the saint was barely marred by the master's renewed interest in a postcard; which distraction led him into making an unwarrantable statement that-- "_He went up in a fiery char-yot_." True, the elder pupils tittered a little over the assertion, but the young ones piped away contentedly, vociferously. The Promised Land once attained, the means were necessarily quite a secondary consideration; and mayhap to their simple imaginings a fiery chariot was preferable to the den of lions. "_Where is noo' the twal A-postles?_" led off the master again, after a whispered remark to Donald Post, which provoked so interesting a reply that the fate of the twelve remained trembling in the balance long enough for the old refrain to startle the scholars from growing inattention. "_Safe intil the Promised Land_." The sound echoed up into the rafters. Truly a blessed relief to reach the haven after delays and difficulties. "_They went through_"--began the master. But whether in orthodox fashion it would have been "_great tri-bu-la-tion_," or whether, on the principle of compensation, the den of lions would have been allowed twelve saints, will never be known. The mote-speckled beam of sunshine through the door was darkened by a slight girlish figure, the children hustled to their feet with much clatter of the unaccustomed boots and shoes, and the schoolmaster, drowning his last nasal note under a guilty cough, busied himself over a registered letter. For Miss Marjory Carmichael objected on principle to the Litany of the Prophets. The rather imperious frown, struggling with an equally obstinate smile which showed on the newcomer's face, vanished at the sight of Donald Post. "Any for me?" she asked eagerly. It was a charming voice, full of interest and totally devoid of anxiety. An acute ear would have told at once that life had as yet brought nothing to the speaker which would make post-time a delight or a dread. She had for instance no right to expect a love-letter or a dun; and her eagerness was but the desire of youth for something new, her expectancy only the girlish belief in something which must surely come with the coming years. For the rest, a winsome young lady with a pair of honest hazel eyes and honest walking boots. "'Deed no, Miss Marjory," replied the schoolmaster, selecting a thin envelope and holding it up shamelessly to the light--a bold stroke to divert attention from the greater offence of the hymn, "Forbye ain wi' the Glasky post-mark that will just be ain o' they weary circulars, for as ye may see for yoursel', Miss Marjory, the inside o't's leethographed." "Thank you, Mr. McColl," said the girl, severely, as she took the letter, "but if you have no objection I should prefer finding out its contents in a more straightforward fashion." "Surely! Surely!" Mr. McColl, having got a little more than he expected, gave another exculpatory cough, and looked round to Donald Post for moral support. Perhaps from a sense that he often needed a like kindness, this was an appeal which the latter never refused, and if he could not draw upon real reminiscence for a remark or anecdote bearing on the point, he never had any hesitation in giving an I. O. U. on fancy and so confounding his creditors. On the present occasion, however, he was taken at a disadvantage, being engaged in trying to conceal from Marjory's uncompromising eyes a bottle of whiskey which formed a contraband item in his bag; consequently he had only got as far as a preliminary murmur that "there wass a good mony wass liking to be reading their ain letters but that it was James Macniven"--when the schoolmaster plucked up courage for further defence. "Aye! Aye! 'tis but natur'l to sinfu' man to be liking his ain. Not that they circulars interestin' readin', even if a body is just set on learnin' like Miss Marjory. And I'm thinkin' it will only be from a wine mairchant likely. It's extraordinair' the number of circulars they'll be sending out; but the whiskey is a' the same. Bad, filthy stuff, what will give parral--y--ses to them that drinks it." This second bid for favour, accompanied as it was by an unfortunate glance for support at Donald--who was struggling unsuccessfully with the neck of the black bottle--proved too much for Marjory's dignity, and the consequent smile encouraged Mr. McColl to go on, oblivious apparently of his last remark. "And it's whiskey we shall all be wanting, and plenty of it, to drink the young laird's health. But I was forgetting you could scarcely have heard the news, Miss Marjory, since it is only coming in the post just now. It is the laird, Miss Marjory, that is to be home to-morrow by the boat!" The girl forgot an incipient frown in sheer surprise. "Here! Captain Macleod?" "Aye! it's the machine is to meet him at the ferry, the light cart for his traps, and the house to be ready." In his desire for importance Mr. McColl in the last words had given himself away completely, for Marjory lived at Gleneira Lodge with her cousin, the factor. "The house to be got ready! Impossible! Mrs. Cameron had heard nothing when I came out. Where did the news come from?" Marjory's voice, especially to those who knew and loved her, as these good folks did, never admitted of refusal, so the postmaster coughed again between the thumps of the office stamp, which he had begun to use in a hurry. "It will be Mistress Macniven that was telling Donald Post, and Donald Post he will be telling it to me." The words came in a sort of sing-song, echoed by Donald himself in a croon of conviction. "Hou-ay! it was Mistress Macniven wass tellin' it to me, and it iss me that iss tellin' it to Mr. McColl, and it is fine news--tamn me, but it is fine news whatever." A twinkle came to Marjory's eyes, for in her character of Grand Inquisitress to the Glen, such startling language was too evidently a drag across the trail. "But where did Mrs. Macniven hear it?" "Aye! aye!" assented Donald, rising to go abruptly, "that is what it will be, but she was tellin' it to me, whatever." "I don't believe a word of it," continued the girl; "Captain Macleod would have written to my cousin, I know. It is just idle gossip." This was too much for the postmaster, who posed, as