THE party of travellers went to Perth, and from thence wandered among the hills and woods, and by the wild and lonely glens, to which that gate of the Highlands gives an entrance. It was all new to Margaret. In all her life she had seen nothing more imposing than the lion crest of Arthur’s Seat, as seen across the stately breadth of the Firth, the low twin heads of the Lomonds, or, in the far distance among the mists, the long withdrawing line of the Grampians. When she saw these misty hills nearer, when she watched the clouds at play upon them, and counted the flying shadows, and shared the instantaneous brightening of the sun-glints, what wonder that Margaret felt her heart rise in her breast notwithstanding all the trouble there. She had not thought it possible that the world could be so lovely. The weather was fine, with now and then a rainy day, and the days were still long, though midsummer was past.
Mrs. Bellingham and Miss Leslie were good travellers. Given two comfortable places in a carriage, and weather at all tolerable, and they were ready to drive anywhere, and to go on from morning to night. A bag fitted, with all manner of conveniences, a novel, a piece of knitting, and plenty of shawls, was all they demanded. Even when it rained they could make themselves very comfortable in the hotels, finding out who everybody was—and did not object even to walking within limits. And they knew about everything: which were the best routes, and how much the carriages ought to cost in which they preferred travelling; for it did not suit these ladies to go in coaches or other public vehicles along with the raskal multitude—and indeed, as it was still only July, the raskal multitude had as yet scarcely started on its peregrinations. As soon as they felt that their crape was safe under the shelter of large water-proofs they were happy. Mrs. Bellingham took the best seat with undaunted composure; but Miss Leslie thought it necessary to go through a good many processes of explanation or apology before she placed herself by her sister’s side.
“Oh no! I cannot think of always taking that place: really, Margaret, you must have it to-day. You can see the view so much better. Dearest Jean, do make dear Margaret take my place. She sat all yesterday with her back to the horses; and I don’t mind, not in the very least. I would much rather sit with my back to the horses. I never have been used to monopolize the best place.”
“Hold your tongue, Grace, and get in,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “I suppose you mean that I do—and I think, at my age, it is my place to have the best seat. You are only wasting our time, now that we really have a fine day. Now this is very comfortable. It is the kind of thing I always enjoy: a decent carriage, and horses that are not bad— I have seen better, but we might have a great deal worse—and two nice girls opposite, and a gentleman at hand whatever happens, and as lovely a drive before us as heart could desire. We will stop for lunch at Kenmore, Aubrey; do you know Kenmore? It is close to Taymouth, which is as beautiful a place as any you could see. It always reminds me of Windsor Castle, except that it lies low, and Windsor is on a hill. We go by the side of Loch Tay, which is a beautiful loch, Margaret; not so picturesque as some you will see farther west, but beautiful for all that. Now, Grace, the girls have settled themselves, and Aubrey is on the box. Are we to wait for you all day? You always keep us waiting when every one is ready to start.”
“It is only because I wanted some one to have this seat,” said Miss Grace, anxiously. “I have been this way before, and the dear girls have not; or Aubrey, perhaps, dear Aubrey would rather be here than on the box? It would be much more amusing for you all, dear Jean, than to have me. Oh!” said the trembling lady, as her more energetic sister dragged her in with a grip of her arm, and the door was closed upon her. She kept asking Margaret and Effie all the day to change places with her, and kept the party in a fidget; “for, you see, I have been this way before,” she said. It was a bright day, and Loch Tay lay before them, a sheet of light, between pale and golden, its fringe of trees wet with past rain, and big Ben Lawers rising huge into the blue air.
Margaret felt that she had to make an effort to retain the sadness that she had kept round her like a mantle. How could she laugh? how could she let them talk, and chime in with irrestrainable reply and remark, when only such a little while ago—not yet a month ago?—she said to herself. But when things had come so far as this, it was not to be supposed that the little veil of natural sentiment could keep her eyes always drooping. Her face began to glow again, to change from white to red, and back into that delicate paleness which was habitual to her. The clouds and the mists cleared away from her brown eyes. The scent of the young birches, the plash of the water on the shore, the soft shower of rain-drops now and then shaken out over their heads by some mischievous breeze as they passed; the atmosphere so heavenly clear, the sun so gay and friendly, beguiled her out of her trouble.
