Flora Annie Webster Steel

For the next few days after the visit to old Peggy, which convinced her that some secret lay in the old woman's keeping, Mrs. Vane refrained from any attempt to interfere with Providence. To begin with, she felt vaguely that the Scotch marriage laws were dangerous, and the very fact that she knew enough of Paul to be sure that this was not likely to be a mere vulgar entanglement, made her hesitate before her own suspicions. On the other hand, this possibility of a new string to her bow inclined her to slack off the other; the more so because here again she was beginning to be afraid of her own weapon. She had always recognised that, but for her interference, Paul would have held to that discretion which is the better part of valour, have seen no more of Marjory, and forgotten her; also, that the girl herself had been quite as ready to dismiss this strange, if alluring, figure from her thoughts, as belonging to a society--nay! to a world--in which she had no part. But now? Mrs. Vane, as she watched the easy familiarity which had of necessity recommenced between them, as she noted the girl's quick, healthy response to the thousand and one new thoughts and ways of this new life, could not help wondering if the awakening to new pleasures might not rouse into action a new set of emotions and instincts. For Marjory, as for Paul, there was also danger; to her from the unfamiliarity, to him from the very familiarity of the environment, which threw him back on past experience, and rendered it well-nigh impossible for him to forget his own nature, and dream himself in Arcadia. And then Dr. Kennedy's appearance had complicated matters for Mrs. Vane, who, kindly to all, had a weak spot in her heart for the friend of her earliest youth. It did not take long for her sharp eyes to pierce through his pretence of mere guardianship, and it gave her quite a pang to think of giving him one. Yet here she comforted herself by the palpable jealousy which Marjory showed towards those youthful days; a jealousy she did not scruple to stimulate, for Mrs. Vane, with all her finesse, occasionally made a mistake, and in the present instance did not realise that in thus, as it were, emphasising a hitherto unknown side of Dr. Kennedy's life she was adding to the strangeness of the environment in which Marjory found herself; and at the same time suggesting that it was no new thing to the one person to whose opinion she was inclined to defer. So that, instead of helping her old friend by the time-honoured device of exciting jealousy as a prelude to love, Mrs. Vane, in reality, made it easier for the girl to drift from her moorings.

"You are very kind to your ward," said the little lady one day, feeling impelled to give comfort as she noticed Dr. Kennedy's eyes following Marjory rather wistfully. "But virtue has its own reward. Do not pretend you don't understand, Monsieur le Docteur! for you do. And I will give you my opinion--when she has seen a little more of the world she will see what it has seen already--that there are not many men in it like Dr. Tom Kennedy."

"She will see exactly what she chooses to see, Madame!" he replied, with one of his little foreign bows, which, to Marjory, seemed to reveal him in a new and worldly light.

"Exactly," retorted the little lady; "and being of the Truth will choose the Truth." And then suddenly her mood changed, and she laid her hand close to his on the table as if to attract his attention to her quick emotion. "Ah, mon ami, I envy you! you can afford to wait for Paradise, and I have had mine. At least, I feel as if I had eaten my apple and been turned out into the cold, for there hasn't been much happiness in my life."

He looked at her with 'grave pity, noting with the eye of one accustomed to the work the thousand and one little signs of wear and tear in the clever, mobile face.

"You have put plenty into other people's lives, anyhow," he said, in kindly, if cold, comfort; and his words were true. With all her faults Mrs. Vane had given more to the world than she had ever taken from it.

Marjory, watching the little scene from afar, felt something of this, as she told herself it was quite natural that Tom should enjoy the companionship of his old friend. Who, in fact, would not enjoy talking to so brilliant and charming a woman? at least, in this new world, which could not somehow be cleft in two by a straight line dividing right from wrong, darkness from light.

Yet, though she acknowledged this, she was as far as ever from understanding it, and as ready as ever to disdain anything which bordered on sentiment; on that unknown ground of Love or Passion.

Dr. Kennedy, repeating to her his part of jeune premier in the little play which was to precede some tableaux, realised her lack of change in this respect with mingled gratification and regret.

