A Maid Of The Isles E-Book

Annie S. Swan

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 511

Beschreibung

During a stormy night on the Isle of Skye, Dr Peter Mathieson responds to an emergency call and becomes embroiled in a scandal that must be kept secret . . . Years later, the free-spirited and rebellious Margaret Mackinnon strikes up an unusual friendship with Angus Macleod of the sheiling, much to the annoyance of Margaret’s mother, Lady Mackinnon. Margaret and Angus are set adrift from each other, but a chance meeting in adulthood transforms their friendship into something more. Is Margaret and Angus’s relationship fated, or will schemes and secrets tear them apart?

Leseprobe

A MAID OF THE ISLES

by Annie S. Swan

Annie Shepherd Swan (1859-1943) was born near Edinburgh, one of seven children. While she began her writing career with children’s stories and religious articles, she went on to become one of the most widely read Scottish authors of the twentieth century.

Her breakthrough came in 1881, when she won a story competition run by “The People’s Journal”, parent title of “The People’s Friend”. Readers of the “Friend” took Annie to their hearts, and over a career that spanned 60 years, she was a loyal contributor to the magazine, writing around 200 serial stories under both her own name and the pseudonym David Lyall.

Chapter 1

Peter Mathieson, the Portree doctor, could not settle in his house on a black night in November. He had had a long enough day in the saddle and in the gig, and his body was weary, but something gripped his spirit, a sense of the unexpected, possibly the dread.

He could not eat his supper, and when Kate Nicholson, his housekeeper, came in to clear the table she beheld it aghast.

“What for haf ye not eaten your good supper, doctor? Is there anything the matter wi’ the meat at all?”

The doctor met her flashing, hawklike eyes with a half-smile in his own.

“Nothing at all, Kate; only I’m off it. Get me a cup of strong coffee in half an hour’s time. I’ve got some writing to do.”

“It will keep you awake, doctor; don’t be takin’ it. And you never off the road for three nights! It’s sleep you’re needin’, and coffee is not so good for it as the other kind o’ nightcap.”

“Wheesht, woman, and not be leading me in the way I should not go. I will not go out tonight, Kate, if the very spirit of Blaaven himself should come to fetch me.”

Kate did not even smile. She had heard the threat before, and seen it confounded. She was jealous of the wellbeing of this man, who was to her all the brains she had not borne or mothered.

She was a Skye woman, and had never been out of the island. That the doctor was an importation from one of the outer isles made no difference to her. She was bound to him by ties of gratitude and service.

He was a short, sturdily built man with an open face and a good, square forehead, a wide, genial mouth which could smile merrily, yet set with unwavering firmness. A man to be trusted, the Portree doctor, and he was trusted far and near. He had the lovely hands of a healer and his tender heart, so that all he touched were comforted even in the swelling of Jordan.

“The wind seems to be rising, Kate, but we have no cause to grumble. There has not been a November like this one in my memory.”

“We’ll haf to pey for it, sure,” muttered Kate as she swept the untasted food on to the tray, half-tilted against the table.

At the moment there was a peal at the bell, followed by a loud knock. She shot a glance of triumph at him.

“What’ll you be sayin’ now, doctor? Like as not they’ll be seekin’ you north or south, and that you’ll be goin’, too, in spite of your braw words.”

“Most likely it’ll only be Rory Macleod for his wife’s medicine, though I told him I would bring it tomorrow. Go and see; if it’s Rory bring him in and give him a bite. Poor man, he’s having an anxious time with Morag.”

Kate left her half-piled tray on the table and marched out. In a minute she was back with a letter in her hand.

“It’s Hamish Macqueen from the inn at Sligachan, an’ he’s a man in a hurry.”

“There can’t be any visitors at the inn just now, Kate,” said the doctor, and took the letter. Kate watched him as he broke the large purple seal on the flap and saw his face change and his brows knit.

Then he turned to her curtly.

“If he can leave his horse, Kate, bring him in and give him something to eat while I get my things together.”

“What things? And where would ye be goin’ at this time o’ night, and you needin’ your bed?” she asked with the privileged persistence of an old servant and friend.

“Never mind. You do as you are bid, Kate,” was all he answered, then passed by her to go to the surgery for his things. A blast through the half-open door urged him towards it.

Outside the wind ruffled his hair, and there was a roar of waters in the bay, as if the spirit of the storm was up and doing.

“What horse have you, Hamish?” he asked briefly. “Is it a fresh one, for the wind will be in our faces as we ride up, and there’s no time to spare?”

“It iss a fresh beast, doctor,” answered the man. “They’ll be waiting for ye at the inn with another. It seems the horses at Corryvreck are wabbit. They’ve been twice to Kyleakin in twenty-four hours, and there’s only the two of them.”

This cryptic remark still further deepened the mystery in the doctor’s mind.

“At least, that’s what they wass sayin’” added Hamish with the characteristic caution of the Skye-man, incapable of haste either in thought, word, or deed.

He had been bidden fly like the wind, but had, nevertheless, taken his own time, for in Skye, time is not the same as in other places. There is always tomorrow, and sometimes tomorrow is better than today.

The doctor was not a questioning man. Further, he could see that the stout cob had plenty of fire in him yet, and that it would not be safe to leave him untended at the door. He therefore called to Kate to take out a bowl of hot soup to Macqueen, and then went to collect his own stuff.

Various bags and cases were in the wide, low cupboard against the wall in the bare little consulting room. His eye swept them. He lifted two, then, moved by some strange impulse, put one back and took another one well known about the glens and crofts, where he pursued his calling.

In about ten minutes’ time, well wrapped up, and followed by Kate Nicholson’s good wishes, tempered by dismal forebodings, he leaped to his seat in the Sligachan gig, and the horse’s head was turned.

The south-west wind met them, soft and sweet, but gusty, driving the massed clouds across the sky, clearing a track for the moon’s face, so that she might add her magic touch to a scene of unimagined beauty.

