CHAPTER XIII. A SWEETER WOMAN NE'ER DREW BREATH
Thenceforward Eric Marshall was a constant visitor at the Gordon
homestead. He soon became a favourite with Thomas and Janet,
especially the latter. He liked them both, discovering under all
their outward peculiarities sterling worth and fitness of
character. Thomas Gordon was surprisingly well read and could
floor Eric any time in argument, once he became sufficiently
warmed up to attain fluency of words. Eric hardly recognized him
the first time he saw him thus animated. His bent form
straightened, his sunken eyes flashed, his face flushed, his
voice rang like a trumpet, and he poured out a flood of eloquence
which swept Eric's smart, up-to-date arguments away like straws
in the rush of a mountain torrent. Eric enjoyed his own defeat
enormously, but Thomas Gordon was ashamed of being thus drawn out
of himself, and for a week afterwards confined his remarks to
"Yes" and "No," or, at the outside, to a brief statement that a
change in the weather was brewing.
Janet never talked on matters of church and state; such she
plainly considered to be far beyond a woman's province. But she
listened with lurking interest in her eyes while Thomas and Eric
pelted on each other with facts and statistics and opinions, and
on the rare occasions when Eric scored a point she permitted
herself a sly little smile at her brother's expense.
Of Neil, Eric saw but little. The Italian boy avoided him, or if
they chanced to meet passed him by with sullen, downcast eyes.
Eric did not trouble himself greatly about Neil; but Thomas
Gordon, understanding the motive which had led Neil to betray his
discovery of the orchard trysts, bluntly told Kilmeny that she
must not make such an equal of Neil as she had done.
"You have been too kind to the lad, lassie, and he's got
presumptuous. He must be taught his place. I mistrust we have
all made more of him than we should."
But most of the idyllic hours of Eric's wooing were spent in the
old orchard; the garden end of it was now a wilderness of
roses--roses red as the heart of a sunset, roses pink as the
early flush of dawn, roses white as the snows on mountain peaks,
roses full blown, and roses in buds that were sweeter than
anything on earth except Kilmeny's face. Their petals fell in
silken heaps along the old paths or clung to the lush grasses
among which Eric lay and dreamed, while Kilmeny played to him on
her violin.
Eric promised himself that when she was his wife her wonderful
gift for music should be cultivated to the utmost. Her powers of
expression seemed to deepen and develop every day, growing as her
soul grew, taking on new colour and richness from her ripening
heart.
To Eric, the days were all pages in an inspired idyl. He had
never dreamed that love could be so mighty or the world so
beautiful. He wondered if the universe were big enough to hold
his joy or eternity long enough to live it out. His whole
existence was, for the time being, bounded by that orchard where
he wooed his sweetheart. All other ambitions and plans and hopes
were set aside in the pursuit of this one aim, the attainment of
which would enhance all others a thousand-fold, the loss of which
would rob all others of their reason for existence. His own
world seemed very far away and the things of that world
forgotten.
His father, on hearing that he had taken the Lindsay school for a
year, had written him a testy, amazed letter, asking him if he
were demented.
"Or is there a girl in the case?" he wrote. "There must be, to
tie you down to a place like Lindsay for a year. Take care,
master Eric; you've been too sensible all your life. A man is
bound to make a fool of himself at least once, and when you
didn't get through with that in your teens it may be attacking
you now."
David also wrote, expostulating more gravely; but he did not
express the suspicions Eric knew he must entertain.
"Good old David! He is quaking with fear that I am up to
something he can't approve of, but he won't say a word by way of
attempting to force my confidence."
It could not long remain a secret in Lindsay that "the Master"
was going to the Gordon place on courting thoughts intent. Mrs.
Williamson kept her own and Eric's counsel; the Gordons said
nothing; but the secret leaked out and great was the surprise and
gossip and wonder. One or two incautious people ventured to
express their opinion of the Master's wisdom to the Master
himself; but they never repeated the experiment. Curiosity was
rife. A hundred stories were circulated about Kilmeny, all
greatly exaggerated in the circulation. Wise heads were shaken
and the majority opined that it was a great pity. The Master was
a likely young fellow; he could have his pick of almost anybody,
you might think; it was too bad that he should go and take up
with that queer, dumb niece of the Gordons who had been brought
up in such a heathenish way. But then you never could guess what
way a man's fancy would jump when he set out to pick him a wife.
They guessed Neil Gordon didn't like it much. He seemed to have
got dreadful moody and sulky of late and wouldn't sing in the
choir any more. Thus the buzz of comment and gossip ran.
To those two in the old orchard it mattered not a whit. Kilmeny
knew nothing of gossip. To her, Lindsay was as much of an
unknown world as the city of Eric's home. Her thoughts strayed
far and wide in the realm of her fancy, but they never wandered
out to the little realities that hedged her strange life around.
