CHAPTER II.
Quand on vous voit, on vous aime; quand on vous aime, où vous voit-on?
For a while the two boats kept in touch, so that talk passed easily between them. Miss Alison spoke little. Silence rather became the fair pensive quality of her charm—and probably she knew it. The uncharitable supposition was Lady Forsyth’s: and she was fain to confess that pensiveness and silence harmonised well with the fine, straight nose, the mass of dull gold hair, and eyes of that transparent blue which lacks warmth and depth, yet has a limpid beauty of its own, especially where the pupils are large and the lashes noticeably long.
Mark, too, had fallen silent: the worst possible sign. But Miss O’Neill atoned for all deficiencies by discoursing vigorously to Maurice’s swaying shoulders, upon the latest developments of the suffrage campaign. Maurice, equal to any emergency, had no difficulty in airing his own views on the subject—as it were, through the back of his head—to one who had hammered shop windows with her own hand, though she graciously drew the line at firing churches and wrecking trains. Yet she was a woman of generous and, at times, noble impulses. The greater part of her small annuity was lavished on a very personal form of rescue work—and on Bel.
‘It’s rank injustice, say what you please,’ she declared in her strong, vibrant tones, ‘to imprison and torture poor misguided girls who have the courage of the faith that’s in them. The real blame lies on the heads of those who’ve driven us to extremes.’
‘That sounds very fine, Miss O’Neill, but I’m afraid it won’t hold water,’ Macnair put in quietly from the other boat. ‘It has been the standing excuse of fanatics and—dare I add?—criminals all down the ages. Your latest forms of argument will simply harden and justify opposition to a cause that is not without certain elements of justice and right.’
His pleasant voice had the clear, leisured enunciation of the scholar, a quality peculiarly exasperating to the red-hot enthusiast whose thoughts are, in the main, emotions intellectually expressed. ‘Justice and right indeed!’ Miss O’Neill fairly hurled the words at him. ‘That’s all we’re asking, isn’t it? And precisely what we’ll never be getting under a man-made Government and man-made laws.’
Macnair smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He had no mind to let argument and recrimination desecrate the peace and glowing beauty of a Highland summer evening; and with practised ease he slid into the calmer waters of generalisation, as much in the hope of weaning Lady Forsyth from troubled thoughts as for the pleasure of expressing his own.
‘The truth is,’ he said, resting on his oars, while the boats drifted into a luminous bay, ‘every age, like every country, has its moral microbe; and the microbe of this one is “Down with everything”; “Can’t; won’t; shan’t; don’t; Pass it along the line,” that’s about the tune of it, in all ranks. Kipling may or may not be a classic poet, but his “Commissariat Camels” put the present-day spirit into a nutshell. For nearly a hundred years the world has been fed on a steady diet of revolt; and now we have the climax, distaste for duties and clamour for rights. The fine, brave old wisdom of acceptance is altogether out of court⸺’
Mark, withdrawing his gaze from Miss Alison’s profile, treated him to a smile of amused approval. ‘Why this sudden access of eloquence, old man?’ he asked; and Keith deliberately winked over his shoulder.
‘Miss O’Neill there’s to blame; and the modern world does seem rather egregiously modern when one’s been living for months in a backwater with Pindar for company.’
‘Oh Keith, have you really found time for your promised translation of the “Odes”?’ Lady Forsyth—herself a translator of some distinction—leaned eagerly forward.
‘I’ve been making time for a few of them,’ he answered, pleased with the success of his diversion, ‘by neglecting my Bergson book.’
‘Have you got them here?’
‘Yes. They’re in type, awaiting your consideration!’
‘Good. You’ll publish them, of course.’
He shook his head. ‘Not even to please you! I’ve simply been enjoying myself, exploring a little deeper into the heart of an old friend; one who could look life in the face without feeling convinced that he personally could have made a better job of it. One suspects even our poets, these days, of being propagandists in disguise. Pindar is as sublime and as useless as a snow-peak; and one can no more convey the essence of him in English than one could convey the scent of a rose in Parliamentary language! Yet one is fool enough to try.’
Sheila, who had been listening with her quiet intentness, remarked softly, ‘Why don’t we all learn Greek?’
‘Because the humanities are out of court in an age of scientific materialism. Wasn’t there a promise, once, that I should teach you?’
The girl flushed with pleasure. ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’
‘And I thought Miss Videlle had persuaded you to give up everything for this massage you’re so keen about.’
