White Heather: A Novel (Volume 2 of 3). William Black
before yesterday you don't want to go back. But here, in the most vulgar superstitions and customs, you come upon the strangest things. Would you believe it, less than twenty miles from this place there is a little lake that is supposed to cure the most desperate diseases – diseases that the doctors have given up; and the poor people meet at midnight, on the first Monday after the change of the moon, and then they throw a piece of money into the lake, and go in and dip themselves three times, and then they must get home before sunrise. Perhaps it is very absurd, but they belong to that same imaginative race of people who have left so many weird stories and poetical legends behind them; and what I say is that you want to come over and breathe this atmosphere of tradition and romance, and see the places, before you can quite understand the charm of all that kind of literature. And perhaps you don't find much in these verses about the poor people who have been driven away from their native strath? Well, they don't claim to be much. They were never meant for you to see. But yes, I do think you will like them; and anyhow Jack Huysen has got to like them, and treat them hospitably, unless he is anxious to have his hair raised.
'Gracious me, I think I must hire a hall. I have just read this scrawl over. Sounds rather muzzy, don't it? But it's this poor brain of mine that has got full of confusion and cobwebs and theories of equality, when I wasn't attending to it. My arms had the whole day's work to do – as they remind me at this minute; and the Cerebral Hemispheres laid their heads, or their half-heads together, when I was busy with the salmon; and entered into a conspiracy against me; and began to make pictures – ghosts, phantom earls, and romantic shepherds and peasant-poets, and I don't know what kind of dreams of a deer stalker walking down Wabash Avenue. But, as I said, to-morrow I start for Paris, thank goodness; and in that calmer atmosphere I hope to come to my senses again; and I will send you a long account of Lily Selden's marriage – though your last letter to me was a fraud: what do I care about the C.M.C.A.? This letter, anyhow, you must burn; I don't feel like reading it over again myself, or perhaps I would save you the trouble; but you may depend on it that the one I shall send you from Paris will be quite sane.
'Second P.S. – Of course you must manage Jack Huysen with a little discretion. I don't want to be drawn into it any more than I can help; I mean, I would just hate to write to him direct and ask him for a particular favour; but this is a very little one, and you know him as well as any of us. And mind you burn this letter – instantly – the moment you have read it – for it is just full of nonsense and wool-gathering; and it will not occur again. Toujours a toi. C.H.'
'What have you been writing all this time?' her father said, when she rose.
'A letter – to Emma Kerfoot.'
'It will make her stare. You don't often write long letters.'
'I do not,' said she, gravely regarding the envelope; and then she added solemnly: 'But this is the record of a chapter in my life that is now closed for ever – at least, I hope so.'
CHAPTER III
HESITATIONS
The waggonette stood at the door; Miss Carry's luggage was put in; and her father was waiting to see her off. But the young lady herself seemed unwilling to take the final step; twice she went back into the inn, on some pretence or another; and each time she came out she looked impatiently around, as if wondering at the absence of some one.
'Well, ain't you ready yet?' her father asked.
'I want to say good-bye to Ronald,' she said half angrily.
'Oh, nonsense – you are not going to America. Why, you will be back in ten days or a fortnight. See here, Carry,' he added, 'are you sure you don't want me to go part of the way with you?'
'Not at all,' she said promptly. 'It is impossible for Mary to mistake the directions I wrote to her; and I shall find her in the Station Hotel at Inverness all right. Don't you worry about me, pappa.'
She glanced along the road again, in the direction of the keeper's cottage; but there was no one in sight.
'Pappa dear,' she said, in an undertone – for there were one or two onlookers standing by – 'if Ronald should decide on giving up his place here, and trying what you suggested, you'll have to stand by him.'
'Oh yes, I'll see him through,' was the complacent answer. 'I should take him to be the sort of man who can look after himself; but if he wants any kind of help – well, here I am; I won't go back on a man who is acting on my advice. Why, if he were to come out to Chicago – '
'Oh no, not Chicago, pappa,' she said, somewhat earnestly, 'not to Chicago. I am sure he will be more at home – he will be happier – in his own country.'
She looked around once more; and then she stepped into the waggonette.
'He might have come to see me off,' she said, a little proudly. 'Good-bye, pappa dear – I will send you a telegram as soon as I get to Paris.'
The two horses sprang forward; Miss Carry waved her lily hand; and then set to work to make herself comfortable with wraps and rugs, for the morning was chill. She thought it was very unfriendly of Ronald not to have come to say good-bye. And what was the reason of it? Of course he could know nothing of the nonsense she had written to her friend in Chicago.
'Have you not seen Ronald about anywhere?' she asked of the driver.
'No, mem,' answered that exceedingly shy youth, 'he wass not about all the morning. But I heard the crack of a gun; maybe he wass on the hill.'
And presently he said —
'I'm thinking that's him along the road – it's two of his dogs whatever.'
And indeed this did turn out to be Ronald who was coming striding along the road, with his gun over his shoulder, a brace of setters at his heels, and something dangling from his left hand. The driver pulled up his horses.
'I've brought ye two or three golden plover to take with ye, Miss Hodson,' Ronald said – and he handed up the birds.
Well, she was exceedingly pleased to find that he had not neglected her, nay, that he had been especially thinking of her and her departure. But what should she do with these birds in a hotel?
'It's so kind of you,' she said, 'but really I'm afraid they're – would you not rather give them to my father?'
'Ye must not go away empty-handed,' said he, with good-humoured insistence; and then it swiftly occurred to her that perhaps this was some custom of the neighbourhood; and so she accepted the little parting gift with a very pretty speech of thanks.
He raised his cap, and was going on.
'Ronald,' she called, and he turned.
'I wish you would tell me,' she said – and there was a little touch of colour in the pretty, pale, interesting face – 'if there is anything I could bring from London that would help you – I mean books about chemistry – or – or – about trees – or instruments for land-surveying – I am sure I could get them – '
He laughed, in a doubtful kind of a way.
'I'm obliged to ye,' he said, 'but it's too soon to speak about that. I havena made up my mind yet.'
'Not yet?'
'No.'
'But you will?'
He said nothing.
'Good-bye, then.'
She held out her hand, so that he could not refuse to take it. So they parted; and the horses' hoofs rang again in the silence of the valley; and she sat looking after the disappearing figure and the meekly following dogs. And then, in the distance, she thought she could make out some faint sound: was he singing to himself as he strode along towards the little hamlet?
'At all events,' she said to herself, with just a touch of pique, 'he does not seem much downhearted at my going away.' And little indeed did she imagine that this song he was thus carelessly and unthinkingly singing was all about Meenie, and red and white roses, and trifles light and joyous as the summer air. For not yet had black care got a grip of his heart.
But this departure of Miss Carry for the south now gave him leisure to attend to his own affairs and proper duties, which had suffered