In grief, as in sickness, there is a moment when the burden is sensibly lightened, the bonds relax for the first time. This moment came to Margaret now. She was terrified to feel how light her heart was, and what an involuntary glow of exhilaration had come over her. Nothing had happened to make her glad. She was only rising again, in spite of herself, into the beauty of the common day, into the light and brightness of her youth. And indeed, but for the sense that she ought not to be happy, Margaret might well have felt the well-being of the moment enough for her. The fresh air, and the pleasant progress, and all the beautiful sights around her, were brightened by Effie’s bright countenance, full of smiles and delight, and by the other companion on the box, who leaned over them to shower down a flood of comments upon everything—comments which were generally amusing enough, and often witty to Margaret’s simple ears. And even the self-contented comfort of Jean, sitting well back in her corner, with her eau-de-cologne, her purse, her little paper-knife, her novel lest the drive should get dull, and Miss Grace’s anxious regret to have the best side, and desire that some one would “change seats with her,” were full of fun, full of amusement to the inexperienced girl. Nature betrayed her into laughter now and then, into smiles between times.
It was only a month yet, not quite a month, since old Sir Ludovic died; but was it Margaret’s fault that she was only eighteen? These four weeks had lasted the length of generations. Now they were creeping into their natural length again, into mornings and evenings, soft and swift as the passage of the clouds. And the country was so fresh and sweet, and all the world so amusing in its varied humors. Her heart came back again into renewed life, with a little thrill and tremor of unconscious yet half-guilty pleasure. She could not be churlish enough to close herself up against all the seductions of nature and gentle persuasions of her youth.
Killin was one of the places where the party had arranged to stay, or, rather, where Mrs. Bellingham had arranged to stay. To have one person with a decided will and taste, and all the rest obedient in natural subjection or good-humored ease, is the grand necessity for such an expedition. Mrs. Bellingham fulfilled all these requirements. She knew what she herself liked, and was very well disposed to make other people accept that, as the standard of beauty. And luckily Jean had been on Loch Tay before, and had arbitrarily decided, like a despot of intelligence, that on Loch Tay Killin was the place to stay. She sat up in her carriage with a pleased importance as they drove in through the homely cottages, thatched, and tiled, and mossy, through the genial odor of peat in the blue air, past the swift flowing of the brown golden stream which winds its way into the loch round that island where the dead Campbells have their mansion as lordly as Taymouth, and how much more safe and sweet. Jean sat up in her place with a pleased relaxation of her countenance as the carriage drove round to the inn-door where Steward, her maid, who had gone by the coach with all the boxes of the party, stood in attendance behind the smiling landlord, but heading the homely waiters and chamber-maids. Steward knew her place. To be mistress of a Highland inn would not at all have displeased her; but she knew very well that she was of a different and higher order of being from those smiling Highland maids with their doubtful English, and the anxious waiter who had so many parties to look after, and lost his wits now and then when the coach was crowded. A party taking so many rooms, and not illiberal in their way, though Mrs. Bellingham looked sharply after the bills, gave importance to everybody connected with them.
“You got my letter, Mr. MacGillivray?” said Mrs. Bellingham.
“Ay, my leddy; oh, ay, my leddy; and I hope ye’ll find everything to your satisfaction,” said the landlord, opening the door with anxious obsequiousness, as if Jean had been the Queen herself, Miss Leslie could not but remark. It was a pleasant moment. The sun was declining westward; the roar of the waterfall above the bridge came fitfully upon the air; the rush of the nearer stream sounded clear and close at hand; the cottage children ran in picturesque little russet groups to gaze at the new-comers. On the other hand, Ben Lawers, clumsy but grand, heaved upward against the sky and cut its arch in two. The trees filled in all the crevices about, and in the distance Glen Dochart glimmered far away, opening up between the hills a golden path into the west.
“Make haste, children,” said Mrs. Bellingham, “for we will have to dine at the table-d’hôte; and that I know by experience waits for nobody, and a very funny business it is. But it’s a great pity we’re a month too early, and you’ll get no grouse.”