"I must keep my own counsel," he recited, in the even yet jerky tone sacred to the learning of parts, "em--and not let her suspect the deep attachment she has inspired--inspired--inspired. Now, don't tell me, please; I know what comes next. Yes! I do, Mademoiselle! In nine cases out of ten a proposal! So there! Well, where were we? Ah! 'But, soft' (depends greatly on the stage floor, my dear sir). 'But, soft! she comes!' Go on, Marjory. 'Enter Blanche--she comes,' is your cue."

"'Tis he! Henri!' Oh! Tom, do let us skip all that bosh!"

Dr. Kennedy put down the hazel root he was whittling into a shepherd's crook and looked at her in feigned surprise. "Bosh! Why, I intend to work this up until I draw tears from every eye."

"Not from mine, Tom," smiled Marjory; "that sort of thing always makes me laugh."

They were lounging under the beech tree which grew close to the burn at the bottom of the garden, and the dappled sunshine and shade from the green canopy overhead made the green draperies outlining the fine curves of Marjory's slender figure seem like a dress of leaves. Leaning forward on the grass, her chin resting on her hands, her curly head thrown back half-defiantly to look him in the face, she reminded Dr. Kennedy of Rosalind; yet it was of another heroine that he spoke.

"Poor Juliet! I suppose she ought not to have survived to the nineteenth century!"

Marjory's eyebrows puckered themselves in doubt. "I don't mean that; perhaps I don't know what I mean; but Juliet loved Romeo, and these"--she nodded at the little book between her elbows in careless contempt--"they--they--Tom! you must allow there is too much of--of that sort of thing."

He went on whittling for a moment; it was the first time he had ever touched on the subject with Marjory, and he felt at once curious and constrained.

"I am afraid that sort of thing--as you call it--will not reduce itself to please you; it is part, and perhaps a necessary part, of life," he said shortly.

"A part!" returned the girl, eagerly. "Not all? Now, in the novels and these plays one hears of little else. It is all hero and heroine; work, ambition, failure, success, are nowhere. It is very uninteresting--don't you think so?"

Dr. Kennedy's face was a study in humour and gravity.

"Upon my word, I don't know, my child! But most people think otherwise at some time of life. And you are a little hard, surely; you should remember that after all the love-season is generally the crisis of life's fever. Put it another way; the touchstone by which we can test the lovers' ideal;" he paused till his innate doubt made him add: "At least it should be so, though I'm afraid it isn't--not always."

She looked at him, and a troubled expression came to her eyes. "I suppose not," she said absently; "that has always been a puzzle to me. To love, and yet not to approve, seems to me a contradiction in terms." The chips flew faster from the knot Dr. Kennedy was smoothing.

"You talk as if love were reducible to logic, but it isn't." Then the impossibility of a mutual understanding made him add more gently: "It isn't a thing you can reason about. It comes and goes as it chooses--not as you choose. That is the difficulty."

"Difficulty," echoed Marjory, raising herself with a belligerent air to clasp her hands about her knees and subside again into a half-dreamy defiance as she sate looking out over the burn to the sunlit point stretching into the blue loch. "It is manifestly unfair if it is so; only I don't think it is. Else how is it possible to hold love sacred? How is it possible to believe in it?"

"I am afraid it will be believed in to the end of the chapter all the same," replied her hearer, with a smile. "And it isn't so unfair when all is said and done, since 'a love that is tender and true and strong crowneth the life of the giver.'"

She turned on him sharply. "Where does that come from? Some extremely sentimental---- Why, Tom! I believe you wrote that--now did you? Come! own up!"

"I might have guessed it wouldn't pass muster with a young person who has taken honours in English literature and knows the Elizabethan poets by heart," he replied gravely. "Yes! Marjory, I am responsible for that particular version of a time-honoured, crusted old sentiment. I wrote it in delirium, or something like it--if that is any excuse."

She edged closer to him in girlish eagerness. "This is quite delightful. I never knew you wrote rhymes. I do, and burn them; but you! Come, tell me the rest at once."

"Perhaps I burn them, too."

"Oh! but that is only pretence, you know, just to keep oneself in subjection. One remembers them all the same. I do. So now, once, twice, thrice!"

