"George!" cried his wife, rising with an awful dignity. "Shall we go into the drawing-room, Mrs. Woodward?"

"It was only his knees, my dear," protested the discomforted n.o.bleman in a whisper as she swept past him. "Hang it all! if a man mayn't mention his brother-in-law's knees or his wife's slippers."

But she was out of hearing, so he sate down in his chair again and poured himself out a b.u.mper of port viciously.

CHAPTER XIV.

While the Big House was going on its way from cellar to attic, as if it had been within the sound of Bow Bells instead of in a remote Highland glen, Marjory for the first time in her life felt time heavy on her hands; a thing not to be tolerated for an instant by a young person of her views and prospects. She told herself that if this was the result of her holiday, the sooner she set to work and forgot that pleasant, idle time the better. For it had been pleasant, and Paul Macleod had been kind. But what of that? His ways were not her ways--his thoughts were not her thoughts; and then suddenly would come the memory of that short instant on Isle Shuna when they had stood hand in hand watching the Green Ray. Or was that only another result of idleness?--that she should be growing fanciful. Paul himself had denied seeing it, and after all, despite his kindness, he was the last person to have sympathy with her ideals; yet such sympathy was the only thing which could make her care for him or his society. She told herself all this, over and over again, until she believed it; for Marjory had not yet learnt to differentiate her head from her heart.

Many women never learn the art, and though some, no doubt, find the difficulty lies in discovering their heads, a far greater number stop short at a calm affection in the catalogue of their emotions.

Still, for some reason or another, as yet inexplicable to the girl herself, the melodious carol of a blackbird singing his heart out in a cherry tree sent a pain to her own. It seemed to fill the world with unrest, even though the house lay still as the grave; for Mrs. Cameron and the la.s.sies were away at the milking. She covered her ears to shut out the sound and bent closer to her book, until suddenly she found herself blindfolded by a pair of strong, slender, supple hands--hands that could not be mistaken for an instant.

"Tom!" she cried. "Oh, Tom! is it you?"

"Tom it is," said a voice with a pleasant intonation scarcely foreign, and yet a.s.suredly not wholly English. "_E' bene!_ Mademoiselle Grands-serieux! So this is the way you hold high holiday?"

He pointed to the open book, then, as she clung delighted to his arm, put on an air of simulated disgust, perhaps to conceal the keen joy which her welcome afforded him.

"Conic sections again, and I wandering round 'permiskus' calling for some of my relations to kill the fatted calf!"

"The prodigal didn't come 'permiskus.' He wired ahead and they saw him from afar."

"Then he didn't get an unexpected holiday, come express from Paris to Oban, and then walk thirty miles over the hills because he had missed the mail cart and was a fool----"

"But why a fool?"

"Why? Because the bosom of my family was absorbed in conic sections!

And if that reason won't do, you really must wait until I have had some veal--for to tell truth I'm ravenous--mostly for drinks!"

He watched her as she flew off, singing as she went like any blackbird out of sheer lightness of heart, and asked himself if this were not enough? If he were bound to wait for something more? For Dr. Tom Kennedy was not a man to require much time for such thoughts, especially when he had been thinking of Marjory and his welcome all that trudge of thirty miles over bog and heather. But the answer came slowly, for he was quite as much in the dark on the vexed question of Love and Marriage as most people, and the little Blind Boy with the bow and arrows was as yet a part of his Pantheon. And yet there was temptation enough to set mere romance aside, when, after antic.i.p.ating his every want, and fussing over him after the manner of a hen with a solitary chicken, Marjory drew a low stool beside his chair, and, with her elbows resting on her knees and her radiant face supported on her hands, looked over him, as it were, in sheer content.

"You don't know how nice it is to have you back," she said, suddenly stretching out one hand to him--a favourite gesture of hers when eager. He took it in both of his, bent over it, and kissed it.

"'Tis worth the parting, child, to come back--to this."

She laughed merrily. "You have such pretty manners, Tom! I expect you learnt them from grandpapa the Marquis and the _haute n.o.blesse_. And then in Paris, I suppose----"

His heart contracted, but he interrupted her gaily. "I decline to be scheduled in that fashion. My manners are my own, thank Heaven! in spite of Galton on heredity. Oh! Marjory, my dear! what a relief it is to get away from it all--from the eternal hunt for something that escapes you--from the first chapter of Genesis to the Book of Revelation; and now that I come to think of it, there is something new about you--what is it?"

She shook her head hastily. "Nothing. You said that last time, I believe--people always look different. You have got greyer."

He rubbed his close-cropped head disconsolately. "Have I?--well, I can't help it. I'm getting old."

"Nonsense! And I won't have you say you are glad to get away from work--from the best work in the world! How can you tire of the only thing worth anything, and of the search for truth?"

"Because I'm forty-three--more than double your age. By the way, there was a man I know who married a girl of sixteen when he was thirty-two.

And when he saw it down on the register it struck him all of a heap that when she was forty he would be eighty. Matrimony, apparently, isn't good for arithmetic--nor for the matter of that, arithmetic for matrimony!"

"What silly stories you have, Tom," laughed the girl, "and in other ways you really are so sensible."

He rose suddenly and went to the window--a small, slight man, with a keen brown face--and then, as if in excuse for the move, he picked a spray or two of white jasmine and stuck them in his b.u.t.tonhole. Then he turned to her with a smile. "I should have been a deal more sensible if people hadn't taught me things when I was young. Original sin isn't in it with education. Come, Marjory! let us go and find my cousin--or there will be a row in the house."