“That is a mistake indeed,” said Aubrey; “but, after all, we are only a fortnight too early, and the time may come when we shall have better luck.”
“And oh, darling Margaret,” said Miss Leslie, “I have had such a beautiful view! I am so sorry, I cannot tell you how sorry, I am that neither you nor dear Effie would take my seat!”
It had been a most successful day, with no clang or bustle of railways, but only the horses’ measured trot; the roll of the wheels; the flash of the sunshiny loch; the honest Highland sunshine, sweet as heavenly light can be, but never scorching, only kindly warming, cheering, smiling, upon the wayfarer. And now it was very pleasant to see the friendly people at their doors: the Highland maids, happy to please you, with their kind voices and looks of friendly interest; the waiter, bothered to death, poor man, but anxious, too, that you should eat and show an appetite. Nowhere else is there such homely interest in the chance guest. Perhaps the bill is a trifle high: is it a trifle high? Not any higher than in England, though perhaps just a little more than in the big, inhuman Swiss caravansary where all the Cockney world is crowding. There are caravansaries in the Highlands too, but not at Killin. There, still, the maids smile kindly, and cannot bide that you should not be happy; and the waiter (though drawn three ways at the same moment) is troubled if you do not “enjoy your dinner.” And the peat smoke rises in aromatic wreaths into the clear blue air, and the river flows golden in the sunshine, but above the bridge tumbles in foaming cataracts; and broad and large, with a homely magnificence, the loch spreads out its waters under the sun or moon.
After the meal, grandly entitled a table-d’hôte, to which our party sat down in friendly conjunction with a stranger pair, whom Mrs. Bellingham was very condescending to, and whom it was odd not to know intimately, as they did to each other all the honors of the family dinner, Jean retired to the most comfortable room, where Steward brought her writing things, and her books and knitting. “I will put up my feet a little,” she said, “but I advise the rest of you to go out for a walk. You should never lose a fine evening in the Highlands, Aubrey, for you never know what to-morrow may be. I know the place as well as I know my Bible. Go up to the bridge and look at the water-fall, for it is considered very fine; and there is a man, where the boats lie, who sells Scotch pearls; you can tell him to bring them up to show us after you come in again. But go out and take a walk first, and get the good of the fine evening. I will just put up my feet.”
“And, dearest Jean, as Aubrey is a kind of cousin—or perhaps it is a kind of nephew—to darling Margaret, don’t you think I may stay with you? for it would be very selfish of me, dear Effie, and dear Margaret, to leave dearest Aunt Jean alone.”
The younger people strayed out without waiting for the conclusion of the controversy which was thus opened between the ladies; for Mrs. Bellingham was quite able to dispense with her sister’s society, though kind Miss Grace, with many a whisper behind her back, declared that she did not at all mind, but that it would never do to leave dear Jean alone. They went out discussing their own curious relationships with a great deal of natural amusement; for there was no doubt that Effie at seventeen and a half was the unquestionable niece of Margaret, who had not yet arrived at her eighteenth birthday. “And as Miss Leslie is my aunt Grace, it is unquestionable that Miss Margaret Leslie must be my aunt Margaret, most venerable of titles,” said Aubrey, taking off his hat and making her a reverential bow. He protested that no Christian name could be added to the title of aunt which could produce so profound an impression of age and awe. Aunt Grace might sound skittish and youthful, and Aunt Jean be no more than matronly; but nothing less than a white-haired grandmother could do justice (they all allowed) to the name of Aunt Margaret. Effie, who was a great novel-reader, reckoned upon her fingers how many there were to be found in books.
Thus discussing, they went lightly along through the soft Highland evening all scented with the peat. The sky was still blue and clear, but in the village street it was almost dark, glimmers of the never-extinguished fires shining cheerfully from the cottage-windows, and the few passengers about looking at each other with puckered eyelids, “as an old tailor looks at the eye of his needle,” according to Dante. Some one contemplating them thus, with contracted pupils and projected head, attracted the notice of the girls as they went along, in a little pause after their laughter—some one with a fishing-basket over his shoulder—and came to a sudden pause before them.