It was full moon at the waning turn. Broad and white was the light shed on the lovely land-locked bay, the tossing waters beyond, with the long, low line of Raasay in the middle distance. Their road led them across the moors, following the windings of the Varragill River, fed by a hundred gleaming mountain torrents. In front lay the massed battalions of the hills, their mystic and towering crests coming ever nearer and nearer, until they seemed to shut them in.

Peter Mathieson knew every rood and pole of that road, but not every stone, for they were ever changing.

There were few landmarks and no houses, only a long stretch of desolate beauty with which a man cannot commune without some hurt or advantage to himself. There are some to whom these lonely fastnesses are the abomination of desolation, but Peter Mathieson loved them. They had helped him at a time when his own life and all his hopes had been in ruins at his feet. Therefore he gave them a son’s love, and did not shrink from their wildest mood.

“We’ll get to Silgachan fair, Hamish, but the storm is brewing,” he remarked from the comfortable depths of his wrap, which Kate had knitted for him from wool spun by her own folk in a cottage in the Sconser crofting township.

“Aye, maybe it iss, too,” answered Hamish in his non-committal voice. “They will be sayin’ at the inn that a leddy has come to Corryvreck, and that there is sore trouble there.”

To this the doctor made no response, having no wish to make the trouble to which he was hastening the subject of common talk.

“Any folk at the inn just now?” he asked by way of turning the subject.

“Nane. There wass a bit body, but he left yesterday on the Broadford post gig. Will ye be stayin’ the night whatefer, or will I be to bring ye back?”

“I don’t know, Hamish,” the doctor answered. Then silence fell again, deep and unbroken, until they breasted the last slope and descended to the level track before the inn door. A light shone broadly from an uncurtained window, and another trap with two horses champing their bits awaited them. The doctor sprang from his seat and approached it.

“Corryvreck, waiting for me?” he asked briefly.

The man nodded. The doctor sprang up to his place, and was gone even as the landlord came out to bid him good evening and enquire regarding his movements for the night.

The man on the box seat of the waggonette was a stranger to Mathieson, and he asked him no questions.

They crossed the bridge, and turning upon the Broadford road, mounted high, leaving the gleaming waters of Sligachan Loch below them.

The doctor’s mind was full of wonder as to why they had sent for him instead of for the Broadford doctor, who was not only nearer, but presumably known to them all. He had not got over this questioning when they turned off from the highroad and began to cover a wide, desolate stretch of moorland little better than a cart track. Peter Mathieson knew the track well. There were few, indeed, of the side tracks or short cuts unknown to him in that part of the island. There was another road to Corryvreck – a straight road from Kyleakin and Broadford – but this was the road, apparently, the man had been bidden take. It meant a clear saving of several miles.

“You came over this, I expect, to get to Silgachan? How about the bogs? There has been a lot of rain.”

“I got there,” was the cryptic answer. “They’re not so bad at all, and, anyway, it iss a good night – for the light, I mean. A body or a horse can see where he is goin’.”

“If the rain keeps off,” muttered Peter Mathieson, feeling as he spoke the sting of the first drops on his cheek. But they pass with incredible swiftness, these wild blashes of mountain rain.

In ten minutes the sky’s face was clear as crystal, and the moon’s white light casting weird and mystical shadows on the encircling hills. Never had they seemed more mysterious, more awful, the very spirit of secrecy and of silence, of “old unhappy, far-off things” brooding upon them.

Mathieson stared in front of him, conscious of their nearness, of their strange, almost human appeal, and all the while his mind was in a turmoil regarding the business on which he had been fetched all the way from Portree. Twenty minutes across the bumpy track brought them to the main road again, along which they were came to a low gateway cut sheer into a mass of low-growing, sturdy pines, which closed upon an avenue so thickly that they made it pitch dark. The horses, however, appeared to know their way, and brought them in a few minutes’ time, without mishap, to the door of a great house hung on a rocky pinnacle, from which Mathieson knew the sea could be seen. Indeed, it laved the foundations of the house, which was a landmark to seafaring and fisher folk for miles.

A few lights twinkled in the upper windows; the lower ones seemed to be heavily curtained. But almost before the horses stopped the low, iron-studded door was thrown wide, and a manservant, old, white-haired, and rather tottery, appeared to bid them welcome.

The next moment Peter Mathieson, gripping his bags in both hands, stepped inside the house, and the door was shut.

The manservant, whose eyes had not lost all their clearness, watched the doctor’s face as he helped him off with his heavy wraps.

“Come this way, sir,” he said then, and Mathieson, with a swift glance at the high, bare hall, with its dark oaken staircase polished by the feet of many generations, followed his guide.

He was brought to a long, low room, badly lighted save at the fireplace, where a solitary woman’s figure in a trailing black frock stood with clasped hands, waiting. Even from the doorway Peter Mathieson was struck by the majesty and the anguish on her face. He had never seen aught like it on a human face before.

“Dr Mathieson, mem,” said the manservant with an anxious tremor in his voice, then closed the door, leaving Mathieson to advance.

“I am here, madam,” he said briefly.

She advanced a step and regarded him keenly with a long, searching glance. Then her features seemed to relax, as if she had found some comfort or reassurance in the sturdy figure, the square, strong face, and the general look of the Portree doctor.

“I am obliged to you for coming. The matter is urgent – nay, more, it is tragic. Will you sit down while I explain?”

Mathieson shook his head. Something told him it was no moment for sitting, that there was urgency in the hour.

“I have been sitting two good hours coming from Portree. I am ready for whatever service is required.”

She clasped her hands nervously, and a fierce red spot burned upon her pallid cheek. Her handsome mouth lost its proud curve, and seemed to tremble before the strength and purpose of the man on whose mercy she had decided to throw herself and what she held dear.

