This incident, however, made it quite impossible for her to continue the role she had been playing before. How could she? with Blasius huddled up on her lap, eating bread and jam between his attempts to count his bare toes; an arithmetical problem which he insisted on solving, despite her efforts with the antimaca.s.sar. Not that the necessity for change mattered, since she had a variety of other parts to fall back upon, and so, being slightly bored by the Reverend James's failure to respond, and evident disposition to remain the spiritual director, she a.s.sumed that of Great Lady and Helper-in-General to her world. In which character, she gave it as her opinion that all parish clergymen should be married--if only in order to make them understand children, and grasp the true bearings of the education question.

Whereat he blushed violently, and five minutes afterwards had confided his hopes regarding Marjory to his hostess's sympathising ears.

Nothing could be more suitable, she told him; in fact, the idea had occurred to her before, and she had no doubt that he would bring his suit to a successful issue. Only, as a woman of the world who had seen more of life than he had, she would advise a little boldness, a trifle more self-a.s.sertion. His position, she said, was really an excellent one on the whole, and she need hardly say that both she and her brother would welcome Mrs. Gillespie as one of themselves.

So, with a complete reversal of their mutual positions, they parted, and the Reverend James as he walked home, full of blushes and budding hopes, told himself that since Lady George agreed with the Bishop it was time he bestirred himself. The picnic at the old burying-ground would afford him an excellent opportunity of proposing, and if he made up his mind definitely on that point, it would make him less nervous.

So when he reached home he went to the calendar of the daily lesson, which hung by his bed, and ticked off the five days remaining to him, just as schoolboys tick off their holidays. Five days--and then--yes!

then he would ask Marjory to marry him.

CHAPTER XX.

A morning in late September on a Highland loch. How good it is to be there! The centre just rippled with crisp waves, while sh.o.r.ewards the rocks show mirrored clearly in the smooth water, each bunch of russet bracken or tuft of yellow bent almost more brilliant in the reflection than the reality. The hills free from haze, standing like sentinels, solid and firm; the wild cherry leaves aping the scarlet of the rowan berries, the birch trees beginning to drop their golden bribe into the still, emerald laps of the mossy hollows, as if seeking to buy the secret of perpetual summer.

A scene where it is meet to put off the travel-stained shoes which have borne our feet along the trivial round, the common tasks of life, and go back to the bare feet of simple pleasure. The pleasure of children on the seash.o.r.e, of young lambs in a blossoming meadow.

Yet there was an air of conscious effort, a virtuous look of duty on many of the faces which a.s.sembled at the boat-house in order to be ferried over to the other side of the loch, whence the ascent to the old burying-ground was to be made.

The shadow of coming separation lay upon most of the party; on none more than Tom Kennedy, who had filched a few extra hours of Marjory's companionship from the Great Enemy by scorning the mail cart in favour of a solitary walk over the crest of Ben Morven to the nearest coach, the place settled on for the picnic being so far on his way. And she, though all unconscious of the keen pain at his heart, felt vaguely that she would miss the touch of his kind hand, the sound of his kind voice more than ever now, now that it seemed the only thing remaining of the old calm confidence. Lady George was a prey to a thousand cares, beginning with the lunch and culminating in the certainty that some one of the three children--whom her husband had insisted on bringing--would be drowned; just at the last, too, when she had brought them safely through all the dangers of Gleneira, for they and their nurse were to start by the early boat next morning. But the day was indeed to be a fateful one, for was not this Paul's last chance of speaking to Alice? and did not Mrs. Woodward, for all her conspicuous calm, show to the watchful eye that she also was aware of the fact?

Paul himself showed nothing; but, then, he was always exasperatingly cool when a little touch of excitement would, on the whole, be pleasing.

But of all the faces that of the Reverend James Gillespie displayed the sense of duty most clearly, and what Paul lacked in animation he made up for in sheer restlessness, since the time had come when he must carry out his intention and ask Marjory Carmichael to marry him.

If only because it would be advisable to set up house at the November term, when they would have a chance of furnishing cheaply and of getting a good servant. So he wandered about in a fuss, alternately trying to make an opportunity, and then flying from it, until Paul, always observant, began to wonder what was up, and then, chancing upon one of the bashful lover's bolder attempts, swore under his breath at the fellow's impudence. Tom Kennedy was a gentleman, and Marjory, with her iceberg of a heart would be happy enough in his keeping by and bye; but this rampant, red-faced fool! And then he laughed, thinking suddenly, causelessly, of a certain little face, looking very winsome despite its weariness, which would have laughed too; for Mrs. Vane had somehow failed to rally from the shock of old Peggy's death with her usual elasticity, and was still in her room visible only to a favoured few, Paul amongst the number. Only that morning she had looked at him with her pretty, quizzical eyes and met his offer to escort her so far on her southward journey with the remark that by that time he would no longer be his own master.

And it was true. Before he rowed across the loch again his future would be settled, he would be Alice Woodward's Highland proprietor.

