The Collected Works of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

      It was for days a matter of puzzled conjecture to Grizel how she could so completely have mislaid that letter, though she knew that she had left it about for a short time. So did Ian, who, though he was never going to see Miss Campbell again, nor would ever write to her or receive a word from her, pounced upon that sheet of paper over which her hand had travelled and which seemed to carry the very sound of her voice, secreted it, and unblushingly declared his complete ignorance of its whereabouts. To such hopeless folly had he come who was shortly to woo Miss Margaret Maclean.

      Miss Campbell’s letter, since he always carried it upon him, went with Ian to Glasgow when, in August, Invernacree sent him thither to see his lawyer, as he had projected some time before. And it was in Glasgow that temptation came down upon Ian like a river in spate. Olivia Campbell was at Kilrain, not thirty miles away, out of his homeward path, it was true, but not so greatly out of it. He had hoped never to see her again, never to go within distance of the spell which she had cast upon him. Now—he felt he could not live unless he did. The reason he gave himself for yielding to temptation was this: he had allowed her (since he could not help himself) to see his passion, but he had not told her why he could never contemplate asking for her hand. It was almost an affront to have acted so . . . but he had lost his wits that day on Eilean Soa.

      He did not pretend that he had found them again now. He knew that it was mad to go to Kilrain, and could lead to nothing but fresh suffering for himself. Yet he would welcome that . . . And he must make his explanation, justify his silence—or so he told himself. To another voice which said that he could equally well, and far more prudently, write this explanation, he shut his ears. He had little desire to combat the flood setting towards Kilrain; he was only too glad to be carried along by it. By the time he paid his second and last visit to Mr. Buchanan this afternoon his mind was made up, and he had consulted the map upon the lawyer’s wall with entire composure. The detour might have been part of his original plan.

      For all that, he had not left the green orchards of Glasgow behind him next morning, his face set north-eastwards, when his blood began to run faster. He knew his self-offered excuse for what it was; he was going to see Olivia Campbell because he could not keep away. And even how she would receive him weighed upon him but little, for she could not prevent him from resting his eyes once more upon her loveliness, though the moment of vision might be short. He could never have gone to Cairns to see her, whether she were like to refuse him admittance or to welcome him; but up in those hills which were neither Campbell nor Stewart territory, she could not entirely forbid his presence. And he fell to imagining the meeting, as, leaving the Clyde behind, he rode by glen or loch side, sometimes mounting, sometimes descending. Every stream which sang along his course or barred it seemed to utter her name, so liquidly sweet to the ear that he could forget the patronymic which followed it.

      He halted at three o’clock to bait and rest his horse, for there was no haste, even though he should not reach Kilrain before dusk. It was even better so; he could more easily make enquiries as to Miss Campbell’s whereabouts in the clachan without the risk of coming upon her unawares. He hardly knew what he should find at Kilrain, save goats.

      And it was dusk when he came there, up the stony, winding road. It was not too ill a track, for little Kilrain lay upon a minor highroad; otherwise, perhaps, it would scarcely have gained its reputation for “the whey.” A curled young moon, and a star too, shone in the green sky over the rounded summit of Meall na Creige, and there was no wind to stir the pines which fringed that crest. All in the little village seemed within, if not abed, but a light or two still showed at the end by which Ian had entered. Had they not, he would willingly have slept on the hillside, but the sound of his horse’s hoofs on the stones brought an old man to the door of one of the nearest cottages, and of him young Invernacree, representing himself as a benighted traveller, asked if there were an inn to which he could betake himself.

      The old man replied in the negative, but offered to take him in himself, adding that he and his daughter were accustomed to do this for the gentry who came there for their health. Asked if there were any of these now visiting Kilrain for that purpose, he at first said that there were none—which was to Ian as though the moon had been struck suddenly out of the sky—but his daughter, correcting him, declared that there was a young lady, a bonny young lady, staying with her woman a little way higher up the hill.

      From the tiny room assigned to him Ian could see up the slope, and gazed at the one faintly illumined window at some quarter mile of distance which he imagined—probably wrongly—to be Miss Campbell’s until the light went out there, and the moon, as if waiting for this extinction, sank into the black arms of the pine-trees on the ridge; and all was as quiet in Kilrain as if a very imprudent and unhappy young man had not come to it.

      § 2

      Though Olivia Campbell had written to her late hostess of her probable exceeding boredom when “at the goats’ milk,” it was only because she felt the absurdity of going there. It was fashionable to pretend to ennui, but in reality she hardly knew the meaning of the word, either in its French form or in its English.

      Least of all did she know it this morning as she knelt by the little mountain pool which an eager burn, slackened in its course by a sudden outward thrust of the slope, had amused itself by forming on this kind of escarpment. She was watching the antics of a couple of kids who, in the intervals of staring at her across that mirror, sprang about it the most ridiculous gymnastics or butted each other with infantile fury. Olivia knelt there in a blue gown and a large shady hat and laughed; securely seated on a big stone, with a cloak folded beneath her, Mrs. Elspeth MacUre, who had been her nurse, knitted busily, and from time to time relaxed into a smile. And it was fine weather; fine with that loveliness-waking magic of the Western Highlands, which can wipe clean from the memory the days of mist and rain and storm, long and many though they be. Highlanders both, the two by the pool were not unmindful of this, though Mrs. MacUre, who was of a stout habit, had already remarked rather ungratefully upon the heat.

      “You’ll fall in, you wee thing!” warned Olivia, addressing one of the kids. “And I doubt you can swim. Are you prepared to wade in after this featherbrain if necessary, Elspeth?”

      Mrs. MacUre shook her head with decision, but replied not in words. She was counting stitches.

      “I see a man coming up the path who can act rescuer if one is needed,” said Olivia in a lower voice. “But do not be so rash, creature,” she went on, addressing the kid in Gaelic, as if she thought it could better understand that tongue. . . . “Although,” she added with a little quick intake of the breath, “he who comes is something skilful in rescue . . . especially from water!” And, the colour leaping into her face, she rose to her feet. “Mr. Stewart, how . . . how come you here?”

      Hat in hand, Ian stood on the other side of the pool. Everything in the scene was painted on his brain with pigments that would never fade, he thought—the azure pool, the crystal burn that fed it, the glowing heather, miles upon miles of surging mountains, clouds like ships in full sail, and soaring, limitless sky—and yet he only saw one figure, Olivia’s.

      “Kilrain lay upon my road yesterday,” he replied, repeating what he had carefully rehearsed, “but I was belated in my arrival last night. And I bethought me this morning that you had written to Grizel of your intention of being here in August; and so I resolved that, if you permitted it, I would pay my respects to you.”

      If she had been alone, would she have sent him about his business, he wondered. And how much was she conscious of what had been virtually their last meeting, among the moon-daisies? He could not tell. She turned to her attendant, who was still knitting, and said with a smile, “Elspeth, this is Mr. Stewart of Invernacree, to whom I owe my rescue from that horrible coach, as you know. Pray, Mr. Stewart, come round to this side of the lochan and let Mrs. MacUre have a good look at you!”

      Ian came round the pool—a very ordinary little Highland tarn, but more wonderful to him than all the stretch of the long sea-loch by which he dwelt, because she was upon its brink. Mrs. MacUre rose and curtsied to him. Even she shared in the enchantment, though to be sure he could have wished her away. And yet—she had perhaps her uses.