“I made no mistake in sending for you. I was bidden, by whom it matters not. I think it was my own heart. I have that to tell you which will take a moment. You prefer to stand; so do I. There can be no rest when the heart is breaking, when all one’s being is on the rack.”

Chapter 2

He bowed gravely, still utterly at sea. Then quite suddenly she began to talk, haltingly at first, but speech gathered momentum as she proceeded, till the words came like one of the mountain torrents which rush impetuously down the hillsides in winter. Mathieson listened like a man entranced, filled with horror and consternation, for a moment almost goaded to turn and flee.

As if gauging the depth of his inmost thought, she suddenly took a step forward and laid a light but compelling hand on his arm.

“It is the honour of my house I am laying upon you, Dr Mathieson. More I cannot tell you. Is it enough? Will you will you undertake for me and mine this night so that the curse causeless which has come upon us may at least – may at least” – here she paused as if at a loss for words – “may at least not destroy us?”

“I am ready,” answered Mathieson simply, “and, before God, I will do what one man can to help Corryvreck in this hour of need.”

A great, deep sigh that was a sob shook her, so that her control seemed likely to desert her.

“Then come upstairs now. There is no one in the house save Ewan MacEwan, the old butler, who admitted you, and Euphan, his wife. You are the fourth person to be admitted to the secret shame of Corryvreck. It lies with you to save us. Now come.”

He followed her out of the room into the badly lighted hall, up the wide, dark staircase to the first landing, along a corridor to a door at the further end, which opened and they passed in. Then fell a strange silence upon the old house, a silence as of the grave.

About two of the morning, an hour when the lights are low and the lamp of life burns but dimly, they came down the wide, bare stairs, these two whom swift tragedy had brought so near in the house of Corryvreck.

When they entered the long living-room the fire still burned on the hearth, but the air was chill. Mathieson moved swiftly forward, and, taking the long wrought-iron poker from its stand, drew the embers together. An odd smile twisted his lips as he turned to her with the leaping flame.

“They say you should be seven years in a man’s house before you touch his fire, ma’am, but this is not as other nights.”

Her face showed wan and grey in the half-light, and, as if suddenly spent, she dropped heavily into a chair.

“Oh,” she said, and there was a moan in her voice, while her hand crept to her heart, as if she felt its throbbing or its pain.

Mathieson, seeing how it was with her, looked round irresolutely. There was a bell-pull, but of what use to pull it, seeing the only one who could answer it was elsewhere? A half-open door in the panelling a few feet away beckoned him, and, walking deliberately to it, he threw it open, and was relieved to behold there an array of bottles and glasses, and even a tin biscuit box – a secret hoard, evidently, for those who knew where to find it.

He filled a glass hastily, not too particular as to what brand of spirit he was putting in it, and, carrying the biscuit tin in the other hand, approached the limp figure in the high tapestried chair.

He had a dominating way with him and few words. Nevertheless, the woman, about whom he was now anxious, obediently put the glass to her lips and drained it, and even essayed to crumble a few bits of the proffered biscuit.

The spirit immediately worked its transient spell, and she sat up, new vigour in her looks.

“Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “It was well done. One forgets that strength is exhaustible, but it has been a terrible night.”

“Now listen to me, madam,” began Mathieson steadily, standing by the table a few feet away from her.

“I am listening,” she said when he made pause. “There is no one else to listen to, for me, in the wide earth. You hold me and mine in the hollow of your hand.”

“Hardly, but we’ll let it pass. I understand that what has happened in this house tonight must for the sake of many besides you and your poor child be kept secret.”

“If it can, if it can!” she moaned. “But walls have ears, and the birds of the air carry messages. Now can I be sure even that you –” But when her eyes met his she faltered, and would have asked his pardon. “I made no mistake in sending for you. They told me –”

“Who told you?”

“I have forgotten. They said you were the friend of all trouble, and sent none empty away. It is true. See, you have never asked my name, nor who is to pay you for what you have done this night. Look you, money should not be so much as named between us, but the service will not be forgotten. Do you hear?”

“I am hearing,” he answered, and the faintest suspicion of a smile touched for a moment his grave lips.

“I said to you when you first came that it was the honour of a great house that was involved, but it is more; it is the happiness, the very existence of some dearer to me than life. Look you, if her father knew what had happened here tonight he would kill her with his own hand. Of that I am as sure as I sit here.”

“No, no,” said Mathieson quietly. “We say things like that but do not believe them, because we are in the grip of forces stronger than ourselves. We would rather think and believe that that poor child upstairs has been more sinned against than sinning.”

Two large, slow tears, wrung from a heart’s pure and utter desolation, welled in her eyes and rolled down her wan cheeks.

“Ah, you are wonderful! Where do you gather such wisdom of the heart? Does it belong to the wizardry of your profession, demonstrated so wonderfully to me tonight?”

“I’m a plain man, face to face with life without its trappings. I see men and women as they are, and am continually astounded by their nobility,” Peter Mathieson answered.

“But it is growing late, or, rather, early,” he added with a glance at the great, honest face of the chiming clock set high on the stone mantelshelf.

“I understand the situation, I think, and I want no further information. I can help you further by placing the child for you in a home where he will be cared for, aye, and mothered, and where no questions will be asked concerning his birth or parentage.”

She stared at him as if he were a deliverer and saviour.

“You – you would do this for a woman you have never seen before? It was my hope – it was my hope,” she added, and her voice faltered, “that other help might be forthcoming upstairs – you understand?”

“That kind of help is forbidden; moreover, it is a crime, madam,” Peter Mathieson answered bluntly. “My business is to save and preserve life, not to destroy it. I can take the bairn with me now, but certain precautions will have to be taken. Where is the man who drove me here tonight?”

“Gone to his home, I expect, but he can be got again. He lives not far away.”

“He is neither needed nor wanted. If you have a horse fit to cover the fifteen miles between this and Portree, I will drive him myself, and you can send the man to my stables for the turnout tomorrow.”

