The Half-Hearted. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ inhabitants. For, not six paces off, stood a man’s figure, his back turned towards her, and his mind apparently set on mending a piece of tackle.

      She stood for a moment hesitating. How could she pass without being seen? The man was blissfully unconscious of her presence, and as he worked he whistled Schubert’s “Wohin,” and whistled it very badly. Then he fell to apostrophizing his tackle, and then he grew irritable. “Somebody come and keep this thing taut,” he cried. “Tam, Jock! where on earth are you?”

      The thing in question was lying at Alice’s feet in wavy coils.

      “Jock, you fool, where are you?” cried the man, but he never looked round and went on biting and tying. Then an impulse took the girl and she picked up the line. “That’s right,” cried the man, “pull it as tight as you can,” and Alice tugged heroically at the waterproof silk. She felt horribly nervous, and was conscious that she must look a very flushed and untidy young barbarian. Many times she wanted to drop it and run away, but the thought of the menaces against the absent Jock and of her swift discovery deterred her. When he was done with her help he might go on working and never look round. Then she would escape unnoticed down the burn.

      But no such luck befell her. With a satisfied tug he pronounced the thing finished and wheeled round to regard his associates. “Now, you young wretches—” and the words froze on his lips, for in the place of two tatterdemalion boys he saw a young girl holding his line limply and smiling with much nervousness.

      “Oh,” he cried, and then became dumb and confused. He was shy and unhappy with women, save the few whom he had known from childhood. The girl was no better. She had blushed deeply, and was now minutely scanning the stones in the burn. Then she raised her eyes, met his, and the difficulty was solved by both falling into fits of deep laughter. She was the first to speak.

      “I am so sorry I surprised you. I did not see you till I was close to you, and then you were abusing somebody so terribly that to stop such language I had to stop and help you. I saw Tam and Jock at a pool a long way down, so they couldn’t hear you, you know.”

      “And I’m very much obliged to you. You held it far better than Tam or Jock would have done. But how did you get up here?”

      “I climbed up the burn,” said Alice simply, putting up a hand to confine a wandering tress. The young man saw a small, very simply dressed girl, with a flushed face and bright, deep eyes. The small white hat crowned a great tangle of wonderful reddish gold hair. She held herself with the grace which is born of natural health and no modish training; the strong hazel stick, the scratched shoes, and the wet fringes of her gown showed how she had spent the afternoon. The young man, having received an excellent education, thought of Dryads and Oreads.

      Alice for her part saw a strong, well-knit being, with a brown, clean-shaven face, a straight nose, and a delicate, humorous mouth. He had large grey eyes, very keen, quizzical, and kindly. His raiment was disgraceful—an old knickerbocker suit with a ruinous Norfolk jacket, patched at the elbows and with leather at wrist and shoulder. Apparently he scorned the June sun, for he had no cap. His pockets seemed bursting with tackle, and a discarded basket lay on the ground. The whole figure pleased her, its rude health, simplicity, and disorder. The atrocious men who sometimes came to her father’s house had been miracles of neatness, and Mr. Stocks was wont to robe his person in the most faultless of shooting suits.

      A fugitive memory began to haunt the girl. She had met or heard of this man before. The valley was divided between Glenavelin and Etterick. He was not the Doctor, and he was not the minister. Might not he be that Lewie, the well-beloved, whose praises she had heard consistently sung since her arrival? It pleased her to think that she had been the first to meet the redoubtable young man.

      To them there entered the two boys, the younger dangling a fish. “It is the big trout ye lost,” he cried. “We guddled ’um. We wad has gotten ’um afore, but a wumman frichted ’um.” Then turning unabashed to Alice, he said in accusing tones, “That’s the wumman!”

      The elder boy gently but firmly performed on his brother the operation known as “scragging.” It was a subdued spirit which emerged from the fraternal embrace.

      “Pit the fush in the basket, Tam,” said he, “and syne gang away wide up the hill till I cry ye back.” The tones implied that his younger brother was no fit company for two gentlemen and a lady.

      “I won’t spoil your fishing,” said Alice, fearing fratricidal strife. “You are fishing up, so I had better go down the burn again.” And with a dignified nod to the others she turned to go.

      Jock sprang forward with a bound and proceeded to stone the small Tam up the hill. He coursed that young gentleman like a dog, bidding him “come near,” or “gang wide,” or “lie down there,” to all of which the culprit, taking the sport in proper spirit, gaily responded.

      “I think you had better not go down the burn,” said the man reflectively. “You should keep the dry hillside. It is safer.”

      “Oh, I am not afraid,” said the girl, laughing.

      “But then I might want to fish down, and the trout are very shy there,” said he, lying generously.

      “Well, I won’t then, but please tell me where Glenavelin is, for the stream-side is my only direction.”

      “You are staying there?” he asked with a pleased face. “We shall meet again, for I shall be over to-morrow. That fence on the hillside is their march, and if you follow it you will come to the footbridge on the Avelin. Many thanks for taking Jock’s place and helping me.”

      He watched her for a second as she lightly jumped the burn and climbed the peaty slope. Then he turned to his fishing, and when Alice looked back from the vantage-ground of the hill shoulder she saw a figure bending intently below a great pool. She was no coquette, but she could not repress a tinge of irritation at so callous and self-absorbed a young man. Another would have been profuse in thanks and would have accompanied her to point out the road, or in some way or other would have declared his appreciation of her presence. He might have told her his name, and then there would have been a pleasant informal introduction, and they could have talked freely. If he came to Glenavelin to-morrow, she would have liked to appear as already an acquaintance of so popular a guest.

      But such thoughts did not long hold their place. She was an honest young woman, and she readily confessed that fluent manners and the air of the cavaliere servente were things she did not love. Carelessness suited well with a frayed jacket and the companionship of a hill burn and two ragged boys. So, comforting her pride with proverbs, she returned to Glenavelin to find the place deserted save for dogs, and in their cheering presence read idly till dinner.

CHAPTER IV

       AFTERNOON IN A GARDEN

       Table of Contents

      THE gardens of Glenavelin have an air of antiquity beyond the dwelling, for there the modish fashions of another century have been followed with enthusiasm. There are clipped yews and long arched avenues, bowers and summer-houses of rustic make, and a terraced lawn fringed with a Georgian parapet. A former lord had kept peacocks innumerable, and something of the tradition still survived. Set in the heart of hilly moorlands, it was like a cameo gem in a tartan plaid, a piece of old Vauxhall or Ranelagh in an upland vale. Of an afternoon sleep reigned supreme. The shapely immobile trees, the grey and crumbling stone, the lone green walks vanishing into a bosky СКАЧАТЬ