Their talk took a more personal tone, and Lady Forsyth’s attention strayed again towards the other boat. It had drifted a little farther off, and a change of seats was in progress between Mark and Miss Videlle. One moment his tall figure loomed against the dying splendour; the next, he sank cautiously down beside Miss Alison, who vouchsafed him a side-long glance of welcome.
‘We’re moving on a bit, Mother,’ he sang out, seeing her face turned in their direction.
They moved on accordingly: and it did not occur to Lady Forsyth that Miss O’Neill, sitting alone in the bows, obscured from vision of the disturbing pair, was in much the same mood as herself. Lonely, passionate, and emotional, her thwarted womanhood had found in Bel Alison an object on which she could lavish at once the protective tenderness of a mother and the devoted service of a man. Unhappily, this last included a consuming jealousy of those who had a better natural right to the girl than herself. Diligently and skilfully, therefore, she had scattered seeds of prejudice against the unjust half of creation—which, by the way, she very much appreciated in units, while denouncing it in the mass. By way of a more positive deterrent, her slender means were taxed to the utmost that Bel might have cushions and flowers and curtains to suit her fastidious taste. No one, least of all Miss Alison, suspected the extent of her secret shifts and sacrifices. And, intermittently, she had her reward. But no skill in self-deception could blind her to the fact that her lavish devotion was as dust in the balance against the passing attentions of a baronet, lord of two estates, and a fine-looking fellow to boot. To-night the conviction rankled with peculiar keenness by reason of her suppressed irritation with Macnair.
‘Shirking the issue. Just like a man!’ she soliloquised wrathfully. ‘And dragging in his own trumpery translations by the heels. The conceit of the creatures! And the folly of them. Wasting good abilities over the vapourings of a musty old Greek poet. Blind as a bat, or simply not caring a snap that the world’s crammed with evils crying out to be reformed. Let them cry, so long as he can scribble in peace....’
At this point her somewhat chaotic thoughts were interrupted by music from the other end of the boat. Mark was singing Wallace’s lullaby, ‘Son of Mine’; half crooning it, at first, for the benefit of Miss Alison, who did not know it. But as the strong swing of the melody took hold of him, he let out his voice to the full—a true, clear baritone; music in its every cadence; and something more than music, for those who had ears to hear.
Harry, raging inwardly, heard, and understood very well that the days of her own dominion were numbered. Lady Forsyth understood equally well; but she had passed beyond the raging mood. The song was an old favourite; every note of it laden with associations; and in spite of herself tears started to her eyes.
As for Mark, others might understand or not as they pleased. He was singing to an audience of one; to the girl who sat beside him, her uncovered head lifted and half turned away toward the dark sweeping curves of the hills.
When the murmur of applause died down she turned to him with the slow lift of her lashes that, conscious or no, thrilled him afresh at each repetition. ‘I didn’t know you could sing like that,’ she said softly.
‘I can’t always,’ he answered, flushing under her implied praise. ‘Sometimes—it just takes hold of me. Don’t you sing yourself? I’m sure you’ve got music in you.’
She suppressed a small sigh. ‘Oh yes. It’s one of my poor little half-fledged talents; useless for want of proper development. My elder sister’s the clever one, and she got all the chances. She found me convenient sometimes for duets.’
‘Duets? Good. I know plenty. Let’s have a try. What was her line?’
‘Classical. Mostly German.’
Mark was silent a moment, raking his memory. Then he had an inspiration. ‘Mendelssohn’s “I would that the love”...? Wasn’t that the sort of thing?’
‘Yes. Very much so.’
‘Right! We’ll give them a treat. You take the air.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re going much too fast. I never said I’d sing; and—I’ve rather forgotten the words.’
‘You won’t slip out of it that way!’ he told her; and leaning close he crooned under his breath: ‘“I would that the love I bear thee, My lips in one word could say; That soft word⸺”’
‘Oh yes, I remember now,’ she cut him short rather abruptly; but a faint colour showed in her cheeks and this time she did not lift her lashes. ‘Very pretty, but drenched with sentiment. That’s the worst of German songs.’
‘Well, you can’t beat the music of ’em,’ he persisted, rebuffed a little by her tone, and hoping it was assumed for the benefit of Miss Videlle, who was most vexatiously in the way. ‘I’m set on it anyhow. Are you ready?’
Taking her smile for consent he moved one hand, beating time in the air; then, without preliminary, their united voices took up the song. Bel’s, though sweet and true within its range, proved too slight an organ to stand the open-air test, and Mark had need to moderate his full-toned alto accordingly, thereby giving an added effect of tenderness to words and music already sufficiently expressive.