well as he might, for being an authority on such questions. In the present instance he preferred the truth to incredulity. '"Deed, Miss Marjory," he said, with unblushing effrontery, "it'll just be one o' they postcards." "Hou-ay!" echoed Donald, softly. "She'll be yon o' they postcards, whatever." "A postcard! What postcard?" Mr. McColl handed her one with the air of a man who has done his duty. "Will you be taking it with you, or shall I be giving it to Donald, here?" Marjory looked at him with speechless indignation; at least, she trusted that was her expression, though the keen sense of humour, which is the natural heritage of the Celt, struggled with her dignity at first. "I am really ashamed of you, Mr. McColl," she said at last, with becoming severity. "Of you and Mrs. Macniven; you ought to know better than pry into other folks' secrets." But now that the cat was out of the bag, the postmaster showed fight. "'Deed, and I'm no for seeing it was a secret at all! It is a penny people will be paying if they're needin' secrets. And the laird is not so poor, but he would put a penny to it if he was caring; though yon crabbed writin' they teach the gentlefolk nowadays, is as most as gude as an envelope. Lorsh me! Miss Marjory, but my laddies would be gettin' tawse for a postcard like yon. It was just awful ill to read." "To read! Mr. McColl, I really am surprised at you! It is most dishonourable to read other people's letters," protested the girl, with great heat. "Surely! Surely! but yon's a postcard." From this position he refused to budge an inch, being backed up in it by Donald, who, being unable to read, was busy in stowing away various letters in different hiding-places in his person, with a view to their future safe delivery at the proper destination. "It was a ferry useful thing," he said, "was postcards, and if Miss Marjory would mind it wass, when old Mistress Macgregor died her sons wass sending to Oban for the whiskey to come by the ferry. But it wass the day before the buryin' that a postcard wass coming to say the whiskey was to be at the pier. But young Peter's cart wass going to the ferry to fetch the whiskey and he was meeting Peter and telling him of the postcard. So if it had not been for the postcaird it wass no whiskey they would be having to Mistress Macgregor's funeral, whatever." A judicious mingling of fact and fiction which outlasted Marjory's wrath. She put the cause of offence in her pocket, remarking pointedly that as Donald had such a budget of important news to retail, that would most likely be the quickest mode of delivery, and then turned to her task of giving the children their usual Sunday lesson, which she began with such a detailed homily on the duty towards your neighbour, that Mr. McColl took the excuse of Donald's departure to accompany him into the garden, and remain there until she passed on to another subject. For Marjory Carmichael ruled the Glen absolutely; perhaps because she was the only young lady in it. Girls there were and plenty, but none in her own class of life, and the result on her character had been to make her at once confident and unconscious of her own powers. She was not, for instance, at all aware what a very learned young person she was, and the fact that she had been taught the differential calculus and the theory of Greek accents affected her no more than it affects the average young man of one-and-twenty. The consequence being a restfulness which, as a rule, is sadly wanting in the clever girls of the period, who never can forget their own superiority to the mass of their female relations. Having been brought up entirely among men, her strongest characteristic was not unnaturally an emotional reserve, and up to the present her life had been pre-eminently favourable to the preservation of that bloom which is as great a charm to a girl as it is to a flower, and which morbid self-introspection utterly destroys. To tell the truth, however, she was apt to be over contemptuous of gush, while her hatred of scenes was quite masculine. In fact, at one-and-twenty, Marjory knew more about her head than her heart, chiefly because, as yet, the call on her affections had been very small. Her father, a shiftless delicate dreamer, brought up by a brother years his senior, had married against that brother's wish, the offence being aggravated by the fact that the bride with whom he ran away was his brother's ward. One of those calm but absolutely hopeless quarrels ensued which come sometimes to divide one portion of a family from the other, without apparently much regret on either side. The young couple had the butterfly instinct, and lived for the present. They also had the faculty for making friends in a light airy fashion, and after various vicissitudes, borne with the gayest good temper, some one managed to find him a post as consul in some odd little seaport in the south, where sunshine kept them alive and contented until Marjory chose to put in an appearance and cost her mother's life. The blow seemed to make the husband still more dreamy and unpractical than ever, and, when cholera carried him off suddenly four years afterwards, he made no provision whatever for the child's future, save a scrawl, written with difficulty at the last moment, begging his brother to look after Marjory for the sake of old times. Perhaps it was the best thing he could have done, since nothing short of despair would have affected Dr. Carmichael, who had by this time become so absorbed in the effort to understand life that he had almost forgotten how to feel it. People wondered why a man, who had gained a European reputation for his researches, should have cared to linger on in a remote country district like Gleneira, and some went so far as to hint that something more than mere displeasure at his brother's disobedience lay at the bottom of his dislike to the marriage and his subsequent misanthropy. Be that as it may, his first look at little Marjory's curly head was absolutely unemotional, and he remarked to his housekeeper that it was a good thing she seemed to take more after her mother than her father, who had always been a cause of anxiety. For the rest, it was a pity she