“Yes, yes, and you will take the – the child with you?”

“I will.”

“But what will you do with him? Your wife –”

“I have no wife, only a housekeeper who knows when and how to hold her tongue. But we will not keep the foundling in Portree. I can do better for him than that – find a foster-mother who will take him to her breast and heart. He will be cared for like her own.”

“But how wonderful that there should be such people in the world!” she cried, trembling very much.

“Then you agree? I will go and get the trap if your old servant can be trusted and will show me the way, while you wrap the mite in blankets. He is a sturdy one, and the night ride won’t hurt him. The winds of Blaaven and Marscon and Glamaig will chant his lullaby,” said Peter Mathieson, for the drama and the poetry of the adventure gripped him.

He left her there and stepped out into the darkness, companioned by the frail old servant, who spoke no word to betray that he sensed the night’s tragedy. When about three of the morning, in a fitful patch of moonshine, Peter Mathieson drove the strange horse round from the stableyard to the front door of Corryvreck, there were no witnesses to what happened save the woman who bore the happed bundle in her arms, her tall, graceful figure tense with strain and excitement, her face wan and drawn in the pale moonlight.

Mathieson saw her in the hall, and stepped within, where they stood a brief second.

“If you will come outside, madam, and after I get to my seat will hand me the child, I will place him tenderly.”

She bent her head, and, clasping the unconscious bundle in her arms, followed him into the open. Mathieson climbed to his seat, and then, stooping, stretched out his hands to take the burden.

It was a striking scene at that moment. A shrouding mist was swept from the moon’s face, and the light shone out clear, white, and wonderful. It touched the woman’s bare head where the wind ruffled her hair, showing up the fineness of her features and the poignancy of her expression. She seemed to hesitate and then to tremble, but Mathieson reminded her there was no time to lose.

She folded back the blanket then, and, moved by some impulse stronger than fear or shame or death, pressed her lips to the pink rose leaf of the baby’s face.

“May God forgive me for this night’s work. But he will be cared for – you do promise me, don’t you, doctor?”

“I do, and I will see you tomorrow, madam, or, rather, today, a few hours later. Goodbye!”

He gathered up the child, laid it softly on the broad seat by his side, making the folds of the blankets taut and secure with a surer touch than any woman’s, then stretched out his hand.

“Goodbye for a few hours. Don’t fret. All will be well.”

She reached up her hand, clinging to his, as if loth to let go the friendly human touch. Whatever her rank or station, she was naught just then but a trembling woman whose heart misgave her. Mathieson understood it all, as if it had been writ in large letters for his eyes to read.

“Keep up your heart, madam. We shall talk it over later in the day. Meanwhile, I am sure this is the right thing to do.”

“You are sure?”

“Absolutely, after what you have told me, and I give you my word of honour he will be cared for, if I have to care for him myself.”

It was a kind of a vow. Neither guessed how nobly it was to be fulfilled in days to come. Alone there in the solemn silence of the new day, with naught but the majesty of the hills about them and God’s eye over all, they felt themselves near the heart of things. Their hands met, but no further word passed. The impatient horse leaped forward, and at the turn of the avenue Mathieson looked back to see the tragic figure standing bareheaded on the step.

Chapter 3

What a night and what a story! One more secret for old Blaaven to hide. But Corryvreck, and who can she be? How did she come? Perhaps she’ll tell me next time.”

The little atom of humanity thus strangely introduced to a world of stress and storm was lulled to sleep by the night winds and the gentle motion of the trap. The poignancy of that night’s adventure was intensified for Peter Mathieson by the enchantment, the weird spell of the hour and the place.

Never had he been more conscious of a Presence about him, something mystic and wonderful; he felt himself encompassed by the unseen. And that uplifting sense drove for a moment from his mind the tragedy and the sorrow of life from which he had just come.

It laid no fear upon him at all, and even when once his horse stopped, quivering in the shafts, he only spoke to him gently. When he came to the Broadford road again he slackened the rein and drove gently, as if pondering something in his mind.

He could see some huddled houses on the slope which bent to the lochside, and it was to one of them he was bound. He had remembered the medicine for Rory Macleod’s wife, and though it was an untimely hour, he decided to deliver it. Also, he had other business with her.

There was a rough cart track across the bog to the house he sought. He skilfully covered it, and brought the trap up before the cobbles at the crofter’s door. There was a good-sized cottage and several outhouses, and he could see a red gleam in the kitchen window, indicating that, if the inmates were asleep, the fire was still alive.

He swung himself from the gig, approached the uncurtained window, and looked in. It was a typical crofter interior – wide, black-raftered, and how, with an open fireplace, from which a quiet glow made everything visible. There were two box-beds let into the wall.

Presumably they had their full complement, for it was a family house, with several bairns. The last babe, eight weeks old, had just died, and great had been Morag Macleod’s mourning over it; in fact, Mathieson had been obliged to remonstrate with her and to point out that she had a duty to the living.

But for the loss of her latest-born she was quite inconsolable. She was the type of woman who loves a baby at the breast, and loves it with a passionate love. He was in no way surprised to behold her crouching, with a shawl about her shoulders, over the red glow of the peat fire. He could see the sharp outline of her comely face, almost imagine the hunger in her eyes.

He gave a low tap on the pane, and saw her start, not in fear, but rather with a sudden apprehension of something she had expected. The next moment he lifted the sneck and stepped in.

“Not in your bed, Mrs Macleod, but I’m glad of it tonight. Come out, will you? I’ve something for you.”

She came out wonderingly, yet with a quick willingness, for she loved the doctor, and trusted him with a whole heart’s trust. She stood bareheaded on the step, expecting naught but a bottle of medicine.

“Och, but you’re late doctor. D’ye nefer get to your bed at all?”

“Whiles, Mrs Macleod, but I’ve had a big night’s work tonight, and you’re in it. See here –” He half-stood on the gig step, lifted the blanketed bundle from the seat, and brought it to her.