He gave an odd little grimace. "It was last year when I had fever," he began apologetically.

"In Paris?"

"No! They had sent me to the country, and there was a stream and some reeds. I could see them as I lay in bed, and so---- Now, mind, if once I begin to swear I won't leave off under half-a-crown!"

"I wouldn't mind giving three shillings if it were worth it; so go on, Tom, why should you be bashful?"

"Because I was delirious when I wrote it, of course," he replied; yet there was a real tremor in his voice, as he began:--

"Where the river's golden sheen floats by
The plumes of the tall reeds touch the sky,

Like arrows from out a quiver.

But one bends over to reach the stream,
Dreaming of naught but the golden gleam,

Weary for love of the river.

"'Oh, river! river! thou flowest fast;
Yet leave me one kiss as thou goest past--

One kiss, to be mine for ever!'

She bent her head to the shining flood;
On swept the river in careless mood,

Mocking her poor endeavour.

"'Oh, river! river! give back to me
Some token of all I have given to thee,

To show thou art my lover!'

But the only answer to her prayer
Was the shade of her own love mirrored there,

With the reeds that grew above her.

"The proud reeds chid her, yet still she sighed,
Wondering such love could be so denied;

While ever towards the ocean,

Dreaming deep dreams of that future free,
The river swept on to the unknown sea,

Careless of her devotion.

"A bird flew down when the sun set red,
To sing his hymn from the reed's bowed head

To God, the All-good Giver.

Bowed by the weight of the singing bird,
At long, long last the waters stirred,

As the reed's plume touched the river.

"'Oh! glad and sweet,' sang the bird, 'is Life,
And Death is sweet, bringing Peace to Strife,

But Love is God's best treasure.

It cometh best when it comes unsought,
It giveth all, and it asketh naught,

For true love hath no measure,'

"The bird flew home when its song had ceased.
The reed, from its one dear kiss released,

Shall give another never;

But a silver crown of dewdrops shone,
Telling of true love given, not won,

In the reed's bright plume for ever.

"Go forth, my song! so that all may learn
Love, like the reed's, needeth no return,

Save the baptism of the river.

Though the heart be sad, and the way be long,
A love that is tender, and true, and strong,

Crowneth the life of the giver."

Dr. Kennedy recited well; the tremor of his voice had soon passed, and with it, apparently, all sense of the personal application of the verses; for as he sate, still whittling away at the hazel root, his keen brown face wore a half-humorous and half-puzzled look, and after a decent pause he gave an odd sort of laugh.

"It sounds pretty," he said; "but upon my word I don't know quite what I meant, and I am almost certain it was not love, not what is generally understood by love."

Marjory looked at him judgmatically. "Nonsense! Of course it was love, and what is more, Tom, I think you must have been in love when you wrote it. Now confess, were you not?"

Once again the temptation to say "Yes! with you," rose uppermost; only to meet with the old revulsion of feeling, born of the knowledge of things hidden from her, and please God! always to be so hidden. In love! Great heavens, no! if that were love. And yet, how could he answer for her nature as well as his own? For a nature which his practised eye told him was full of vitality, full of possibilities; and young, ah! so young as yet in its knowledge of itself. If he told her that he loved her and asked her to marry him, the chances were ten to one that she would say "Yes." And yet the conviction that it was so brought him no content, but only something of tender reluctance for her, of vague contempt for himself.

"In love!" he echoed. "I was in a delirium if you meant that, or near it. Temperature a hundred and five point two, and Abbeville--he was nursing me--good luck to him!--had just confessed there was not much chance; as if I hadn't known that for days!"

"And you never told me," she said, after a pause.

"No; I didn't want to bother you, and----" He looked up to see her face white, and his manner changed. "Don't, child! it's past and over--besides I have a knack of pulling through--I am sorry I mentioned it, now."

"What is it?" she asked, in a constrained voice. "I should like to know, if I may?"

"My dear! of course you may. PyÆmia; the knife slipped, that was all. The veriest scratch. What a fool I was to mention it!"

"Don't say that," she flashed out suddenly. "Don't you know that I like to hear everything--everything----" She paused, and her quick resentment seemed to die down before a keener thought, and she sate silent for a while. "I can scarcely think what it would have meant to me," she went on, half to herself, before she turned her face to him again. "I should have been quite alone in the world then, you know, Tom."

