The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

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      “Dear brother, you must be blind! One can see them from here—hundreds of them!” And she ran off.

      Ian helped his elder sister out. “If you will forgive me,” he said in a low voice, “I will stay here by the boat while you go to the cairn with Miss Campbell. I . . . my burnt wrist is paining me somewhat; I should be poor company.”

      “Dear Ian . . .” said Grizel, looking at him in perturbation. He was so oddly pale beneath his sunburn. “Shall I stay with you? Why should your wrist . . .”

      “Because I wrenched it,” he lied, “when that stone gave way. The pain will go off in a little, but I think I will stay here. Go after Jacqueline and explain.”

      She looked at him again dubiously and obeyed; and Ian, after a careless word or two to the rowers, walked to a rock a little way off, sat down there and was very still. If only he could have left the island, and gone home by himself. But he could not take the boat and abandon the ladies, even for a time; and though the swim to land was not beyond his powers it would have seemed the most extraordinary proceeding, calling for investigation, and above all things he wished no one of his family to know what had befallen him.

      For there could be no doubt of it—he loved Olivia Campbell to distraction, and fight against the avowal of that passion as he had done, he was glad in his heart that she knew it. He ought not to have betrayed his love, because of the long and bitter racial feud almost as much as because of the blood which cried from the ground between them, but she was too generous, too noble, to make of that avowal a subject for triumph or for mockery. She might soon forget his mad and wordless confession—he hoped she would—but she would never misuse it.

      And now, a supreme effort, it only remained during the homeward voyage to behave as naturally as he could, and to lay any blame for his recent defection upon yesterday’s now fortunate injury. Olivia, in her divine kindness and comprehension, would support him in that pretence.

      Even if the young man were already attributing to the enchantress all sorts of noble qualities of whose existence he could not possibly have been aware, he was right as far as the homeward voyage was concerned. Miss Campbell made it as easy for him as she could, contriving somehow to change places with Grizel so that the latter, and not she, sat next the tiller; and encouraging Jacqueline to talk, to tell her again, for instance, about the empty cairn and what it had once contained.

      “But the burial chamber was so small,” she objected at one point. “I should have thought a king would have been taller! Were they dwarfs in those days?”

      “It was only the burnt bones of the king—or his ashes, I forget which—that they found,” explained Jacqueline, looking a little surprised, for she had distinctly heard Grizel already informing the visitor of this fact. “Isn’t that so, Ian?—Ian, what are you dreaming about there?”

      “You were talking of ancient kings,” answered her brother slowly, his eyes fixed on the point for which he was steering, “and I was thinking of one, that is all. Yes, I believe that nothing but ashes was found in the cairn. None of us, after all, kings or king’s daughters, can leave behind more of ourselves than that.”

      “What a horrid speech!” cried Jacqueline; and Grizel, also disliking the macabre trend which he had given to the conversation, observed drily, “You certainly made an effort to reduce yourself to that condition yesterday evening;” and began to talk about the prospects of a fine sunset. And at last, as all ordeals must, the voyage came to an end.

      A surprise awaited them all at Invernacree, where they were informed that Miss Campbell’s brother had already arrived, in order to be able to make an early start with his sister next morning. He had come to the house to pay his respects, finding no one, not even the laird himself, at home, and had, the domestic understood, taken up his quarters at the tiny inn down by the loch.

      “But Mr. Campbell must not remain there!” exclaimed Grizel on hearing this news. “Ian shall go and bid him come up to the house for the night—will you not, Ian?”

      Without waiting to find his father Ian went off. He had no desire at all for the company of a male Campbell, and his father, he was sure, would have still less; yet he knew that Invernacree would not be satisfied to leave the traveller to the mercies of the inn, more especially when his sister was already staying beneath his roof. And after all, thought the young man, nothing mattered very much to-night. His outburst had by now numbed him; he felt nothing. To-morrow the world would come to an end for him . . . if it had not already done so over there on Eilean Soa among the daisies.

      He found at the inn Mr. Colin Campbell, a tall, fair young man of about his own age, who at first refused to put the laird of Invernacree to the trouble of receiving him for one night, and was stiff even when, unable to do anything else, he finally yielded. The two of them walked together up to the house, neither finding much to say to the other.

      And through the evening, while Ian watched Olivia in a kind of dream, still numbed, but every now and again waking to a stab of pain, as though the blood was beginning to run once more in a frozen limb, it seemed to him not unfortunate, perhaps, that Colin Campbell was here, for the atmosphere was changed by it. The presence of that typical son of Clan Diarmaid seemed to draw Olivia so much further away from them, back into the circle to which she belonged; it showed things as they really were. It was better so.

      She left early next morning with her brother in their father’s coach, which by now had been repaired. Ian had no word alone with her. But as old Invernacree was about to hand her in she said, “I shall never ride in this carriage again, sir, without the most grateful thoughts of what I owe to you and . . . your family.”

      For a moment her gaze went past him to that member of it for whom no doubt her thanks were specially intended, where he stood by Jacqueline’s side, saying nothing and not, apparently, looking at any one.

      “My dear young lady,” replied the old man, with an air at once courteous and paternal, “anything which my family has been able to do for you is their good fortune. God bless you, and may you have a better journey than the last!”

      Their good fortune! Ian could have laughed out loud. If his father only knew!

      Mr. Colin Campbell, a little less stiff than last night, but still not at ease, got into the coach and slammed the door, the postillion chirruped to the horses, and that fatal vehicle drew away from the old white house among the oak trees. Grizel and Jacqueline stood on the steps for some time, Jacqueline waving a handkerchief, to which, as the coach turned just outside the gate, there was an answering flicker of white. But Ian had not stayed to see that.

      So she was gone, the enchanted, the enchanting. Up in his own room he had only to shut his eyes, and he was back in the flowery meadow where he had kissed her hand. His heart still lay there among the daisy stems, in the place where the King of Lochlann’s daughter had stood. But now that she was gone from Appin he had a half hope that it might creep back to his breast, even if it should never be the same heart again, but remain what it seemed now, as much ashes as any in the ancient tomb on Eilean Soa.

      CHAPTER VII

       AN EXPLANATION AT THE GOATS’ WHEY

       Table of Contents

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