“It’s a bairn, my woman, to take the place of her that’s away. He is a nameless one, but you will mother him, I know. D’ye mind we talked about this once, and you said you would be foster-mother to any bairn you could get? Well, here he is.”

He laid the bundle in her arms, and saw how her fingers crept about it with a tender, lingering touch. As she put back the blanket from the little face a slow ecstasy gathered in her eyes. It was enough for Peter Mathieson.

“I’ll see you the morn, Mrs Macleod, after I’ve had an hour or two’s sleep,” he said, and without more ado swung himself to his seat again, and so drove away. But Morag heeded him not, for the mother-heart in her was mightily stirred, and when the child awoke with a little cry the tears rained down her cheeks, and she clasped him crooning to her breast.

Chapter 4

“And where, may I enquire, is Margaret?” The slightly imperious tone was one which Miss Bannister, the governess at Corryvreck, had reason to dislike.

A confused expression covered her shrinking face as she answered, while her other three charges, the Misses Caroline, Sheila, and Patricia Mackinnon looked on with demure mischief in their eyes waiting to see Banny getting into the hat.

They loved Banny, but ruled her with a rod of iron. She had no commanding qualities, which possibly explains how her term of residence at Corryvreck and the Gate House at Chelsea had been longer than that of any of her predecessors.

“Margaret! Margaret! Oh, she has gone out on the sheltie. She might meet us, she said.”

“No, no, Banny,” put in Caroline. “You know perfectly well she’s gone to Alt Bruach.”

The storm began to gather on Lady Mackinnon’s brow.

“Alt Bruach! Miss Bannister, you know that I disapprove of the way Margaret spends her time about the crofts. How is it you have so little control over her?”

Poor Bannister shook a dismal head.

“Margaret is so high-spirited,” she murmured. “It is very difficult to control her.”

“Then somebody must be got who can. I pay you a high salary, Miss Bannister, but you fail in your duty. Margaret must be kept from Alt Bruach and other undesirable haunts, do you hear?”

Then did Banny put her foot hopelessly in it.

“But the Macleods are very nice people, Lady Mackinnon, and most refined for crofters.”

A glance of wordless scorn was her employer’s only answer.

“You can proceed to Beltare and deliver the note I gave you; I will go and look after Margaret myself.” She dismissed them with that, and poor Bannister, the picture of dismay and apprehension, followed her charges into the sunshine.

It was summer in Skye, and there is no summer in the world like it. The warm hills bathed in sunshine or wrapped in contrasting shadow, the rolling mists folded unseen, the shimmer of gold on flashing waters, the glint of royal purple on every moorland space, and the wine of intoxication in its air – that is summer in Skye.

The lady of Corryvreck had no kinship with the entrancing, penetrating beauty and lure of the islands; she was not island-born, but an alien whose heart and allegiance were riveted to the south. Having married the Laird of Corryvreck, she came with him from time to time to the seat of his forefathers, the cradle of his race; came reluctantly, languidly; slow to come and in haste to go; filling the house with strange, noisy people to save her boredom; alluding to the place as “the shooting lodge,” which enraged Donald Mackinnon beyond everything on earth. Often he stole away alone from London to the misty island, and these were his happiest times.

It is a great tragedy when two are yoked together and are not agreed about the things that matter. She was an up-to-date modern woman in every movement, to whom London and the cult of its strange circles was more than meat or drink. Mackinnon adored his quartet of pretty daughters, and they him, but the tragedy of his life was that no son had been born to Corryvreck, nor would ever be now. Therefore, it might pass from the Mackinnons, so that the old name would be forgotten.

A little car driven by a smart chauffeur came round to the door at Lady Mackinnon’s bidding, and she, attired in the latest “country clothes,” as she called them, took her seat, and they started across the moor. About a mile beyond the gates of Corryvreck she espied her husband walking with a couple of dogs at his heels.

“There is Sir Donald, Craven. Stop,” she said quickly, and waved to him in imperious fashion. He obeyed, nothing loth, striding across the heather, a fine figure of a man, with looks such as ought to have filled the heart of his wife with a proper pride.

But passion and pride in her husband had long since died in Evelyn Mackinnon’s heart. She had no quarrel with him. He had merely ceased to interest her. And there is no tragedy in marriage greater than that.

“Well, whither bound, lady fair?” he asked with his sunny smile, which so endeared him to high and low – to all, indeed, who came within its happy radius.

“You can get out, Craven,” she said to the chauffeur. “I wish to speak to Sir Donald.”

When the man was beyond earshot she leaned out and spoke snappishly.

“I’m going down to Alt Bruach to retrieve Margaret. That Bannister woman is of less use than a sheep. I shan’t keep her after October. What do you suppose I pay her such high wages for? She has just confessed that she has no control over Margaret – not that I needed to be told that.”

“She’s a good sort, Evelyn, and they all adore her,” said Mackinnon with an indulgent tone in his voice.

“She’s a useless worm,” repeated his wife firmly. “You haven’t seen Margaret, I suppose? She’s on the sheltie on her way to the crofts.”

“No such luck. Probably fearing pursuit she has taken one of the sheep tracks. Old Blaaven could tell us, only he won’t, being a particular pal of Peggy’s.”

“Don’t be silly, Donald. I’m annoyed, very annoyed, and you know I dislike you to call her Peggy. It’s a common name, far too easily learned. If you don’t take care she’ll soon be Peggy all over the place.”

“That’s just what she is, bless her – Peggy-all-over-the-place. But why that continuous frown, my dear? She can’t learn anything she oughtn’t to know at Alt Bruach. The Macleods are the very salt of the earth.”

“You and Bannister must be in collusion, but I tell you I won’t have her rowing about all over the loch with these barefooted, ragged boys.”