"Until you made a home of your own, perhaps," he replied quietly, being, like most men of his temperament, somewhat given to self-torture.

"Perhaps; but it would never be the same," she said, as quietly. "It would never seem to be the haven of rest that the thought of your goodness is to me now. Do you know, Tom, that I always hearten myself up by saying that if I am tired I can always ask you to let me rest, and you would, wouldn't you?" As she spoke she stretched out her hand towards him in her favourite gesture of appeal, and both of his, leaving their work, had reached to it eagerly and clasped it close.

"Marjory!" he said, a surge of sheer happiness flooding heart and brain with unalloyed content. "Promise me that always--and--and I am satisfied."

"Promise what?" she asked, smiling through the sudden tears which brightened her eyes. "That I will come home to rest if I am tired? Of course I shall. What is the use of having you, Tom, the best, the kindest, if I don't make use of you? And I will. I'll come home fast enough, you'll see, if----" She paused to give a wise shake of her head, and then, clasping the hand he had released over the other which lay upon her knee, she looked out absently over the running water at her feet.

"I wonder how I shall like it?" she continued. "I wonder if it will be what I have fancied it?"

"Probably not," replied her companion, with a quick dread at his heart. For how could it be so? What could this girl's imagining have to do with that world which he knew so well: so well that the finer tissue in him rebelled against the teaching which his very profession forced him to accept as true, at any rate for the majority of men and women. "Probably not," he repeated more quietly, "though that is just the sort of thing it is impossible to predict of a girl who has been brought up as you have. So it must be settled by experience."

Half an hour afterwards Paul Macleod, coming over to the Lodge on the pretence of giving notice of an afternoon rehearsal, found them still busy over the loves and woes of Henri and Blanche. In fact, Dr. Kennedy was on his knees disclaiming his part passionately; whereat the newcomer frowned. First at the sight, secondly at his own dislike to it.

"I have been trying to teach Miss Carmichael how to refuse an aspirant firmly, yet sympathetically," said the doctor, coolly, rising to his feet and putting the handkerchief he had spread on the ground into his pocket; "but she finds a difficulty, apparently, in keeping her countenance. It is a mistake, Marjory. Half the unhappy marriages in the world come from the difficulty which the untutored mind has in saying 'No' with decent courtesy. It is so much easier to say 'Yes,' since that requires no diplomacy. If I had daughters I should always impress on them that the eleventh commandment does not consist in 'Thou shalt not refuse.'"

"I shouldn't have thought it necessary to impress that on the girls of the present day," remarked Paul, rather hastily, and Marjory flushed up at once.

"It is never safe to generalise from a single experience, Captain Macleod," she retorted, "and yours may have been exceptionally fortunate--hitherto."

"Perhaps it has--hitherto," he replied, and, after delivering his message, went off in a huff. Yet he felt himself more on a plane with Marjory than he had ever done before, slightly to his discomfiture; for this atmosphere of quick give and take, this suspicion of jealous anger, was familiar to him, and he could not mistake its possibilities. So he devoted himself more than usual to his duty, and though, of course, he made up his tiff a trifle sentimentally with Marjory, he chose to be rather lordly over her relations with Dr. Kennedy, and even went so far as to mention to his sister that he suspected her protÉgÉ, Mr. Gillespie, was forestalled.

"My dear Paul!" said Lady George, distractedly, "I really don't care at the present moment who marries who. I might be in a better world for that matter, if I weren't in Purgatory."

"Wherefore?" asked Paul, kindly.

"Oh! the supper, and the servants, and the general civility," replied Blanche, who was in reality enjoying the bustle, but, at the same time, liked to pose as a victim. "Really, in these out-of-the-way places one has to be a virtuous woman, and bring one's food from afar; and then there is always Blasius. I suppose it is the name, as you say, George, but, really, I don't believe that child can do what is right."

"Nonsense, my dear," retorted her spouse, who ever since he undertook to interpret the laws of nature to his youngest born had been a trifle jealous of his pupil's reputation. "Blasius won the Derby in '73. What has the child been doing now?"

