Red Rowans.

by Flora Annie Steel.

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 gra.s.s 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 la.s.sie'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 la.s.sie's bonnie?" repeated Paul Macleod, watching the rapid changes in her vivid face with amused admiration; "if a la.s.sie'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 la.s.sie 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-cla.s.s 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 a.s.serting 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.sault 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."