“They may be barefooted – and, faith, I don’t blame this weather – but they certainly aren’t ragged, Evelyn. Morag Macleod takes care of that, and that clever lad of theirs will go far yet, or I’m much mistaken. Leave Peggy alone. She’s happy, my dear, and that’s all that matters.”

“Oh, you’re incorrigible, Donald, but I will put my foot down, I assure you. I shall send her to school next term, and take care that there are fewer holidays in Skye.”

“Don’t do that, dear. It’s the only freedom left to us,” said Mackinnon with a ring of passion in his tone. “Let her have her fling. We’re only young once, and some of us are not permitted to be young for long.”

She, unconvinced and not in the least softened, beckoned to the chauffeur, and a moment later the little car bounded forward.

Mackinnon stood leaning on his shepherd’s crook, watching until the car became a mere receding speck in the middle of space. He tried to picture the scene at the crofts – the quick flash of Peggy’s blue eyes, the stamp of her passionate foot. Bannister had been right in saying that she was difficult to control, yet Mackinnon himself could sway her with a look.

Love was the only argument where Margaret was concerned, and her father had the key to the door. He foresaw further conflict when strong wills, gaining strength with time, clashing with inclination and with duty, should bring dissension to his house. And he loved peace with a great love. It was necessary to his very existence.

Could he but have seen the happenings of the next few years, he would have had an even more disturbed walk than he enjoyed that afternoon.

* * * *

The motor stopped dead at the turning where a cart track led to a handful of sheilings known as Alt Bruach, huddled on the slope not far from the lochside. Morag Macleod from her cottage door saw the coming of the lady of Corryvreck, and likewise guessed her errand.

With swift step the lady crossed the track, her short skirts revealing the turn of a very neat ankle. Her hose and her shoon were of the very latest type, provided at extravagant cost. The lady of Corryvreck spent more, indeed, upon her stockings in a year than would have kept a poor family in Skye in modest comfort.

Morag Macleod, though in no way glad at sight of her visitor, remembered her duty, and dropped a curtsey as she approached.

“Good day, Mrs Macleod. Is Miss Mackinnon here?”

“Yes an’ no, my Lady. She hass been here, but now, see, she is out yonder in the boat wi’ Angus.”

Lady Mackinnon’s eyes immediately swept the shimmering surface of the loch, and was able to detect the boat bobbing like a cork a long way out.

“I object very strongly to her going on the loch without a proper boatman. Do you hear, Mrs Macleod?”

“There is nobody about the place knows more about the boat than just Angus,” Morag answered. “He could row blindfold from here to Raasay and back, I’ll be bound.”

“I don’t mind what he does so long as my daughter is not in the boat,” said Lady Mackinnon coldly. “I want her back now immediately. Can you signal your son to bring her in?”

Morag looked doubtful. She had changed little in the sixteen years since Peter Mathieson had laid the foundling in her arms. She had the look of a contented and happy woman, but in her secret soul she had no use at all for the lady of Corryvreck.

“I’ve seen me tie a sheet to a pole for Miss Peggy when she was wantin’ them to bring in the poat,” she said, but without eagerness.

“Do it now, then,” was the imperious order.

Morag displayed no great alacrity, but dared not disobey.

In due course the sheet was rigged up on the pole, and observed with some consternation by the two figures in the boat.

“Look, Angus, somebody is waving to us,” cried Margaret, whose head was bare, her cap lying at the bottom of the boat.

Angus shipped his oar, and, shading his eyes, tried to discern the signal through the sun’s track.

“So it is. We’ll have to be going back,” he said reluctantly.

Margaret looked rebellious.

“Can you see anything besides the signal, Angus?”

“Yes; there is a motor car on the road.”

“Then it’s mother come to fetch me. I’ve a very mind not to go.”

“I think you’d better, Peggy,” he said, and how Peggy’s mother would have writhed could she have heard the quiet familiarity of the banned name!

His legs were bare and brown, his faded blue jersey rucked about the lithe grace of his body, his throat bare, too, and showing a dividing line between the sunbrown and the exquisite whiteness of his breast.

He had a fine face, and a great shock of dark hair, showing russet where the sun smote it. Alone on that tideless sea, these two young creatures, drawn together by some inward kinship of the spirit, were utterly content.

Year by year their friendship had grown, and now its roots were so deep that never could they be pulled up or their sap destroyed.

The beauty of young things was upon them, carefree as the dawn, full of the joy of living, the boundless hope of a future with which they concerned themselves not at all.

“I think we’d better be going,” he said, and immediately began to row towards the shore.

He and his brothers had greatly improved the rough pier of loose boulders where the boat was anchored in summer time. In winter she was hauled up the slope and covered over, it being one of Macleod’s stern injunctions that they were not to go on the loch in winter. Sudden squalls are frequent on those island seas; the isles are full of tragedies they can work with human lives.

Chapter 5

On the bleak shore at the bottom of the croft Lady Mackinnon waited. As the boat drew nearer Angus’s long, swift strokes quickly covering the middle distance, her frown deepened. She saw Peggy’s rebellious head with her brown locks flying, the bare hands with the sleeves of her Shetland jersey rolled back to the elbow, a lovely picture, but not conforming to her mother’s ideal of young ladyhood.

As the keel grated on the pebbly shore she stepped across to the boulders of the pier, about which the little waves lapped greedily, shining in the sun.

“Margaret, how often have I forbidden you to go on the loch unless with a proper boatman?” she said severely.

Peggy swung herself on to the stones and answered blithely –

“Why, Mother, Angus is the best boatman on this loch, bar none.”

Lady Mackinnon passed over the vulgar phrase in silence. She was looking at the lad making fast the boat, and presently he stood up, giving her a salute in which there was no hint of cringing or of fear.

He was very tall, and the grace of his figure was a thing to wonder at. Then he held himself nobly. His face had great beauty, and his brow was the seat of noble gifts. Every movement was one of unconscious grace. He seemed to have no kinship at all with the others in the house where he was born.

