Almond, Wild Almond. D. K. Broster

was much for him to learn, he knew, but the estate had had a good overseer in his uncle’s day, and he should remain. In time, yes, in time Girolac might come to seem home to him; in time he might plant his heart there, marry, hear the voices of children under that high-pitched French roof.

      Whose children? He saw them with locks like spun gold, locks that the wind would lift with delight, that would slip at a touch, hair that a man could drown in, lying with his face buried in it . . .

      Ranald pulled himself up short. This was, indeed, to weave fantasies! She would never consent to marry him, she who dwelt under Schiehallion, who must leave Schiehallion’s shadow if she did. And yet, unless he took her to the warm land of the vine, he had no roof under which he could shelter that bright, magic head.

      The burn talked below him, talked of the mists it knew, the deer which came to drink of it, the waterfall to which it was hurrying, the river in which it met fulfilment. “You’ll hear nothing like me over the sea!” And the heath by his foot, pink as a shell, the bold, tough sprays of the July heather, the patch of stagmoss and the mountain turf itself, they too said: “If you should light upon us over there, we shall not look the same!”

      The young man suddenly flung himself full length among them and dug his fingers into the ground. The moss beneath the heather was wet—what hillside in the Highlands was not? and the vineyard slopes round Girolac were dry . . . dry as his heart would become there. . . . Mo thruaigh! What use to dwell upon it longer?—it had to be! Ranald sprang to his feet and went on upwards.

      An hour and a half later he was coming down the burnside again; but he had not left his heartache behind him. To have seen on the heights of Beinn a Chuallaich what must prove his last stag at gaze was not a panacea for it . . .

      Below the tiny ravine where he had gazed at the young hawks it had pleased the Allt Mor to form a pool, before slipping further. Ranald had noticed, as he passed upwards, the slab of flat rock above it and the noble Scots pine which shaded both. There had been no one there then, but now he saw that a black-clad figure was sitting there—a woman, evidently, with a large dog by her side. Both appeared to be gazing down at the burn below them. Some widow, he supposed, come to indulge her grief in solitude.

      He continued to descend rapidly, and since he would pass a little above the level where the woman was sitting, would naturally have gone past without saluting her in any way had not the dog, a large deerhound, got up and begun to bark at him. Its mistress spoke to it, put out a hand to its collar; the hood of dark grey silk which she wore over her head slipped a little, and as she looked up to see the cause of the dog’s behaviour, it fell completely back. To Ranald’s surprise, and something more, he found himself gazing down upon the hair of his daydreams. It was Bride Stewart in that sombre gown.

      He uncovered. “Good-day, Miss Stewart. May I hope that you have not forgotten me?”

      Plainly she had not—unless, indeed, with a skin so fair as hers even the most transient and ordinary blush was magnified to this lovely rosiness, or unless he had startled her. Choosing to assume the first explanation, Ranald leapt down the short descent on to the smooth flat slab of rock—to the increased perturbation of the deerhound.

      And he was right. “It will be Mr. Maclean from Askay, will it not? Be quiet, Fiona!” Now upon her feet, Miss Stewart caught again at the big dog’s collar. “We met last year, sir, when you were returning from Dunkirk.”

      Ranald assented. And postponing from ulterior motives the information that he was returning to France for good, he gave her to understand that, affairs taking him to Perthshire, he was happy to be able to pass through Kinloch Rannoch and to pay his respects to those who had shown him such hospitality on his former visit. He had, however, only arrived at Mount Alexander the previous day.

      Standing there with him below the pine tree, above the clear and smiling pool, Bride Stewart listened, looking up at him with those eyes as limpid as the burn, but not of its colour. The mountain breeze fingered the tendrils of fine gold upon her brow, their pure glow enhanced by the black ribbon which confined them, and Ranald found himself almost eagerly hoping that she would continue to let that eclipsing hood lie idle, as now, upon her shoulders. But why was she in such sable attire?—though indeed there was a little bunch of pink heath thrust into the great mourning brooch, all funeral urn and weeping willow, which fastened her white kerchief. Struan had not told him of any death at Inchrannoch. He was discomposed.

      “You have not, I trust, madam, suffered any recent bereavement? . . . Yet indeed I fear you must have done so!”

      The tears came into Bride Stewart’s eyes and she lowered them. “Yes, Mr. Maclean; we have lost my dear aunt—but not very recently. She died nearly a year ago. She had long been ailing.”

      “Indeed,” said the young man gravely, “I am very sorry to hear it.”

      And the thought came at once, very much to increase his regret: “She is all the less likely to leave her widowed uncle. It may indeed be that Mrs. Stewart’s death is the reason for her refusal of Malcolm Robertson. But perhaps she has only bidden him to wait.” Well, he was not going to wait, save long enough to avoid appearing uncouth and abrupt.

      And after enquiring how Mr. Stewart did, Ranald, divining that she was on the point of leaving this retreat overlooking the pool, asked whether he might have the privilege of escorting her down the brae.

      Bride Stewart assented, accepting his hand up to the path, but was not, unfortunately for him, sufficiently incommoded by the steepness of the familiar descent to accept it again. Indeed, she flitted down before Ranald like an elf. He wished she had not been in black; she should have worn green, like all her fairy race.

      All too soon, since the way was so short, they arrived at the little river, with Inchrannoch House standing on the further bank. While Bride Stewart waited for the old blue ferry-boat to come across for her, Ranald asked and obtained permission to escort her over in order to pay his respects to her uncle. He was debating whether this was a good opportunity to break the news of the change in his circumstances and observe how she took it, or whether it would be wiser to make a little headway with her first, before he told her that he must ask her to share the fortunes of an exile. But Miss Stewart herself settled the question for him by asking how soon he would be going back to his island. “You told us about it when you were here before, sir,” she added.

      “Alas, I am not returning to Askay at all,” he answered. “I am on my way to France.”

      For a moment she looked surprised, but the look passed. “Oh, upon the affairs of . . .” She lowered her voice and did not complete the sentence; it was not necessary.

      “No, not that, madam. On affairs of my own. I am now a French landed proprietor.” And Ranald laughed, not very happily. “My uncle in the wine country has died and left me his small estate—a house and vineyards. You must allow me to send Mr. Stewart a cask of Girolac some day—though I suppose that with France and England at war that may be none too easy to do.”

      “Mr. Maclean, I hope you’ll not get captured yourself by a French privateer on your way thither!”

      “Would that distress you, Miss Stewart?”

      “But naturally it would,” replied Bride, smiling. “I would not wish to be thinking of a friend of mine in chains!”

      Confound the old ferryman, he was half-way over! “I am glad to know you so compassionate, madam—nay, more, that you allow me the title of a friend. I assure you that I very greatly value it.”

      The words were not much; they might have conveyed little more than a formal politeness, but Ranald Maclean, perhaps in compensation for having little play of feature, was gifted with a very expressive voice. Bride’s colour rose a trifle, and he saw it. And then and there, looking down at her, he felt with conviction that here was the one woman for him, that he must have her if he carried her off by force . . . and knew with equal certainty that he would never dare touch a finger of her unless she willed it.

      Immediately there was further occasion silently to curse Donald the ferryman,