“Randal Burnside!” Margaret cried, with a little start. And Randal made a very elaborate explanation as to how he had been under an old engagement to come here to fish, and how much surprised he was to see them arriving whom he had parted from only about ten days before.
“I could not believe my eyes,” he said.
Why should not he believe his eyes? Mrs. Bellingham, when told of this explanation, declared indignantly that she had herself told him of her intention to stay a few days at Killin.
“What should he be surprised at?” she asked; but this was a question to which nobody could reply.
He turned with them, as was natural, and they all continued their walk together. There were no lamps nor other worldly vulgarities in Killin; there was no railway even, in those days, invading the silence of the hills—nothing but the cottages, low, homely places, in pleasant tones of gray, and red, and brown, with soft blue pennons of the aromatic peat-reek floating over them, and clouds of white convolvulus threaded up and down their homely walls—and the big shadows of the hills forming the background, or, when you reached higher ground, the silver brightness of the loch. And how quiet it was! the distant roar of the wild water only heightening, as with a great abstract voice of nature, taking no note of humanity, the tranquillity and softened dimness of the village. The little group took in the stranger and increased itself, then unconsciously sundered and formed into two and two.
Was it not the merest accident that the two in advance were merry Effie and the gay Englishman, and the two behind Randal and Margaret? Nothing could have been more natural. But Margaret’s hesitating laughter was quenched henceforward. She was half ashamed of it, as not befitting her orphanhood and her black dress: and then she could not but think of the other evening, not so very long ago, when Randal’s appearance had startled her before: the time when he had not taken any notice, not even taken off his hat. Margaret had never got over the humiliation of that greeting withheld. He had seen her, for she had heard him say so: but then and there, she felt, Randal must have lost his respect for her— Randal, who had known her all her life. Even in the excitement of the moment this had given Margaret a wound; and she had not got over it, though that evening had so many recollections that were painful to her. Two or three times now in the soft gloom, as they walked along side by side, she raised her head and gave him a furtive, timid glance, with the words on her lips, “Why did you take no notice that night?” But though her mind was full of it, she had not the courage to ask the question. Effie and Aubrey went on before, their voices sounding softly through the night; but Randal did not say very much, and Margaret nothing at all. The spell of the momentary gayety was broken. A little moisture even stole into her eyes under cover of the night; and yet she was not unhappy, if only she could have had the courage to ask why it was that he “took no notice.” They went as far as the bridge and stood there, looking at the torrent as it foamed down, leaping and dashing in white clouds over the rocks.
Margaret had never seen such a scene; even the brawling cataracts of the Tummel and Garry, which had been her first experience of the kind, were not like this. In the midst of the wild commotion a knot of stately firs held themselves aloof, intrenched in a citadel of rock amidst all the rage of the torrents, the wild water raging on every side, but the tree-island, coldly proud, scarcely owning, by a quiver of its leaflets, the influence of so much passion roused. Randal said something to her as he stood by her, but she could not hear a syllable. She looked up at him and shook her head, and he smiled. Somehow he did not look (though it was so dark that she could scarcely see) as if he had lost his respect for her, after all.
“What a row,” said Aubrey, as they came away, “for such a cupful of water! If it had been Niagara, there might have been some excuse.”
“That is just like the Highlands,” said Randal, with that partial offence which always moves a Scotsman when it is suggested by any impertinent stranger that his country is not the equal in every respect of every other country under the sun. “It is not Niagara, and Ben Lawers is not Mont Blanc; but they impose upon us all the same.”
“Hush!” said Margaret; “don’t talk; one is enough.” What she said was not very intelligible, but, indeed, the one voice was enough in the air. It seemed to her to declaim some great poem, some wild chant, like a sublime Ossian. The others went chattering on before, delighted with themselves and their jokes. And when the rush of the wild stream had sunk into a murmur, Margaret herself began again to wonder. “Why did he take no notice that night?”
Next day Randal joined them quite early. It was not a good day for fishing, he said. It was too bright. Besides, if they were only going to stay a day or two, he could make up for his idleness afterward. He had got a boat ready, and was bent on taking the ladies to Finlarig, and afterward upon the loch.