Evelyn Mackinnon had never heard the story of the Macleods’ foster-child, partly because she had no interest in stories of the isles, and partly because three years had passed about that time without bringing her to Skye. She had shirked the long journey and gone elsewhere for her summers, leaving Mackinnon to come to Corryvreck.

“Come here, boy,” she said imperiously. “I have something to say to you.”

He saluted and stood waiting for her mandate.

“I do not like my daughter going on the loch with you, and when she comes here to ask you to take her out you will refuse. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my Lady, I understand.”

“And you will obey my orders?”

“I will remember them, my Lady, but I will be making no promises,” he said, and the mode of his answer caused Margaret’s eyes to dance.

“Angus is right, mother, for promises are too hard to keep, and should never be made, I think. Don’t forbid me to go on the loch with Angus.

“We were counting the peaks to-day; he knows every one, and has been up and down all the corries. Why, he has promised to take me through Harta Corrie, where the little people are, and some day we will make a tryst by the Bloody Stone when the moon is at the full.”

The words poured in a torrent from the girl’s mouth, but her mother’s jaw set in an uncompromising displeasure.

“I am very angry with you, Margaret, and since you are promising to be disobedient it will only mean that next year you will be left at the Gate House or sent to your Aunt Caroline at Winchester.”

“Mother, I’d run away!” cried Margaret with the flush high in her cheek. “I’d walk every step of the road and swim the kyle when I got to it if there was no other way of setting foot in Skye again.

“But Daddy won’t let you keep me in London or England. I belong to Skye. I’ll live and die here.”

A passion rent her, and her eyes filled with tears. The boy, disquieted at the sight of her distress, whereas the anger of the lady had left him cold, turned away to the boat again, his lips whitening save where he bit them to still their trembling.

“Come, Margaret,” said her mother’s chill voice, and she laid a detaining hand on the girl’s arm. Margaret decided to go quietly.

“Good-bye, Angus!” she called out, trying to bring back the gay note to her voice. He turned round, saluted again, but did not offer to get the pony which he himself had tethered to a stake near the byre.

It was quickly mounted by Margaret, and she rode ahead of her mother, the light wind tossing her hair about her shoulders. Angus busied himself about the boat a long time, with his back to the road, and when he looked round at last every trace of both motor and pony had disappeared.

Then he saw his mother beckoning him from the door.

“Now that you haf come in from the loch, Angus, I would like ye to ride on your bicycle into Portree and ask the doctor to come out the morn. Your father is not so well at all. I think he overheated himself wi’ the hay the other day. He seems in a fever, and I would like the doctor to see him.”

“Very well, Mother,” said Angus very quietly, but instant relief sprang in his eyes.

“I’ll wash my face and put on my good clothes,” he said. “It will not take me more than ten minutes.”

“Aye, do that, laddie. Her ladyship seemed sore angert like, did she not? Maybe it would be better if you and the young leddy did not go out in the boat.”

“It might and it might not, Mother,” was the lad’s cryptic answer, of which Morag could make neither head nor tail. She was often at a loss with him, especially in the last year. He seemed strangely and suddenly to have grown away from his bairn days, and to stand on the threshold of manhood.

Rory Macleod was crouching over the peat fire, complaining of the cold, though it was a day of summer heat. Angus eyed him anxiously.

“I will bring the doctor maybe, Father. If he is at home he’ll come out the night.”

“I’ll be glad to see him, but it iss a great expense.”

“It will be a greater if we have to bury ye, my man,” observed Morag without a moment’s hesitation. “I nefer believe in waiting too long when it’s a case of illness. It doesn’t pey, Rory, my man.”

Once on the road, flying up and down the slopes like a bird on the wing, surrounded by the infinite beauty and solitude his soul loved, Angus forgot the momentary wound the lady of Corryvreck had been able to inflict.

Also, he had great joy in his errand apart from the desire to help his father and mother. He was going to see the man who stood for more in his young life than all the other men, his father not excepted.

Peter Mathieson had never lost his keen interest in the bairn he had brought in the silent watches from Corryvreck across the moor to the crofter’s cottage.

He had carried him safely over every childish ailment, and watched with joy the growth and development of his mind, encouraged him in the right way, lent him books, talked with him – had been his guide, philosopher, and friend.

Angus bore down upon Portree in the glow of the summer evening, when the sun was flashing royally on the waters of the land-locked bay, and shedding long level rays upon the surrounding panorama of the hills.

It was a face of the morning he presented to Kate Nicholson at the doctor’s door, and she bade him warm welcome.

“It iss a long time since you haf been here, Angus, laddie. Come in. Yes, the doctor’s in hafin’ his tea at this very minute. Come an’ see him.”

Sixteen years had dealt lightly with Peter Mathieson, nor had his hard work aged him much. A few grey hairs were showing at the temples, and a line here and there about the firm, fine mouth, also his figure had set a little more firmly, but he was otherwise unchanged.

“Hulloa, Angus! Glad to see you, boy,” he said heartily, jumping up to shake him by the hand. “Another cup, Kate. What’s ado at Alt Bruach? Nothing bad, I hope?”

Angus gave his message and took his place at the doctor’s table, where he had sat many a time, and where he felt himself completely at home.

Indeed, he had begun to wonder of late why it was he was more at home in that pleasant living-room among the books and pictures than in his father’s sheiling.

“I’ll be up first thing in the morning, tell them, Angus. Queer thing, I was thinking a lot about you to-day, and was going to send for you to come down to stop over the Sunday.

“There are some things that need to be said between you and me. We might even say them tonight.”

The lad’s eyes grew eager. He forgot to drink his tea, till reminded not to let it grow cold.

“It’s about your future, laddie. School days are over. I don’t suppose you are going to be content to work on the croft even if it should end in your being a well-to-do tacksman. Tell me, is there anything you would like to do?”

“Yes, doctor, there is.”

“What?”

