IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.
'Oh, Angus!' Maggie held out her hand to him on the pier, and he held it as in a vice. 'It iss your own poat, then, Angus?'
'No; she iss not,' said Angus.
'No?'
'No! She iss yours, Maggie! I built her for ye—every inch of her grew under my own hand—and she's no a pad poat at all, though it iss me that says it——'
'Well, Angus——'
'Don't say another word, but go aboard,' said Angus, proceeding down the steep slippery steps to the loch, leading Maggie gallantly by the hand. Speedily the rope was unloosed, the white sail spread to the breeze, and the boat moved gracefully and rapidly, under a glorious sunset sky, out into the loch. Maggie sat holding the tiller silently while Angus adjusted the ropes. The loch was radiant from shore to shore in the rich evening light; quickly the white houses of the town were left in the distance; and hardly a movement but the delicious ripple of water cleft by the boat's bow, or the cry of a sea-gull sailing lazily overhead, disturbed the stillness. Here and there in the pools among the boulders in lonely parts of the shore, a heron stood silent as its own shadow and solitary as a hermit; from the grassy hollows by the beach a thin white mist rose, softening the green wooded slopes, and adding a sense of distance to the heathery ridges in the background, glorified by the red autumn sunset. Maggie was supremely happy. When the sail was fairly set, Angus came and stretched himself by her side.
'And ye think she iss a nice poat, and ye like her?' he said, looking into Maggie's face.
'It wass fery kind of ye to think of giving me such a present as this, Angus; but I cannot possibly take it.'
'Maggie,' said Angus, taking her disengaged hand in his, 'I hef long wanted to tell you something—indeed I hef, Maggie—not that I'm a goot hand at telling anything I want, but—all the time I wass building her, and that wass longer than ye might think, Maggie—I hef looked to this moment as a reward—when I would see you sitting there, looking that happy and that peautiful—yes, Maggie, peautiful, and pleased with my work—and proud am I to see ye so pleased wi' a trifle'——
'But it iss not a trifle,' said the maiden interrupting him; 'it wass a great undertaking! I nefer saw anything I liked half so much.'
'But it iss nothing, I tell you, Maggie, to what I would gif you if you would be willing to take it—nothing! I would like you, Maggie, to take all I hef—and myself too. It iss true I am only a common sailor, but Maggie, my heart iss fery warm to you. Many's the time, when I wass a hundred and maybe thousants of miles away from here, I wad pe thinking of you—many a time in the middle of the night, when I wass on the deck alone, watching and looking at the stars under a foreign sky, I would single out a particular star and call it Maggie's eye, and watch it lovingly, cass I thocht you might pe looking at it too, even if you wass not thinking of me thousants of miles off; and it makes me fery unhappy when I'm a long way off, to think that maybe I am forgotten, and some other man iss trying to get your love, and maybe I losing my chance of happiness for life, cass, like a fool, I held my peace, when by speaking a word my happiness and yours might pe secure.'
Angus's arm had stolen round the girl's waist as he proceeded in the speech that was a direct outflow from his heart. She did not try to speak for a little. Angus saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
'It wass wrong of ye, Angus, efer to think I would forget ye,' she said.
'Then ye do think sometimes apoot me when I am not near you?'
'Angus, how can you pe speaking nonsense like that!'
'But it iss not nonsense to me, Maggie,' said her lover seriously; 'I love you, Maggie, as I love no woman in the world; and Maggie, if you were to—to—it wad break my'——
It was the old story. Two human souls meeting under the light of heaven, each recognising in the other that which each yearned for, to give completeness to life; the spoken word being the outward force impelling them towards each other, as two dewdrops merge into one by a movement external to both. The Highland girl had no desire to break her lover's heart; nay, she was ready to give her own in exchange for his love with all the impulsiveness of a simple and true nature. As the boat sped on they noted not that twilight was deepening into evening, that the stars were myriad-eyed above them, and the crescent moon glimmered over the hills and shone in quivering tracks along the loch. So it came about that at the same moment of time when the piper in the clachan was apostrophising Angus's father in the words already recorded—'Nae doot your son Angus will pe wanting me to learn him to play the pipes too; and nae doot, when he comes for that purpose, he will look to have his crack wi' Maggie,' &c.—his daughter's arms were being thrown impulsively about Angus's neck, and Angus himself was the happiest man in the Western Highlands.
Maggie reached Glen Heath with a joyous heart. She was there before the piper. She speedily girt on her apron, and with tucked-up sleeves proceeded to the more prosaic duty of baking 'scones' that might be warm and palatable for the piper's supper; and as she rolled out the dough, and patted and rolled and kneaded it, and turned it before the fire until an appetising browniness covered each surface, she sang merrily one of the merriest of the sad Gaelic melodies.
But the piper was late. The white cloth was spread, and the scones had time to cool, before Diana leaping to her feet, stretched herself, yawned, and went to the door sniffing. Maggie opened the door immediately; the piper swung along the path unsteadily. The dog went to meet him without enthusiasm, half-doubtful of her reception, and only narrowly escaped the kick which the piper aimed at her.
'Get out, ye prute!' he said, as he came in; and when the animal still came fawning towards him, he hurled his bagpipes with great force at her head, only with the result, however, of breaking the pipe's mouthpiece. 'O the prute!' he cried when he saw what had happened; 'she has proken my favourite shanter—the shanter that I've played wi' for fifteen years. O the prute! I'll cut her throat, to teach her to keep oot o' my way. My best shanter too!'
'Come, dad, you are late,' said Maggie cheerily, going to meet him; 'you hef had a long walk. I hef boiled some eggs for ye, and baked some scones; come, hef some supper before ye go to bed.'
'Ay, ay, ye are a praw lass, Maggie, one o' the right sort,' the piper said. 'But to think my poor shanter's broken. I will nefer see her like again whatefer!'
The piper sat down to supper with an enormous appetite, and Maggie waited upon him devotedly, uncertain whether she should reveal her secret or not in the present dubious state of her father's temper.
'Anypody peen here for me the day?' he asked between mouthfuls.
'Yes, Angus MacTavish wass here in the afternoon; and he'——
The piper laid down his knife, looked straight in his daughter's face with a fierceness that startled her, saying: 'Hang Angus MacTavish and efery man i' their black clan! A MacTavish nefer darkens my threshold again! If Angus MacTavish efer comes to my house he will live to rue it. I hate efery living MacTavish!'
Maggie looked in her father's face amazed. To violent language she was well accustomed; but sober or otherwise, she had never heard him utter a word against the MacTavishes until now.
'Come, dad,' she said after a short silence, during which time she decided it would be better to say nothing of what was uppermost in her mind until morning—'come, dad; something has vexed you to-night. You will be petter in the morning. Angus iss the best friend either you or I hef in the wide world.'
'I tell you,' burst out the piper, 'I will not hef his name mentioned in my hoose, not by you or any other! And if you go apoot with him, Meg, as I hef seen ye do lately, I'll—I'll maybe pack you out of doors too!'
The tears were in poor Maggie's eyes, but she comforted herself as she put up the bolt in the door for the night, by assuring herself, as she heard the piper stumbling up-stairs to his room: 'Poor dad, he iss worse than usual to-night.' And when she slept, she dreamed of Angus.