“Of course, we are going to Finlarig, Randal,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “Do you think I have never been here before? Good-morning, Duncan Macgregor. Have you any of your pearls to-day? Oh yes! I should like to look at them. The little ones are beautiful, but the big ones are too milky. I like the small size best. You can come up and see us after dinner to-night, and bring them with you. Duncan and I are old friends. Many a pearl I have got from him, and had them set afterward at Sanderson’s, in Princes Street. I invented the setting myself, and it was very much admired—just a gold thread twisted round them. Margaret, you don’t wear any rings. I must have one made for you. Duncan Macgregor had much better come with us, Randal. I have no confidence in gentlemen rowers. You will go off with the girls as soon as we get to Finlarig, and then where shall we be?”
“You will have your devoted nephew, Aunt Jean. My aunts are the aim and object of my life. I never think of anything else, sleeping or waking. How can you talk of being left alone so long as you have me?”
“I prefer Duncan Macgregor,” said Aunt Jean; “and as for your aunts, as you call them, you have only one. And I don’t want to see you pushed out of your place by that lad, Randal Burnside,” she added, in a whisper. “Just you keep your eyes upon him, Aubrey. I can’t think what business he has here.”
Mrs. Bellingham’s prophecy was so far fulfilled that the young men and the girls did somehow, as is their use and wont, manage to separate themselves from their elder companions, one of whom, at least, had every desire to further this separation. It was Randal who was the cicerone of the party, and who led them through the winding path to that secluded, sheltered palace of peace where the dead Campbells rest. They were not thinking much about the Campbells. Who, indeed, thinks of the silent occupants, be they Pharaohs, be they Highland caterans, of those still dwellings of the dead? The Campbells lie in lordly guardianship of their loch and their trees, with their clan within call, and their castle scarcely out of hearing, and all kinds of Highland bravery—honeysuckles and wild roses in the summer, barberries and rowans in the autumn, flaunting upon the half-ruined wall that surrounds their tomb.
The young people strayed that way—two of them full of talk and laughter, two of them quiet enough. Why it was that Effie and Aubrey fell together it would be difficult (yet not very difficult) to say; but the reason why Margaret stayed her steps for those of Randal was easy enough. She wanted, constantly wanted, to ask him why he took no notice that night. For this reason she lingered while the others went on, looking at him now and then with a shy, eager look, which at once puzzled the young man, and filled his heart with a dangerous interest. She wanted to ask him something—what was it she wanted to ask him? Randal was on his guard, he felt. He had been warned effectually enough. Margaret was not for him. Even if he had wanted her (which he did not, he said to himself with a little indignation), was not he forestalled? Had not her heart been caught in its first flight? He might be sorry, but that did not matter much: the deed was done. And he was fully warned, completely forestalled, even if he had wished for anything else. But what was it she wanted to say? Probably, in the innocence of her heart, something about that fellow, for whom, poor thing, she must fancy—she who knew nobody, because she loved him—that every one cared.
They came at last to a little sheltered glade close to the little river, with its golden brown water. There was a beautiful barberry growing in a corner, which Margaret had caught sight of. She wanted a branch of it to put in her hat, she said—until she remembered that her hat was covered with crape. But Randal was cutting the scarlet grapes before that evident incongruity had occurred to her. She sat alone upon a bit of the broken wall close by, among ferns and ivy, and watched him.
“Oh,” she said, “I am so sorry I have given you the trouble. I forgot that it was crape I was wearing. It is very strange that one should ever be able to forget.”
“But you are—by moments.”
“Yes; it shows how little one knows. I thought I would die.”
“But that could not be,” said Randal, kindly. “The world would come to an end very quickly if grief killed; but it does not, even the most terrible.”
“And you will think mine was not like that,” said Margaret. “But I do not forget him! oh, I do not forget him! only— I do not know how it is—my mind will not keep to one thing. I suppose,” she said, with a deep sigh, “it is because I have not very much mind at all.”
