"Too true, too true," began his companion, but the laird had risen, and, with a remark that he would wait outside for the tardy letters, left the schoolhouse. Apparently he tired even of that, for when Marjory, after lingering longer than was necessary over the arrangements for the morrow's inspection with Mr. Gillespie, came out with a half-annoyed expectation of finding the tall figure still lounging under the horse-chestnut tree, it had gone, rather to her surprise.
Still, it would ensure her the solitary walk home which she loved; since really it was too much to expect her to devote a whole afternoon to the Reverend James who, curtly dismissed to a neglected parishioner up the Glen, watched her pass down the loch with wistful yet still admiring eyes until she disappeared behind a knoll of ash trees, hiding the bridge which carried the road to the other side of the river, and so down the seashore to Gleneira House and Lodge. A road which, beautiful at all times, was never so beautiful as in the sunsetting. There was one point, however, where its beauty seemed to culminate, where, after climbing a rocky knoll cushioned with bosses of bell-heather and the close oak scrub which springs from the roots of past cuttings, it dipped down to the very edge of the water. Here, on spring tides, the waves crept up to smooth away the wheel marks, and leave a scalloped fringe of seaweed on the turf beyond. And hence you could see straight through the cleft of the Narrowest, where the hills embosoming the upper portion of the loch sloped down into the gentler contours of the lower, right away to the Linnhe Loch, and so beyond the purple bluff of Mull to the wide Atlantic. On that evening the sun was setting into it in a golden glory, guiltless of a cloud. And Marjory, cresting the knoll, thought instantly that here, indeed, was a chance of the Green Ray. For ever since she had read Jules Verne's book the idea of this, the last legacy of a dying day, had remained with her fancifully. Many and many a time, half in jest, half in earnest, she had watched for it, wondering if she would feel different after she had seen it. If, in fairy-tale fashion, the world would seem the better for it. Even if the legend was no legend, and the phenomenon simply a natural one, due to refraction, there must be something exhilarating in seeing that which other people had not seen; in seeing the world transfigured, even for a second, for you, and you only. Unless, indeed, others were watching with you. And, then, what a strange tie that would be! To have seen something together that the rest of the world had not seen; something at which it would laugh, but which you knew to be true. The quaintness of the idea attracted her as she walked over the crisp shingle to sit on a rock close to the incoming tide. Out yonder on the far sea horizon it was a blaze of light, but closer in the loch showed like a golden network of ripples with ever-widening meshes enclosing the purple water till it ended, at her very feet, in a faint foam-edge. There was no sound save the blab-blabbing of the tiny wavelets on the rocks as they whispered to each other of the havoc they had done far out at sea, or met every now and again with a little tinkle of laughter to drown a stone.
To Marjory, looking and listening so intently that consciousness seemed to leave eyes and ears, came a sudden dread, not for herself, but for others different from what she was.
"Drowned--dead, drowned--drowned and cold--dead, dead, drowned!" Those whispering voices seemed to repeat it over and over again, as for the first time in her life she realised that others might not steer straight for the sun across the ocean of life, as she did, unswervingly. Of course, in a scholastic, unreal way she knew well that there were swift currents to betray, big loadstone rocks to make the compass waver, but till she had met Paul Macleod the possibility of anyone deliberately and wilfully weighting his log and depolarising his compass had not occurred to her. It is so, often, with those who, as she was, are almost overburdened with that mysterious outcome of past sacrifices, a sense of duty. But Paul, she recognised clearly, might steer straight for the rocks, though his knowledge of seamanship was equal to her own. On that point she would take no denial. It was her one solace against her own interest in him. But for it what scorn would be too great for the weakness of her tolerance for a handsome face, a soft voice, and the most engaging of manners. No! The charm--for there was undoubtedly a charm--lay elsewhere; in his considerateness, his quick sympathy. This did not come, as he averred, from a mere selfish desire to be liked, a mere selfish consideration for his own comfort. It might suit him to say so, to declare his disbelief in anything higher, to scoff, for instance, at the Green Ray. The girl's thoughts rebounded swiftly to their starting-point, and brought back sight to her dream-blinded eyes.
Too late! Too late! The last outermost edge of the sun had dipped beneath the sea; the fateful moment was past, and with the little chill shudder of a breeze which had crept like a sigh over the water at the Death of Day, the little wavelets at her feet were whispering--
"Drowned--dead--drowned! Who cares? Drowned! drowned! drowned!"
She rose suddenly and stretched her hands out to the fast fading glow, as if in entreaty. But only for a second; the next the voice of someone coming up the opposite side of the knoll carolling a Gaelic song made her turn quickly to see Paul Macleod outlined against the blue of the hills as he paused on the summit to take breath and look up into the child's face above him with a smile; for little Paul was perched on his shoulder.
The western glow, already leaving the earth, fell full on those two faces, and on the firm delicate hands, holding the child secure. It was like a St. Christopher, thought Marjory, with a pulse, almost of pain, at her heart. For it left her bereft of something; of something that had gone out irrevocably to be Paul's henceforth, even though the first glimpse of her standing below made him loosen his clasp almost roughly.
"Is that you, Miss Carmichael?" he called, walking on to meet her; "I'm doing good Samaritan against the grain; but I found the little imp on the road. He had fallen from a rowan tree and sprained his ankle."
She found it easier for some reason to speak to the child in reproof. "I've told you so often not to climb so recklessly," she said in Gaelic.