And again Lady Forsyth—a most unwilling listener—understood everything far too well. Deliberately she hardened herself against the appeal of the music. For this time she was simply angry—angry as she had never yet been with her son; though, needless to say, she attributed his egregious behaviour entirely to Miss Alison.
‘How can he? How dare he!’ was the cry of her pained heart. ‘So unlike him. An insult to Sheila. Flinging his folly in her face.’
But Sheila was drawing her finger-tips lightly through the water, watching the effect with that shadowy smile of hers, and to all appearances simply enjoying the song. Almost Lady Forsyth found herself hoping that it was so. In any case, she was thankful when the ‘exhibition’ ended, and Maurice’s cheerful voice was heard calling out: ‘Your turn, Miss Videlle! Can’t you give us a music-hall masterpiece by way of diversion?’
But Miss Videlle disowned all knowledge of masterpieces, music-hall or otherwise, and Maurice himself came nobly to the rescue.
‘I’m not up to Mark’s style; but I’m top-hole at genuine Harry Lauders,’ he volunteered with becoming modesty. ‘And as you’re all so pressing, it would be ungracious to hide my light under a bushel.’
‘Good egg!’ sang out Ralph from the second boat. ‘Give us “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’.”’
And Maurice, with a deliberate wink at Mark over Miss Videlle’s shoulder, proceeded to give it for all he was worth, in the broadest of broad Scotch. But Mark was in no mood to see the joke of a performance that sounded far too like a travesty of his own chosen love-song.
‘“I kissed her-r twice and I asked her-r once if she would be my br-ride,”’ sang Maurice with insolent gusto, burring his r’s like a policeman’s rattle; and Mark simply wanted to kick him into the loch.
Lady Forsyth, on the other hand, was privately blessing the boy’s foolery, that seemed to clear the air and sent the boats skimming homeward to the swing of chorus on chorus; only her son’s voice being conspicuous by its absence. Keith’s boat was leading now; and without turning round deliberately she could see nothing of the two who haunted her mind.
This was perhaps fortunate; for Mark’s arm lay along the back of the seat, his shoulder was within three inches of Bel’s; and under cover of the music they had picked up the dropped thread of their talk in lowered tones that imparted a tender significance to the simplest remark.
‘I don’t call your singing a half-fledged talent,’ he said with a faint stress on the pronoun. ‘You’ve the gift, anyway. Why not make more of it—study, practise?’
She smiled and lifted her shoulders. ‘I’ve tried, but I couldn’t keep it up. Laziness, perhaps; I don’t know. Vanity, perhaps, a little. I either want to do things splendidly or else—I can’t be bothered. I need someone to spur me, to encourage me.’
‘Well, I should have thought Miss O’Neill⸺’
‘Harry? Oh yes, she’d lie down and let me walk over her if I wanted to. But she’s swamped in “the Cause” and philanthropic work. As for my talents, when I wanted the helping hand it wasn’t there; and now—it’s too late. I’ve dabbled first in one thing and then in another, and frittered away what little ambition I ever had.’
The emotionless quiet of her tone suggested a noble resignation to the general obstructiveness of life; a resignation that, to the man’s strenuous spirit, seemed alike pathetic and premature.
‘Why, you’re only on the threshold of things,’ he rebuked her gently. ‘What are the talents you’ve dabbled in? Do tell me.’
‘Oh, I’ve written a little and acted a little. I wanted badly to take that up in earnest. Heavens! Wasn’t there a row! So I fell back on the writing. Verses, chiefly.’
‘Have they appeared, any of them?’
‘A few. Here and there. I was vain enough once to have a booklet printed out of my allowance. Then there was a worse row than ever.’
‘But why?’
‘Well—they weren’t exactly of the pretty-pretty order. And my father’s a clergyman: that kind of clergyman.’
‘I see.’
He saw her, in fact, a creature of fine sensibilities, striving for self-expression, thwarted, discouraged, and misprized by those who should have been her natural helpers, and his heart went out to her the more.
‘May I⸺’ he hesitated. ‘Miss Alison, won’t you let me see some of your verses?’
‘No. Not for the world.’ She flushed suddenly and her voice had a tremor in it. It was the first time he had seen her really perturbed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he began: but she was mistress of herself in a moment and turned the matter off with a laugh.
