Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Good! And what may that be — that bunch of weed you wear in your button-hole?” Again the young fellow laughed: “Seasgan or Cuilc — in Gaelic — just reed-grass, Miss Yellow-hair.”

  “Your clan badge?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You’re a good Yankee, Kay. You couldn’t be a good Yankee if you treated Scotch custom with contempt…. This jam is delicious. And oh, such scones!”

  “When we go to Edinburgh we’ll tea on Princess Street,” he remarked.

  “It’s there you’ll fall for the Scotch cakes, Yellow-hair.”

  “I’ve already fallen for everything Scotch,” she remarked demurely.

  “Ah, wait! This Scotland is no strange land to good Americans. It’s a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by God out of the same batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind the first day I ever saw Scotland. ’Twas across Princess Street — across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married her to Scotland.”

  “Kay, you’re a poet!” she exclaimed.

  “We all are here, Yellow-hair. There’s naught else in Scotland,” he said laughing.

  The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never imagined that a “cure” meant the revelation of this unsuspected personality — this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.

  Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up his rod, rising as she rose.

  “Are there no instructions yet?” she inquired.

  As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told her about the visit of No. 67.

  “I fancy instructions will come before long,” he remarked, casting a leaderless line out across the grass. After a moment he glanced rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her, watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.

  “You’re not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?”

  “About the Boche?”

  “I meant that.”

  “No, Kay, I’m not uneasy.”

  And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man beside her.

  It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her — an odd courage quite unfamiliar — an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul to God, her body to her country’s service.

  Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.

  Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and transmuted.

  And now, here in this ancient garden — here in the sun of earliest summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it, so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that left her pretty lips softly parted.

  At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute beast…. That was very hard to know and remember …. But it was the price he had to pay — that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget what she had looked upon.

  “Kay!”

  “Yes, Lady Yellow-hair.”

  “What are you going to do with that rod?”

  “Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you.”

  “Isla?”

  “Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder.”

  “You know,” she said, “to a Yankee girl those moors appear rather — rather lonely.”

  “Forbidding?”

  “No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors.”

  He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast of tiny flies.

  “Have you—” she began, and smiled nervously.

  “A gun?” he inquired coolly. “Yes, I have two strapped up under both arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair.”

  “You don’t think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?”

  “No, I don’t think it best.”

  “I wanted to go with you anyway,” she said, picking up a soft hat and pulling it over her golden head.

  On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of broom and whinn and heath.

  As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge burst from the heather at her very feet — a “Frenchman” with his red legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.

  Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge of Isla Water and over the road to Isla — the enchanting river — interested in each other’s conversation and in the loveliness of the sunny world about them.

  High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching painted tails.

  “It is adorable, this country!” Miss Erith confessed. “It steals into your very bones; doesn’t it?”

  “And the bones still remain Yankee bones,” he rejoined. “There’s the miracle, Yellow-hair.”

  “Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we become to our own. I’m really quite serious. Take yourself for example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing tunes to-day, Yellow-hair.”

  “Let it sing — God bless it!”

  He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer son; America no son more loyal.

  A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla hurrying to the sea.

  Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair dishevelled by the wind, her skirt’s edge wet with the spray of waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d’or glimmered on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always encountered in Isla during the season — always surprising and exciting the angler with emotion forever new.

  Over his shoulder he was saying to her: “Sea-trout and grilse don’t belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair.”

  “Like you and I, Kay — we don’t belong here but we come.”

  “Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his sporran,” he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.

  “Oh, the modes
ty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he is at home!” she cried.

  He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla like a silver spider’s floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet silver as the “Doctor” touched water; one keen scream of the reel cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the tremendous rush of the great fish.

  Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler. Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with rod and gaff — happily aware of the grace in every unconscious movement of his handsome lean body — the steady, keen poise of head and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown hands.

  It came into her mind that he’d look like that on the firing-line some day when his Government was ready to release him from his obscure and terrible mission — the Government that was sending him where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured, repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the most brave and unselfish dare undertake.

  A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the ripples.

  In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she heard the bells of Banff — a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.

  Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they had had their hour, and that the hour was ending — almost ended now.

  They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay before them beyond the bright moor’s edge — beyond the far blue horizon — preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their play-day was finished — seemed already to feel physically the approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East — that hellish mist toward which they both were headed — the twilight of the Hun.

  Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up there, — a flight of lapwings now and then — a lone curlew. The long, squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.

  McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the “Lament for

  Donald” — the lament of CLAN AOIDH — his clan.

  “That’s rather depressing, Kay — what you’re whistling,” said Evelyn

  Erith.

  He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming the “Over There” of that good bard George of Broadway.