was not a boy. Orphans should always be boys; it simplified matters so much for the relations. However, Mrs. Campbell, the housekeeper, must make the best of it, and bring her up as a girl. He could not. But Marjory took a different view of the situation, and before six months had passed it dawned upon the Doctor that, as often as not, she was trotting round with her doll in his shadow as he paced the garden, or sitting in a corner of his study intent on some game of her own. She was a singularly silent unobjectionable child at such times; at others, if he might judge from the sounds that reached him, quite the reverse. He laid down his pen to watch her as she sate in the sunshine by the window one day, and heard her instantly tell her doll, that if she was naughty and disturbed Dr. Carmichael she must be sent into the garden. Another day he came upon her in his chair poring over a Greek treatise in an attitude which even he recognised as a faithful copy of his own. Finally, he discovered that she had taught her doll to draw geometrical figures such as she often saw on the papers littered about the room. This palpable preference for him and his occupations being distinctly flattering, he began to take more notice of her, and try experiments with her memory. So, by degrees, becoming interested in her quick intelligence, he deliberately began to educate her, as he would have educated a boy, with a view to her making her own living in the future. As indeed she would have to do, in the event of his death; since years before her advent he had sunk all his private means in an annuity, and the expenses of his scientific work did not allow of his saving much. The prospect neither pleased nor displeased the girl. It came simply, naturally, to her, as it does to a boy. On the other hand, she certainly worked harder than any boy would have done, partly because she took it for granted that the tasks set her by Dr. Carmichael were very ordinary ones, and partly because of that feminine tolerance of mere drudgery which makes it so difficult to compare the intellectual work of a man and a woman. For while you can safely assume that an undergraduate has not worked more than so many hours or minutes a day, it is quite possible that a girl student may have sate up half the night over a trivial exercise. The primal curse on labour, it must be remembered, was not extended to the woman, who had a peculiar ban of her own. So, by the time she was seventeen, Marjory Carmichael was learned beyond her years in Greek and Latin, and displayed a genius for mathematics which fairly surprised her uncle. Then he died suddenly, leaving her to the guardianship of a distant relation and ardent disciple in Edinburgh, who was instructed to spend what small sum might remain, after paying just debts, on completing the girl's education, and starting her, not before the age of twenty-one, in a career; preferably teaching, which he considered the most suitable opening for her. She was strong, he said, in the letter in which he informed Dr. Kennedy of his wishes, and singularly sensible for a girl, despite a distressing want of proportion in her estimate of things. Being neither sentimental nor sensitive, she was not likely to give trouble. So far good, but at the very end of the letter came a remark showing that the old man was not quite the fossil he pretended to be. It ran thus: "All this concerns her head only; of her heart I know nothing. Let us hope she has none; for it is a terrible drawback to a woman who has brains. Anyhow, it has had no education from me." The description somehow did not prepare Dr. Tom Kennedy for either the face or manner which greeted him on his arrival at the house of mourning, but then he himself had the softest heart in the world, and the mere sight of a lonely slip of a thing in a black dress gave him a pang. But that was only for a moment; five minutes afterwards he wondered how that suggestion of kissing and comforting her in semi-fatherly fashion could have arisen. Yet the same evening after she had bidden him good-night with a little stilted hope that he would be comfortable, the temptation returned with redoubled force, when, on going into the study for another volume of the book he had taken up to his bedroom to read, he found her fast asleep in the dead man's chair, her arms flung out over the table, her cheek resting on one of the ponderous volumes which had been the dead man's real companions. Her fresh young face looked happy enough in its sleep, though the marks of tears were still visible, and yet Dr. Kennedy felt another pang. Had the child no better confidante than that musty, fusty old book? Yet he did not dare to rouse her, even though the room struck cold and dreary, for he felt that the knowledge that he had so far been witness of her weakness would be an offence, a barrier between them, and that was the last thing he desired. So he crept out of the room again discreetly, and smoked another cigar over the not uninteresting novelty of his guardianship. For Tom Kennedy was sentimental, and gloried in the fact. "You are very kind," said Marjory to him, a day or two afterwards, with a half-puzzled and critical appreciation of his tact and consideration. "But I don't see why you should take such trouble about me. I shall get on all right, I expect. I think it is a mistake that uncle has forbidden my beginning work till I am twenty-one, but, as it can't be helped, I must go on as I've been doing, I suppose. I would rather not go to school if that can be arranged. You see I don't know any girls, and I am not sure if I should get on with them. If I could stop here, Mr. Wilson at the Manse would look over my work, and I could come up to Edinburgh for my examinations, you know." Evidently his guardianship was not going to be a burden to him. This clear-eyed young damsel, despite a very dainty feminine appearance, was evidently quite capable of looking ahead. "I will do my best to arrange everything as you wish," he replied, feeling somehow a little hurt in his feelings. "My great object, of course,
{'title': 'Red Rowans by Flora Annie Webster Steel', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}