“Nay, you accuse yourself unjustly,” he said, with a half smile; “after the shock of a great event, a great trouble, there comes a time of quiet—”
“Oh!” she said, finding herself, by no doing of hers, brought to the point she desired, and turning to him with a sudden start, “Randal, I would like to tell you something. I thought I should have told them all that night when I came in, but I had not the courage.”
“What is it?” Randal threw a twig of his barberries into the stream and watched it carried along, tossing on the swift current. She was going to speak to him of her love, the poor child; and his heart revolted against such a confidence. He could not look at her. Girls receive the confidences of men with interest, but it is very seldom indeed that a young man plays the same part to a girl.
“When I came in that night you all thought my heart was breaking because I was going away, and I did not dare to say otherwise. But oh, Randal! it was not that!”
“I understand.” He threw in another branch of the barberries and watched it intently, turning his head away from her. “It was another kind of parting that made you cry; you were thinking of—”
“Oh, I was thinking—how glad, how glad I would be just to get away, only to get away!”
“Margaret!” he turned round and looked at her quickly now. She was not embarrassed nor blushing, as if the words could bear some happier meaning, but quite pale and serious, looking at the water as he had been doing. Though he had known her all her life, he had of late given up calling her by her Christian name. It was the surprise that forced it from his lips.
“It sounds like wickedness,” she said, fervently. “I can see that, but I do not mean any ill. I could not help it; things had been so strange. How could I help trembling and crying? All had gone wrong, some way. And oh, I was glad, so glad to get away, to be free! But if I had said so you would all have thought me— I don’t know what you would have thought me. But it came into my head that perhaps you guessed my true meaning, and thought it was a lie I was telling, and had no more respect for me.”
“Respect for you! That is not the word I would have used, Margaret. I have always—liked you—taken an interest in you ever since you were a little baby. How could I lose what you call respect?”
“But you looked like it, Randal. Why did you pass me in the gloaming and never say a word, nor even nod your head, or take off your hat?”
“Margaret!” he cried, in great confusion, “I— I thought you did not want to be recognized. I—thought you would like to think I had not seen you— I thought—”
“How could I do that?” said Margaret, seriously; “for that could not have been true. I have wondered ever since if you thought me—a—a—bad girl, Randal? Oh! I think I have no heart! I can laugh, though papa has only been gone a month. I—almost—forget sometimes that I am so unhappy; but I am not a bad girl, Randal. You might always take off your hat to me. You need not think shame to speak to me—”
“Margaret, for Heaven’s sake! who could have imagined you would take it so? I thought you had some one with you whom you cared for more than any one else, and that you would rather I took no notice. I did not think I had any right to interfere between him and you.”
“No,” said Margaret, with a deep sigh, “I suppose nobody could do that;” and after a pause she resumed, half smiling—“But you should not look as if you thought shame of your friends, Randal; you should take off your hat, even when a girl is not very wise. I thought you had no respect for me after that night.”
Margaret pronounced the word wise as if it had been written wice, which the reader who is Scotch will be aware is a word with a quite distinct meaning of its own; a girl who is not wise means a girl who is wildly silly, without any sense—perhaps with not all her wits about her. What would Sir Ludovic have thought had he heard a speech so outrageously Scotch from his little Peggy? How he would have smiled, how he would have scolded! Randal remembered the old man’s amused reproofs; but his heart was too much troubled to permit him to smile. And the inference that lay in Margaret’s words was more than his intelligence could fathom. He was thrown into the wildest commotion of curiosity, anxiety, and wonder. Was it possible that there was no love, after all, between her and Rob Glen? or what did her joy in escaping, her sigh at the thought that no one could interfere, mean? He answered her at last in a strain quite confused and wide of the purpose, like a man in a dream.
“If I should ever be able to do anything for you, to be of any use to you, Margaret, will you send for me? will you let me know? Whatever it may be, and wherever I may be,” he cried, in his confusion, “if you ever tell me you want me, I will come to you if I am at the end of the world!”
She looked up at him with faint surprise, yet gratitude. “Yes, Randal,” she said; “now I know that you have not lost your respect for me. But how should I ever want anything?” she added, with a smile; “there is Jean always to take care of me, you know.”