The Dark Mile (Historical Novel). D. K. Broster

likely has regrets now.”

      “Grizel is over douce,” pronounced Jacqueline, twining her arm in her brother’s. “For my part, I shall be very glad when Mr. Campbell is gone, but I have no desire to see his daughter drive away. She has a face like . . . like moonlight on the loch yonder.”

      “Your enthusiasm has betrayed you into a very unsuitable metaphor,” said Ian coldly, and somehow his arm disengaged itself from the girl’s. “I cannot but feel with my father in this matter, and wish them both gone as soon as may be.”

      And half of Ian’s inhospitable wish found itself fulfilled with more promptitude than he had dared to hope. Whether Mr. Campbell made the urgent business of which he spoke an excuse, or whether it really was as pressing as he asserted, at any rate he alleged himself bound to depart next morning. He was well satisfied with his daughter’s condition, and ready to leave her behind under Miss Stewart’s care with full confidence and, as he added with much feeling, with deep gratitude. He departed in a postchaise, his coach, though now fished up from its ignominious position on the shore of Loch Linnhe, being still lamentably wet and muddy and having a broken window.

      His host omitted no courtesy at his departure, but the courtesy was stern and strained, and Campbell of Cairns’ own leave-taking was not free from embarrassment. He, or one of his sons, was, however, to return to fetch his daughter in about a week’s time.

      CHAPTER V

       WOULD SHE WERE GONE!

       Table of Contents

      § 1

      June 22nd—24th.

      The sun was coming into the bedroom, and Olivia Campbell, lying on her couch near the window, watched it with delight—the sun and the sweet air from the hills. Their presence seemed to dispel the last traces of that haunting memory of darkness and confinement which had hovered over her during the last few days. It had quite lifted now, and she could laugh at it, and say, as she had said to kind Miss Stewart, that nothing less romantic or more ridiculous could happen to any girl than the accident which had brought her to Invernacree. To be imprisoned in an overturned coach with the possibility of being drowned, before she could be extricated, in six inches or so of loch water! And how had she been extricated—how had Mr. Ian Stewart, the actual rescuer, as she had heard from her father—how had this agile young man contrived to extract her from the bottom of her prison without trampling upon her?

      Grizel indeed scarcely knew, for her brother had not been expansive on the subject; she could only be thankful that her patient had been extracted. “You were in real danger, dear Miss Campbell, seeing that you were unconscious.” “But in such a ludicrous kind of danger,” Olivia had responded, laughing. “Not, indeed, that I wish to underrate your brother’s skill in getting me out of it!”

      Olivia had laughed a good deal in her two and twenty years of life, for she had a happy disposition and a keen sense of the ridiculous. People said that her widowed father loved her, his only daughter, better than any of his four tall sons, whom, like most men, young or old, she could generally charm into doing what she wanted. Wilful she was, more than a little, but at the core of too fine a temper to misuse her power very seriously, and exercising it much too spontaneously to be vain of it. So loth was her father to part with her that, though she had arrived some time ago at full marriageable age, he neither made plans for a match nor smiled on those gentlemen who were so willing to make the plans for themselves. Olivia did not smile upon them either with any permanency, being wont to say that the only man who always pleased her was that friend of her father’s, Mr. Maitland of Strathmory, whom she had known from a child. But she was safe in saying that, for there were three very solid obstacles in the way of her ever uniting herself to that kind and personable gentleman—he was forty-five at least, was a Jacobite, and had a living if bedridden wife, not to speak of a son just grown to manhood. Olivia called him Godfather, though he had no right to that title, nor indeed any kind of relationship with her. Just occasionally it had occurred to her to wonder how Mr. Maitland, holding such very different political views from her father—having, in fact, been “out” in the Forty-five, could be on such friendly terms with him. But it was quite a couple of years now since he had paid them a visit at Cairns.

      It was perhaps not surprising that she should suddenly think of her Jacobite friend, here, in a Jacobite, even an ultra-Jacobite household. Before the Rising, so she had been told, relations between the Whigs and the adherents of the White Rose had been much easier, a case of live and let live; but the events of 1745 and 1746 had wiped out that tolerance and hardened the line of cleavage. And Olivia knew, of course, that, as a field officer commanding at Culloden, her father could not be welcome in a house whose men had certainly fought on the opposite side. That its eldest son had fallen there she fortunately did not know. But no trace of political animosity had coloured the kindness and care of the two Miss Stewarts, and it was only when she looked at the very unflattering oil painting of the ill-fated “Pretender’s son” over her mantelpiece that Olivia remembered where she was.

      She glanced round the bedroom now in search of something to occupy her. It was not often that she was left thus alone. Grizel had lent her a book, but she was tired of reading—tired, too, of lying on this couch, when she felt perfectly well. She slipped off it and went and sat down by the open window.

      How delicious the air was! And, absurd though she might find her adventure, it had not been free from genuine peril. That rocking, swaying coach . . . Yes, indeed there had been a possibility that she might not now be breathing this air, feeling the warm sunlight on her throat, looking at those distant blue and purple mountains . . . nor watching with pleased eyes the dove which suddenly alighted on the sill outside and began to walk about there.

      It was this bird which induced Olivia to lean out. “You pretty creature!” she said impulsively, and put forth a cautious hand, hoping to stroke its sleek neck. But, though the pet dove was indifferent to her presence just inside the window, the stretching out of that strange hand alarmed it, and it flew off. Olivia leant out still further to see where it had gone to, and thus became aware of a young man almost immediately below her, who was engaged in fastening up against the wall of the house a detached spray of something or other. And this young man, though his face was a little turned upwards, did not see her. His brow wore a slight frown as he worked, and between his lips was a piece of twine.

      And so Olivia looked down upon her rescuer’s countenance as he had looked upon hers—though not in this case exactly upside down nor for nearly so long a period. In fact it was only for a moment or so. Some instinct caused Ian to look up, and he instantly beheld Miss Campbell gazing down upon him. A blush sprang into the lady’s cheek, and she made a movement to withdraw. Ian stepped backwards; he could not doff his hat, since he was already bareheaded. But he removed the string from his mouth, bowed, and said rather formally:

      “Good morning, madam. I am glad to see you recovered.”

      “I . . . I was trying to stroke that dove,” said Olivia, with a natural idea of accounting for her situation at the window. “But it flew away.” (It was to be hoped that Mr. Stewart did not know the number of seconds which had elapsed since its flight, but he probably did.) “I think I see it in the cedar tree yonder.”

      “My sister Jacqueline could catch it for you,” Ian assured her gravely. “It will not come to me. I will find her.”

      “No, no, Mr. Stewart,” said Olivia in haste. “I do not want the bird. I want . . . when shall I have the opportunity of thanking you for what you did for me?”

      “Thanking me!” exclaimed the young man, looking up at her more fully. “Miss Campbell, you have nothing to thank me for. I fear my sisters have been exaggerating a very simple and natural action, and one that in no way warrants gratitude.”

      “But I think differently,” replied Miss Campbell in a soft voice—she had at all times a very pleasing one. And from the window she gave young