"I like that!" retorted the girl, taking possession of his arm; "as if anyone in the place dare say a word against you. Why, she told Dr.

Macrea the other day that she didn't intend to die till she could have you to attend her!" Whereat they both laughed.

But, in truth, there was much laughter and general good-will at the Lodge that evening, when Dr. Kennedy insisted on Mrs. Cameron bringing her knitting to the garden bench, while he and Marjory and Will strolled about among the flowers, or stood talking here and there as the fancy took them.

"Why do you always wear jasmine, Tom?" asked the girl, idly bending to catch a closer whiff of the b.u.t.tonhole. "I suppose _she_ used to give it to you."

"What she?"

"The one _she_ of a man's life, of course."

"Fabulous creature! If they come at all, they come in crowds. Yes! now I think of it, I fancy you are right. I was twelve, and she a distracting young flirt of six. Her name was Pauline. I remember it, because she was the last!----"

"Oh, Tom! how can you!"

"Fact; for twenty years after that the responsibilities of searching for truth prevented my thinking of fictions."

"And after that?"

"My dear Marjory, no history is ever written up to date. Even in your beloved school-primers the last years of Her Gracious Majesty's reign are glozed over by generalities. You see it is never safe to hazard an opinion till events have proved it to be right. And then decent reserve over the immediate past saves a lot of worry. I should hate to confess that I had told a lie yesterday, though I might own up placidly to one seven years ago. Yes! seven years should be close time for confession. A man renews his vile body in that period, and can take credit for having changed his morals also."

"But it is more than seven years since you were thirty-two."

"You have a head for arithmetic, my dear, not for--the other thing; and it is possible that I am still only in the second volume of my fiction."

"You mean in love. What a delightfully funny idea!"

"Mrs. Cameron!" cried the doctor, "do you see anything comic in the spectacle of Methuselah wishing to get married; for I don't. I think it is melancholy in the extreme."

In truth he did think so, for though, when he was away, his own sentimentality seemed sufficient for them both, the first look at Marjory's face always told him that, if the received theories were true, there was something yet to come before he had any right--in a way any desire--to ask Marjory to be his wife. If they were true!

There lay the problem which he found so much difficulty in solving.

Like most men of his profession, he was almost over familiar with the material side of the question, and, being naturally of delicate fibre, an instinctive revolt made him exaggerate the part which romance was to play in the purification of pa.s.sion. To marry when you loved each other was one thing; for one to love, and both to remain friends, was another! And between these two ideals he hesitated; for Dr. Kennedy's power lay not so much in strength as in a certain fineness of perception and delicacy of touch. And yet at times a doubt lingered--the doubt which had made him fall foul of the things he had been taught in his youth. But even through this there ran a vein of protest against the lack of colour which a more prosaic, more material, and yet less animal view of the relations which ought to exist between a man and woman would involve. For he was sentimental to a degree, and told himself that the very fact of his age made it more than ever necessary that his wife should be inspired to do her duty by something more than mere affection. That is to say, once more, if current theories were true! He came back to this point again and again, unable to settle it to his own satisfaction, and finding his chief comfort in the fact that Marjory had, hitherto, never shown the least sign of loving anyone. If that were to continue in the future, he could imagine the doubts and difficulties disappearing altogether; but for this time was required, time for her to understand her own nature. His knowledge, his experience of life, the position in which he stood towards her, all combined to make him hyper-sensitive lest in any way he should wrong her innocence and ignorance. Besides, he himself would have been bitterly dissatisfied with the position. That was the solid truth, which went further than anything else in making him stand aloof; though, no doubt, he would have denied the fact strenuously, since to men of his stamp a sentimental grief is better than no sentiment at all. Yet the grief sate on him lightly because of its very sentimentality, and because--though this again he would strenuously have denied--in his heart of hearts he felt that it was largely of his own making, and that one part of his nature was satisfied and to spare. In these days, when the happiness of the individual is both aim and end, it is curious to see how persistently one form of happiness is ignored; the happiness which indubitably comes from doing what you would _not_ wish to do, unless you conceived it to be your duty. And yet the very people who deny the possibility of this content are the first to point out that, when all is said and done, a man can only do what he wishes to do.

So that when, on the next morning, Dr. Kennedy, who had listened to the tale of what had been going on and what was going on in the Big House with a certain foreboding, came to Marjory and urged her to accompany him on a visit there in the afternoon, he did so with the distinct intention of feeling the self-complacency of duty performed.

And Marjory, in her turn, thus brought face to face with the very reasonable proposition, found it hard to make an excuse that did not rouse her own indignation by being over serious. After all, why should she not comply with Captain Macleod's urgent invitations? There was nothing to be afraid of. Nevertheless, when she appeared, clothed in white raiment with her best gloves on, she had so solemn and sedate an air that the doctor felt aghast at his own act.

"Don't look so like Iphigenia, my dear," he said; "or let us give it up."

"Certainly not. If it's the right thing to do, it has got to be done; but I do feel like a sacrificial lamb. You don't, of course; but then you are accustomed to society, a great deal of society, and I'm not.

Do you know, Tom, I have scarcely ever seen more than three or four people of my own rank together in my life, and I positively don't know any girls."

"Time you did," he replied stoutly.