"Your left, please, Miss Carmichael," he said, giving stroke with a longer swing; "there is a nice, comfortable landing-place just beyond the white stone, and I hate getting my feet wet, even in helping ladies to keep theirs dry."

"But we shall miss----" began Marjory.

"Do as you're bid, my dear," put in Will Cameron, resignedly, from the bow; "haven't you learnt by this time that the laird knows where he wants to steer and sticks to it? After all, it saves a lot of trouble to others."

"Right you are!" a.s.sented Paul, gaily; "your left, please; not so much as that; thank you! I've no desire to find the sunken rocks."

The words were light, and a boat-load of people were listening to them; yet Marjory, guiding the tiller ropes, felt that they were spoken for her ear alone; that she and Paul were face to face, as they so often were before his future, and the fact annoyed her. Yet, as they stepped out on the little causeway of rock jutting forward like a peer, the waves blab, blabbing upon its sides, reminded her of the evening when she had sate listening to them and Paul had come along the sh.o.r.e behind her, like another St. Christopher, bearing the burden of the world's immortality--its childhood.

"Tom," she said, in a low voice, turning to him in swift appeal, why she knew not, "let us get away from all this; we might go along the point and look for clams, as we used to do. Remember, it is the last I shall see of you; so don't talk about manners and being wanted; don't think of what other people think."

She spoke petulantly, but there were sudden tears in her eyes. Yet as they moved off together neither of then realised that a fateful moment had come and gone; that the trivial words covered an unconscious revolt of one side of her woman's nature against the other, and that if, instead of hunting clams like a couple of children, he had taken her hand and told her the truth of love and marriage, as he had seen it in life, she would have turned instinctively from the world's apotheosis of pa.s.sion, and so have found a compa.s.s to guide her out of danger; but Tom Kennedy, being conscious that he himself was once more under the glamour which had come and gone many times already even in his sober life, could not find it in his heart to decry it utterly. So they stalked clams instead, advancing on tiptoe over the wet sand with eyes alert for every sign of an air-hole, and then pouncing like a cat on a mouse to seize the collapsing tube before it sank down, down, into the depths of gravel where even finger nails could not follow it.

And to them, as they laughed and hunted, came the Reverend James, restless as ever, yet showing to advantage in a sport which he had practised from his barefoot childhood.

It was good to see his fair, florid face come up red with smug triumph from each dive as he added another clam to the heap, until Marjory forgot everything else in emulation, and Tom Kennedy, smiling at her eagerness, sate down to a cigarette beside Lord George, who, engaged in the same business, was watching the children paddle in the shallows.

A silent, yet sympathetic audience were these two men of middle age, smiling to themselves over the gay voices and childish sallies. Over Eve's eleventh ineffectual attempt to swallow an oyster which would have been successful if Adam hadn't made her laugh; over Marjory's indignant claim to a clam, which, during the dispute, disappeared for ever. Smiling, too, over Blasius' solemn face as he informed daddy that there was a "big crawly wild beast down there wif wobbly legs, and Blazeths wanted daddy's hand. Blazeths wathn't afwaid, but he wanted daddy's hand."

The incoming tide was drowning the round brown heads of the boulders out on the far point, as those two red ones, so curiously alike, bent over the "wild beast wif wobbly legs," which Adam and Eve, with wide-eyed superiority, said was nothing but a crab, a tiny crab! A heron, driven from its last inch of seaweed, flapped slowly across the bay, its trailing feet almost touching the water, and the sea-pyots circled screaming round the invaders of their happy hunting-ground. In the bend of the bay beneath a clump of alders showed a cl.u.s.ter of gay dresses busy about a tablecloth, and above them, in wooded curves merging into sheer slopes of rock and bent, rose Ben Morven. Half-way up, right in the open, a single holly tree, like a black shadow, marking the turn to the old burying-ground. Lord George came back from the wild beast with a sober face, and eyes still watching that little red head, bent now over a stick with which the wobbly legs were being boldly prodded to a walk.

"Queer start, children--aren't they?" he remarked confidentially, as he lit another cigarette. "I never thought of it before I married, give you my word. I suppose men don't--more's the pity." He gave a glance at his companion's face, and went on with more a.s.surance: "You see no one ever talks of the paternal instinct; the women are supposed to have it all their own way, in the maternal business, and it's a shame, for a man needs that sort of thing more than they do. A woman can't be done out of her motherhood, but a man loses everything except a pa.s.sing pleasure if he doesn't keep straight. Look at that boy, Kennedy! He is the very moral of me, and I had to whack him the other day. Well, I a.s.sure you, that I felt for the first time in my life that I was immortal--that I had a stake in time and eternity. Why don't they teach us this when we are young? Why don't they say something about it in the marriage service, instead of letting a couple of young fools undertake responsibilities for which they are not fit?"