"Oh! nothing much; only he wouldn't eat his dinner just now because it was only an egg, and the others had mutton. He really is too young to have meat every day; so, as I was busy, I told nurse to put him to bed, and he is sitting up in it making the most unearthly noises, as if the whole farmyard were in the top landing. Listen! you can hear him down here."

There could be no doubt of it, and as they stood in the hall, looking up involuntarily, a perfect babel of cluckings and cacklings, crowings and quackings, seemed to come down the stairs with Mary, the nursemaid, who was bearing the dirty dishes from the nursery dinner; among them Blazes' despised egg.

"The worst of it is," went on Lady George, in her high, plaintive voice, "you never really know what the child means. Why, for instance, should he cackle, as if he had laid an egg himself?"

'"Um!" grumbled her husband. "More to the purpose why he refused his dinner? Here, let me look at that tray, will you? By Jove, Blanche!" he went on, holding out the egg-cup excitedly, "it's bad--no child could be expected to eat that--what a fool!"

He was half-way up the stairs impetuously when his wife begged him to be discreet, and wait for her.

"It is just what I said," she confided to Paul, who followed full of laughter. "You never can tell what he means till afterwards; now, of course, I can guess that--that----" She paused, feeling that words were unnecessary before the spectacle of Blasius, standing beside the round, white pillow of his cot, and cackling vehemently. But Lord George was too angry for amusement, and after an elaborate apology to Blazes for the mistake, handed him over to the nurse with a sharp order to re-dress him and take more care in future, which enabled that functionary to veil her real regret under a show of indignation until Blasius, who was sitting on her knee, and could presumably see more of the truths than others, said consolingly:

"Never mind, nursie! Cocky eat his own egg next time." Whereupon, she burst into tears and hugged him for a darling, and a treasure, and the one comfort of her life.

"I don't think his meaning was obscure that time, Blanche," said her husband, as they went downstairs. "If Cocky had committed the indiscretion of laying a bad egg, why then--God bless the boy, he is a little trump!"

"And has a wisdom beyond his years," added Paul, rather cynically; "for he lays the blame where it should be given--on the Creator."

"My dear Paul! what a dreadful thing to say; please remember he is your god-son."

"Well, if he doesn't hear it from me he will from others, my dear girl," replied her brother, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It is the teaching of to-day. We are none of us responsible beings."

"And upon my soul," growled Lord George, "I'm inclined to agree with it in one sense--think of that fool of a nurse!--you should dismiss her, Blanche."

"But, my dear Paul," persisted Lady George, disregarding her husband's suggestion, "the question of heredity does not exclude the forces of education. We can be altered----"

"I've heard you say a dozen times, Blanche, that an altered body is never satisfactory, even with the best of dressmakers," interrupted Paul, as he turned off to the smoking-room. "So why should you think it would answer with a soul?"

"There is something the matter with Paul," remarked his sister, who disliked above all things to have the logical sequence of her own theories flung in her face; "but that is only to be expected. When one is busy troubles come crowding in on every side. However, I have written to Lady Hooker, and begged her as a personal favour not to bring the piper to-morrow night; for, though I have warned the servants about Highland flings, you cannot expect people to overcome their natural instincts nowadays, and of course we shall be enjoying ourselves, in a way, upstairs."

"I hope so," assented her husband, gloomily; "and I suppose, my dear, I shall get my towel-horse back when it is all over."

"Now, George! isn't that like a man?" cried his wife, triumphantly, as if appealing to him for verification of a new and interesting fact about himself. "As if you didn't know that tableaux in the drawing-room and towel-horses in the bedrooms were quite incompatible when scenery is required--especially rustic scenery. And Mrs. Vane requires so many rocks! You may be thankful it wasn't boulders, for then the pillows would have gone, and what would you have said to that?"

Lord George said nothing, but as he followed his brother-in-law's example and turned off to the smoking-room, some connection of ideas made him hum to himself:--

"Out of my stony grief Bethels I'll raise."

"Really, George!" called his wife, indignantly; "you and Paul are impayable. It is a wonder Adam and Eve are so good."