“Be a doctor like you. I’ve dreamed of it. There isn’t anything else I want to be in the whole world.”

Deep satisfaction glowed in Peter Mathieson’s eyes.

“It’s a hard life, Angus, and sometimes a thankless one, but for reasons best known to Himself the Almighty made some men who can be nothing else, and then neither the hard work nor the thanklessness are remembered. But there is no peace from folk in the life. Do ye ken where I was last night?”

Angus shook his head leaving the morsel untouched on his plate.

“At Camasunary, and I had to light a fire on the beach to let them know on the other side that I was waiting, then they sent over the boat at three of the morning. Angus Macleod, could you stand up to that?”

“Aye, could I, too. I’d like it fine, doctor. It is what I would like to do better than anything in the whole world.”

“There’s a long, hard road before that even – five years at Glasgow University or Edinburgh, but I think it will be Glasgow, for it was there I learned all I know. It can be done, Angus, if you put your back into it, and, who knows, we might have a partnership here, you and me. Mathieson and Macleod carrying everything before them, and the young doing all the night shifts. Ha, ha!”

He stopped, for tears stood large and bright in the lad’s eyes. He leaned over and patted the brown slim hand, noting, as he had often noted before, that it was like his own, the hand of a healer.

They made their pact before they parted that night, and when in the sweet gloaming, a bottle of medicine for his father in his pocket, Angus rode home again, himself and all the world had changed.

Even the moor and the mountains and the brawling river had taken on a new face. Blaaven, with a swirl of mist on his brow, nevertheless seemed to smile upon him, and the brooding sky was big with promise.

Ah, youth, youth! Nothing can compare with it, and there is no counterfeit or substitute for its high hope.

* * * *

Margaret, in disgrace at Corryvreck, was not allowed to come down to dinner that night. But her thoughts were winging across the moor and the middle distance to the edge of the sleeping loch beside which dwelt her friend and comrade.

Chapter 6

Angus Macleod, stalking impatiently up and down the platform at Inverness waiting for the start of the train for the isles, suddenly beheld a vision many a young man sees – the vision which belongs to the stars and inaccessible heights, which he may adore from afar, but never can hope to reach.

Almost superfluous to say, it wore woman’s clothes, the very latest thing in sports garb, indeed – a coat and skirt of homespun, with a glint of the heather and the faint reek of peat in its weave.

It had a velour hat of a bright pink colour perched firmly on its bonnie head, and a long scarf of dyed wool hanging straight from its shoulders, and a pair of rather dirty wash-leather gloves hanging loosely. But the hands were bare.

Possibly that is why he was able to identify the vision. She had never worn gloves unless obliged by fate and inexorable relations. She had indeed quite frequently and in strong language said her say about them, comparing gloved hands to prisoners itching to be free.

Angus, with the blood high in his face, would have advanced, but feared – firstly, because she was guarded by a tall footman carrying her wraps and her dressing-bag, and, secondly, because he had no speech with her for over three years, and in the interval she had grown up, and there was upon him the unaccountable dominating shyness of a male creature who has begun to realise his own potentialities, body and soul. But when she saw him there was no hesitation or shyness, no holding back. Just an adorable start of sheer joy, a quick, running step, and the clasping of hands.

“Oh, Angus Macleod, but God has been good to me after all, though I was maligning Him this very morning! Are you going to Lochalsh? But of course you are. There is nowhere else to go in the wide world, is there? It’s the road to the isles.”

Angus managed to murmur that of course he was going there, and became aware through the tingling of his blood of a great, consuming anxiety concerning the cut of his clothes.

It was a new suit he had on, bought with the margin left by a great bursary which had made his going good at the University of Glasgow, and filled all who loved him with a proper pride. But when he stood beside the first class compartment where the footman had stowed her belongings he drew back.

“I’m third class, of course, Miss Mackinnon.”

“Miss Mackinnon? Not at home – never at home at all except to those she has no use for,” she answered. “Read me that riddle if you dare, Angus Macleod. Meanwhile, you can be getting in.”

She had, even while she uttered these words, made a quick survey of the adjoining compartments filling up.

“There wouldn’t be an earthly chance of talking, Angus and if you can’t pay, I will. Don’t you remember,” she said, and something liquid and lovely swam in her eyes, “how we used to share out at the picnics to the last crumb?”

Did he remember?

“Ask me another!” he could have shouted, he who remembered all, alas, too well! For now he was grown to manhood many things had been made clear to him, among them the great gulf fixed between Corryvreck and the cottage by the lochside, a gulf which the love of childhood can bridge and cross, but the love of later days, never.

At least, that was the conclusion to which he had come. Such being his despair, why not, then, take the scanty goods the gods had provided and made hay while the sun shone? As good as done!

“I’ll pay,” he said grandly, having exactly sixteen and fourpence in his pocket.

Margaret thereupon smiled sweetly on the footman, took her small case from his hand, placed a coin in it, and so dismissed him.

At the moment the bell rang, the porters slammed such doors as were handy, and they were off.

Margaret sank upon the seat, waving her gloves to make a breath of air.

“Oh, but that was a near shave. Aunt Caroline said we couldn’t do it, but the motor was a lamb, and knew what was going to happen if she didn’t get me there in time.”

“What would have happened?” Angus asked lamely, sitting opposite to the glory of her, and unable to bear it, as men are unable to bear the shining of the sun.

“The heart of me would be broke, Angus Macleod, and very well you know it.”

A quick tear sprang with the words, and, rising suddenly, she threw off her coat, revealing the slim, gracious lines of her figure, well defined by a queer, straight thing of stout knitted silk to match her suit, but the name of which he did not know.

His sister Effie still wore blouses mostly crumpled, and quite frequently bunching at the waist, thus destroying the lines nature had intended Effie to have, but had somehow failed to keep the appointment. Effie was a small tub of a girl, with a laughing face and a wide mouth, the toast of all the swains within a ten-mile radius.