‘We’re both making mountains out of molehills! The verses were wretched poor stuff, most of them. Father was quite right to condemn them; but he went the wrong way about it. He usually does. They were just the outcome of—an influence: a passing phase. I hated them myself—afterwards. One does go through phases, doesn’t one? At least I do. It’s rather interesting. Saves one from the bottomless pit of boredom, the only thing we’re really afraid of nowadays.’ She made the statement in all seriousness. ‘But—looking back—one sometimes wonders how much that other girl was really me?’
He did not answer at once; partly because he was trying not to be aware that while she spoke there had blown through him a chill breeze of doubt: an unwelcome reminder that after all he knew nothing as yet of her life, her antecedents, or—if it came to that—of herself. He only knew that almost from the first moment of contact she had put a spell upon him that he had neither the power nor the will to resist.
‘Do I seem to be talking utter nonsense?’ she asked suddenly in a changed voice; and doubt fled like a wraith at sunrise.
‘Rather not. I was only hoping—that this is the real you. I’m not simply a phase—am I?—like all the rest?’
At that she turned to him with the lazy uplift of her lashes, and the astonishing blue of her eyes flashed on him like a light.
‘Isn’t it—rather too soon to tell?’
‘Is it?’ he challenged her boldly, and exulted to see the blood rise in her cheeks. More than that he could not achieve. For another Lauder chorus had just died down and they were nearing the shore.
‘Look here,’ he said, low and rapidly. ‘I am off up the loch to-morrow in my little steam yacht—fishing. Come along too—will you?’
She gave him a reproachful look. ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’
‘Oh, well, bring your police dog along if you must; and I’ll get Lenox to make a square. Will that do?’
‘Yes. I’ll ask Harry. If it is like to-day—it’ll be lovely.’
‘Better than to-day, I hope,’ he muttered, wondering very much if he could wait till then, and cursing the wire entanglements of convention.
‘I’m going to see you home,’ he announced as he handed her out of the boat, and repeated his intention when all the party was ashore. ‘Good night, Mums,’ he added, laying a hand on his mother’s shoulder. ‘Lenox is coming along with me. Leave things open for us, will you?’
‘Very well, dear; don’t be too late,’ she said, looking up at him; but between the gathering dusk and his own preoccupation he missed the mute appeal of her eyes.
During the short walk back to the village, Miss O’Neill took complete command of affairs. Having at last recovered her treasure, she slipped a retaining hand through Bel’s arm, and never a chance had Mark of another intimate word.
She graciously fell in with the morrow’s plan, however; and afterwards, as the men strolled back, smoking, to Inveraig, Maurice was frankly informed what would be expected of him on the occasion. Mark betrayed his repressed excitability by speaking rather more rapidly and abruptly than usual.
‘I’m running this show altogether—you understand? We’re not going off on a blooming picnic to play consequences. No nonsense, mind. And no Harry Lauder—confound you! All you and Miss O’Neill are required to do is to make yourselves scarce. Fact is, you’re only there because I couldn’t get—Miss Alison to come alone.’
Maurice smiled broadly. ‘I gathered as much. But I say, Forsyth,’ he hesitated and took a pull at his pipe, ‘do you really mean business?’
‘Rather so. What kind of a cad d’you take me for?’ snapped Mark, whose temper was quick at the best of times. ‘Think I’d play the fool with a girl like that?’
‘Sorry, old chap. Didn’t intend to rile you. Only, to a mere outsider, it seems just a trifle precipitate. Besides—one naturally thought⸺’
‘Oh, dry up. Nobody asked you to think.’
There was pain as well as anger in Mark’s tone. He knew very well what Maurice thought—what others were likely to think: and although Lady Forsyth did not guess it, his sensitiveness on Sheila’s account almost equalled her own. It hurt him horribly that by any act of his he should seem to cast even the slightest slur on her. And he saw no reason. For years they had been like brother and sister. Certainly, since her return from India he had caught himself wondering⸺ But before wonder could crystallise into belief, Bel had arisen in her moonlight beauty and all the stars of heaven had suffered eclipse. Come to think of it, he owed young Lenox a debt he could never repay; and for the rest of the way he made royal atonement for his flash of temper.
‘Good night, old chap,’ he said when they reached the house. ‘I’m not turning in just yet.’
And for more than half an hour he paced the terrace, wondering, hoping, dreaming; while his mother lay awake in her bedroom above, both windows flung wide, listening to the restless sound of his footsteps; wondering also; and scarcely daring to hope that he had already spoken and been refused.
Not until she heard him come in, at last, and shut the door of his room, did she let her tired body have its way and fall into a troubled sleep.