"Nothing, except this--that since you can set love aside so easily, I fail to see what effect the memory of a past one could have on your present life--that is all."
He looked at her in the growing darkness, wishing that he could see her face more clearly; wishing still more keenly that he could see straight into her mind and satisfy himself that this calm indifference was simply cold-bloodedness. But what if it was something more? If here, at last, he had found that of which most men dream at times; the refuge from themselves. And when he spoke again his voice had changed its tone, though the bitterness remained in the words.
"You make no allowance, then, for the power of a sentiment, especially when it is morbid and unhealthy. And yet such things mean more to most of us than right or wrong; because they are more human."
There was a pause; then she turned to him with a smile, which he felt, more than saw.
"I am afraid I don't understand what you mean."
"Perhaps it is as well you do not," he replied; and changed the subject.
But from that day their mutual attitude towards each other altered, perhaps unconsciously. To tell the truth, the remembrance of the St. Christopher rose up between her and Paul in his less admirable impersonations. All the more so, perhaps, because of his strange, impulsive confidence regarding his love for the boy's mother. He must have been quite a boy himself at the time, she thought; no older than she was now, and boys were so much younger than girls for their age. She felt vaguely sorry for that young Paul and his fruitless love; for Marjory, like most girls who have been much in contact with the poor, accepted the facts of life calmly, looking at them straight in the face, and calling them by their names fairly, ere she passed them by. And so no doubt of that past to which Paul had alluded so frankly ever crossed her mind. She felt, almost unconsciously, that he would not have spoken about it to her had there been any cause for such suspicion. So the only effect of his attempt to shock her was to bring into stronger relief her confidence in his gentlemanly instincts. And Paul, seeing this, metaphorically took off his shoes before the holy ground which she prepared for him, even while he fretted against the necessity imposed upon him by that better part of his nature, which, in environments like these, would have its say. And then, even as he discussed the matter with himself cynically, telling himself at one and the same time that she was not human enough to see, and that it would be cowardly to open her eyes, there would come with a rush a fierce resentment at all reason. This was holiday time, and it would soon be over for him. A week or two more and Gleneira would be full of London ways and London talk; it would be time enough then to remember the world, the flesh, and the devil.
[CHAPTER IX.]
There was some excuse for his refusal to face a struggle, for in the sunshiny days which followed, Nature herself held high holiday, and the most prosaic might well have found it impossible to avoid falling in with her gracious mood. The heather-flush was beginning to creep over the curves of moor, the rowan berries ripened under the sun's kiss, the juicy guienne cherries purpled the children's mouths, and the oat fields hid their poverty in a cloak of golden marigold. Down in the shady nooks the stately foxgloves still lingered, while on the sunniest spots the bracken was gathering the sun-gold into its delicate tracery against the coming gloom of winter. Such times come rarely; times when it is possible to forget the world of toil and trouble, of sin, sorrow, and shame, which lies beyond the circle of the everlasting hills; times when one is content to let life slip past, without counting its pulse-beat; times when one seems to enter in spirit with that divine rest, because the whole world seems good in our eyes.
Paul, dulled as he was by world-tarnish, felt the charm; Marjory, fresh from her sober youth, yielded to it gladly. Will Cameron, with the hay safe housed and harvest secure in the future, said the weather was too good for farming, and gave himself a holiday, and even Mr. Gillespie, free from inspection anxieties, and rejoicing in the Bishop's praise, fell back for a while on college sermons, and studied future ones in stones and running brooks. Only Mrs. Cameron, despising the heat, bustled from kitchen to store-room, from store-room to dairy, indignant over the irregular meals, and the still more irregular milk. It was enough, she said, to turn that of human kindness sour to have charge of five Ayrshires and two Jerseys in such weather, with an English cook coming, or a Frenchman maybe--the laird was equal to that iniquity--who would use crocks on crocks of powdered butter. She knew them! graceless, godless creatures, and Will, instead of wandering like a tinkler about the place, should be at the markets buying pigs, to eat up the sinful waste of good victuals which would begin ere long at the Big House. It was very well of William to smile, and for the laird to say he didn't mind; but what would Lady George say to the cook? And how did William expect to supply the Big House as it should be supplied, when every crofter body was asking one and eightpence a pound for butter she wouldn't look at? And it all trysted, every pound of it, to the English folk over at the Forest, who were coming down like a flight of locusts, devouring the land with pipers and bad whiskey, and a set of idle, pasty-faced, meat-eating English maids, ruining the country side with bad examples! There would have to be a judgment, nothing less, when Sheenach--barefooted Sheenach from the blackest hut on the property--Marjory would mind it, seeing that she held it to be a disgrace to a Christian landholder--set her up for new-fangled notions indeed!--had actually spoken to her, Mrs. Cameron, about beer-money! The kitchen girl over at the Forest, forsooth, got it, and three shillings a week for washings. Heard one ever the like! a barefoot lass that had not spent three shillings on washings since she was born, and would have to look to it for white robes in the future. And Mistress Mackenzie at the ferry house saying calmly that her prices would be doubled from the 10th August.