Tom Kennedy shook his head. "Because we are not brave enough to face our own instincts and call a spade a spade. I served a few years in India once, and Hindooism is, I think, the only religion which sets personal feelings aside utterly; and there the idea has been overlaid with a horrible sensuality. Though on the whole it is not more sickening than our artificial sentiment. But it's a weary subject.

Everyone talks of it, and yet no one cares to go back to the beginning; to give up the romance----"

His eyes wandered to Marjory, and he was silent. It was true. When all was said and done he craved for it.

"Well," remarked Lord George, judgmatically, after a pause, "there is something wrong, somewhere. Take my own case. I married, as most fellows do, to please myself, without a thought of the consequences.

And though, of course, some romance is necessary to make a man give up his club and undertake the responsibility of a boy like Blazes--Good Lord! and I promised his mother to keep him out of mischief!"

The last words being evoked by the sight of his youngest born p.r.o.ne on his back kicking madly in six inches of water, with the crab attached to his big toe.

"I wanted it to come a walk wif Blazeths," he wailed pathetically; "and it bited Blazeths instead, with a wobbly leg."

"I knew how it would be, George," said his wife, with patient dignity, when the culprits appeared before her. "But you are so self-confident.

You are always undertaking responsibilities for which Nature has not fitted you. Give him to nurse, and cut the cuc.u.mber, do--there's a good boy."

Lord George shot a queer glance at Dr. Kennedy, and did as he was bid; as most people did when Blanche put on her superior manner.

"And, Dr. Kennedy," she continued, "I want you to do something for me.

The Hookers have brought--no! I don't mean the piper, George, though they have brought him--not that it matters so much, for I have told John Macpherson to keep him in the 'Tubhaneer,' which is anch.o.r.ed in the stream, so he can do no harm, and the pipes will sound nice over the water--No, Dr. Kennedy, it is a German professor, very distinguished, but none of the Hooker party speak German. George will, of course, take him in tow by and bye, being in the Foreign Office; but just now, I thought--if you would not mind. Thanks, so much! it always looks well to have more than one linguist. At present, I have sent him to admire the view with Major Bertie, who says 'wunderschon'

at intervals; but that can't last long, you know."

"My dear Blanche, you are as good as a play!" protested her husband, convulsed with laughter, at her unconscious mimicry, and even Dr.

Kennedy found it hard to keep his countenance over her innocent surprise. Yet he was in no mood for amus.e.m.e.nt, and his face showed it when, lunch being over, he drew out his watch, and looked meaningly to Marjory.

"Is it time?" she asked, with a sudden sinking of the heart.

"Quite time," echoed Paul, coolly, from his place by Alice Woodward; "that is to say, if we are to be back to tea. It is a longer pull than it looks. Now, good people! who is for the burying-ground? You are coming, of course, Miss Woodward; I want you to see all the beauties of Gleneira, and the view is splendid."

The Reverend James, who had made up his mind that the descent, when Marjory should have lost her natural escort, would be the very time for his purpose, stood up manfully, and Major Bertie, under orders for the time being to the athletic daughter of a neighbouring laird, followed suit; but the rest, for the most part, declined what they stigmatised as a gruesome invitation. The pull was not only long but stiff, especially after lunch, and the view from below, enhanced by idleness and a quiet cigar, good enough for them.

So it was a small single file which, led by Paul, and brought up by John Macpherson with the whiskey flask in case of accidents, toiled up through the fern brakes, till half-way up the hill they struck the path, and paused for breath beside a spring roughly set in masonry.

Beside it lay a pile of broken broomsticks, one of which Alice Woodward took up, intending to use it as a staff.

"It will be the staves they are using to carry the coffins," remarked old John, cheerfully, as he wiped his forehead with his coat sleeve; "it is breaking them they are when they come down, at the wishing well; and the la.s.sies will come with them to wish for a jo---- Ay! ay!

it will be what they were using for old Peggy that the leddy will be choosing, for it's new whatever."

Alice dropped the stick with a little shiver of disgust, and Paul moved on impatiently, while John, in reply to a query from the Major, went on from behind in garrulous tones, "Ou, ay! it is a job, whatever, but it's most the auld bodies like Peggy that's wantin' to come to the auld place, and they're fine and light; all but the old _bodach_, Angus MacKinnon, and by 'sunder he will be a job when his turn comes, for he's as big as a stirk. Ay! ay! as big as a stirk, whatever."

"There! is not that worth the climb?" cried Paul, with a ring of real pleasure in his voice which Marjory remembered so well on many a similar occasion, as they reached the twin holly trees--sacred to an older cult than that which had prompted the selection of a burial site whence Iona might sometimes be seen--and sank down upon the short thyme-set turf to admire the view.

"We are in luck!" cried Marjory, breathlessly. "Look! yonder is Iona."

Out on the verge, between the golden sea and the golden sky, lay a faint purple cloud no bigger than a man's hand.

"But why Iona?" asked Alice Woodward. "I mean why did they want to be buried in sight of it?"