  After a moment the girl said: “There seem to be some people by Isla

  Water.”

  His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the hampers on the grass.

  “Trespassers,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s a pretty spot by Isla

  Bridge and we never drive them away.”

  She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of stone. Down by the water’s edge stood their machine. Beside it on the grass were picnicking three people — a very good-looking girl, a very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.

  The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.

  McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. “That won’t do,” he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said pleasantly: “I’m sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn’t permitted in Isla Water.”

  At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness — a powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.

  “Say, sport,” he called out, “if this is your fish-pond we’re ready to pay what’s right. What’s the damage for a dozen fish?”

  “Americans — awful ones,” whispered Miss Erith.

  McKay rested his folded arms on the parapet and regarded the advance of the flashy man up the grassy slope below.

  “I don’t rent fishing privileges,” he said amiably.

  “That’s all right. Name your price. No millionaire guy I ever heard of ever had enough money,” returned the flashy man jocosely.

  McKay, amused, shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “but I couldn’t permit you to fish.”

  “Aw, come on, old scout! We heard you was American same as us.

  That’s my sister down there and her feller. My name’s Jim

  Macniff — some Scotch somewhere. That there feller is Harry Skelton.

  Horses is our business — Spitalfields Mews — here’s my card—”

  pulling it out— “I’ll come up on the bridge—”

  “Never mind. What are you in Scotland for anyway?” inquired McKay.

  “The Angus Dhu stables at Inverness — auction next Wednesday. Horses is our line, so we made it a holiday—”

  “A holiday in the Banff country?”

  “Sure, I ain’t never seen it before. Is that your house?”

  McKay nodded and turned away, weary of the man and his vulgarity. “Very well, picnic and fish if you like,” he said; and fell into step beside Miss Erith.

  They entered the house through the door in the garden. Later, when Miss Erith came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl.

  “What people to encounter in this corner of Paradise,” she said laughingly. And, as he did not smile: “You don’t suppose there’s anything queer about them, do you, Kay?” At that he smiled: “Oh, no, nothing of that sort, Yellow-hair. Only — it’s rather odd. But bagmen and their kind do come into the northland — why, Heaven knows — but one sees them playing about.”

  “Of course those people are merely very ordinary Americans — nothing worse,” she said, seating herself at the table.

  “What could be worse?” he returned lightly.

  “Boche.”

  They were seated sideways to the window and opposite each other, commanding a clear view of Isla Water and the shore where the picnickers sprawled apparently enjoying the semi-comatose pleasure of repletion.

  “That other man — the thin one — has not exactly a prepossessing countenance,” she remarked.

  “They can’t travel without papers,” he said.

  For a little while luncheon progressed in silence. Presently Miss Erith reverted to the picnickers: “The young woman has a foreign face. Have you noticed?”

  “She’s rather dark. Rather handsome, too. And she appears rather nice.”

  “Women of that class always appear superior to men of the same class,” observed Miss Erith. “I suppose really they are not superior to the male of the species.”

  “I’ve always thought they were,” he said.

  “Men might think so.”

  He smiled: “Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?”

  “Oh, the moors — please, Kay!”

  “What!” he exclaimed laughingly; “you’re already a victim to Glenark moors!”

  “Kay, I adore them! … Are you tired? … Our time is short-our day of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can … before we—”

  “Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?”

  “If it please my lord.”

  “Now?”

  “In the cool of the afternoon. Don’t you want to be lazy with me in your quaint old garden for an hour or two?”

  �
��I’ll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair.”

  When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers, their hamper, and their car.

  “Stole away, the beggars,” drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.

  “Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me.”

  The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.

  “Kay?”

  “Yes, Yellow-hair.” Their voices were vague and dreamy.

  “Tell me something.”

  “I’ll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is always warned.”

  “How?”

  “A cold hand touches his hand in the dark.”

  “Kay!”

  “It’s so. It’s called’the Cold Hand of Isla.’ We are all doomed to feel it.”

  “Absurd!”

  “Not at all. That’s a pretty story; isn’t it? Now what more shall I tell you?”

  “Anything you like, Kay. I’m in paradise — or would be if only somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep.”

  “Stories about what?”

  “About YOU, Kay.”

  “I’ll not talk about myself.”

  “Please!”

  But he shook his head without smiling: “You know all there is,” he said— “and much that is — unspeakable.”

  “Kay!”

  “What?”

  “Never, never speak that way again!”

  He remained silent.

  “Because,” she continued in her low, pretty voice, “it is not true. I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say to me, ‘This is a boy who also is a real man!’ … And it was true, Kay.”

  “You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that beastly drunken—”

  “Yes! Don’t use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy, asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man.”

  “You are merciful, but I know what you went through,” he said morosely.