Red Rowans

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Then, with a rush, the one side of his nature challenged the other. Why--why had he done these things? Why had he given up paradise? Had he not been happy? In very truth, had he even thought of the world and its ways, of himself and his instincts, when he was beside her? Yet, what a return had he not made to this girl who had taught him to forget these things. Had he not in a way taught her to know them? Had he not roused in her something, blameless enough, God knows! in its way, beautiful enough, though of the earth earthy, compared to that other strange comradeship, in which there seemed no possibility of passion, no sense of sex. In truth, he had taught her to love him as women and men will love to the end of all things. Taught her, and left her to face it alone--as he had left Jeanie Duncan long years ago.

The unbidden remembrance brought a new shame with it for that old offence, even while it intensified the sudden remorse he felt for the present one; since Jeanie, in all her sweet maidenhood, had never seemed so hedged about from evil as this Brynhild, whose very womanhood had been hidden beneath her glittering armour of mail. That he should have thought these things showed the strain of romance, the touch of mysticism, which was in him by right of his race, and though, as ever, he chafed against these things, he could not escape from them, or from the self-contempt which took possession of him. Ever since the night when he had said good-bye, as he had boasted, to the best part of him, there had been something to prevent his realising the extent of his degradation. First, the relief of certainty, bringing with it a very real content; then, the anxiety for the child, bringing out all the kindliness of his nature--finally, the knowledge that he was not, after all, so mercenary. But now he was defenceless against his own worldliness, against the memory of his wanton insult to Marjory--for it was an insult, nothing less.

As he wandered moodily back into the town, back to face his world and its comments, it seemed to him as if there were not a rag anywhere wherewith to cover his wounded self-esteem. One thing he could do: he could go down and ask Marjory to marry him. He owed her so much. She would refuse him, of course, since she was not the sort to care for other folks' rejections; and he knew, by long experience, how keenly such love as he had seen in her eyes resented neglect, how quick it was in changing to repulsion if the pride were outraged.

Yes! he would go down to Gleneira and regain some of his belief in himself by giving Marjory her revenge. Then he would go abroad and shoot lions, or do something of that sort. Everyone would know he had been jilted, so he might as well play the part to the bitter end, and behave as a man ought to behave who has had a disappointment.

Meanwhile he might as well go and see Violet, and congratulate her on her acumen. He might even go so far as to tell her that, taking her words to heart, he was about to propose poverty to the girl he loved, as he had proposed it to the girl he had not loved. She, of course, not knowing of that wanton insult, would not understand how idle a proposition it would be; but she liked to be thought clever--liked to be at the bottom of everything.

So he was not exactly in an amiable or easily managed mood as he followed the servant upstairs at Mrs. Vane's house. And, as luck would have it, he came at a time when she herself was too disturbed to have the cool head and steady nerve necessary to steer him into the haven where she would have him. Yet it was a trifling thing which had upset her: merely the certainty that little Paul Duncan would not get a penny of his grandmother's money. There it was in black and white, set down in the wills and bequests column of the Illustrated London News. Now, the difference between keeping a boy with a hundred thousand pounds from possibly inheriting some acres of heavily mortgaged bog and heather, and keeping a nameless, penniless waif from a name and some hundreds a year was palpable. She was no hardened criminal, and for the first time she found herself really facing the question: "Am I to do this thing, or am I not to do it?"

Should she put those letters in the fire and say no more about them, or should she tell the truth?

Though she knew its contents almost by heart, she took the slender packet out once more and looked doubtfully at the marriage certificate.

"Captain Macleod," said the servant at the door, for Paul was a privileged visitor, with the entrée at all times to Mrs. Vane's little sitting-room. She had barely time to thrust the paper under a book ere he was beside her.

"How you startled me!" she said, with a nervous laugh, as she took his hand. "I did not expect you to-day; you were here yesterday."