In that life she had blossomed out, a fair, unique thing. There
were times when Eric almost regretted that one day he must take
her out of her white solitude to a world that, in the last
analysis, was only Lindsay on a larger scale, with just the same
pettiness of thought and feeling and opinion at the bottom of it.
He wished he might keep her to himself for ever, in that old,
spruce-hidden orchard where the roses fell.
One day he indulged himself in the fulfillment of the whim he had
formed when Kilmeny had told him she thought herself ugly. He
went to Janet and asked her permission to bring a mirror to the
house that he might have the privilege of being the first to
reveal Kilmeny to herself exteriorly. Janet was somewhat dubious
at first.
"There hasn't been such a thing in the house for sixteen years,
Master. There never was but three--one in the spare room, and a
little one in the kitchen, and Margaret's own. She broke them
all the day it first struck her that Kilmeny was going to be
bonny. I might have got one after she died maybe. But I didn't
think of it; and there's no need of lasses to be always prinking
at their looking glasses."
But Eric pleaded and argued skilfully, and finally Janet said,
"Well, well, have your own way. You'd have it anyway I think,
lad. You are one of those men who always get their own way. But
that is different from the men who TAKE their own way--and that's
a mercy," she added under her breath.
Eric went to town the next Saturday and picked out a mirror that
pleased him. He had it shipped to Radnor and Thomas Gordon
brought it home, not knowing what it was, for Janet had thought
it just as well he should not know.
"It's a present the Master is making Kilmeny," she told him.
She sent Kilmeny off to the orchard after tea, and Eric slipped
around to the house by way of the main road and lane. He and
Janet together unpacked the mirror and hung it on the parlour
wall.
"I never saw such a big one, Master," said Janet rather
doubtfully, as if, after all, she distrusted its gleaming, pearly
depth and richly ornamented frame. "I hope it won't make her
vain. She is very bonny, but it may not do her any good to know
it."
"It won't harm her," said Eric confidently. "When a belief in
her ugliness hasn't spoiled a girl a belief in her beauty won't."
But Janet did not understand epigrams. She carefully removed a
little dust from the polished surface, and frowned meditatively
at the by no means beautiful reflection she saw therein.
"I cannot think what made Kilmeny suppose she was ugly, Master."
"Her mother told her she was," said Eric, rather bitterly.
"Ah!" Janet shot a quick glance at the picture of her sister.
"Was that it? Margaret was a strange woman, Master. I suppose
she thought her own beauty had been a snare to her. She WAS
bonny. That picture doesn't do her justice. I never liked it.
It was taken before she was--before she met Ronald Fraser. We
none of us thought it very like her at the time. But, Master,
three years later it was like her--oh, it was like her then!
That very look came in her face."
"Kilmeny doesn't resemble her mother," remarked Eric, glancing at
the picture with the same feeling of mingled fascination and
distaste with which he always regarded it. "Does she look like
her father?"
"No, not a great deal, though some of her ways are very like his.
She looks like her grandmother--Margaret's mother, Master. Her
name was Kilmeny too, and she was a handsome, sweet woman. I was
very fond of my stepmother, Master. When she died she gave her
baby to me, and asked me to be a mother to it. Ah well, I tried;
but I couldn't fence the sorrow out of Margaret's life, and it
sometimes comes to my mind that maybe I'll not be able to fence
it out of Kilmeny's either."
"That will be my task," said Eric.
"You'll do your best, I do not doubt. But maybe it will be
through you that sorrow will come to her after all."
"Not through any fault of mine, Aunt Janet."
"No, no, I'm not saying it will be your fault. But my heart
misgives me at times. Oh, I dare say I am only a foolish old
woman, Master. Go your ways and bring your lass here to look at
your plaything when you like. I'll not make or meddle with it."
Janet betook herself to the kitchen and Eric went to look for
Kilmeny. She was not in the orchard and it was not until he had
searched for some time that he found her. She was standing under
a beech tree in a field beyond the orchard, leaning on the longer
fence, with her hands clasped against her cheek. In them she
held a white Mary-lily from the orchard. She did not run to meet
him while he was crossing the pasture, as she would once have
done. She waited motionless until he was close to her. Eric
began, half laughingly, half tenderly, to quote some lines from
her namesake ballad:
"'Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?
Long hae we sought baith holt and den,--
By linn, by ford, and greenwood tree!
Yet you are halesome and fair to see.
Where got you that joup o' the lily sheen?
That bonny snood o' the birk sae green,
And those roses, the fairest that ever was seen?
Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?'
"Only it's a lily and not a rose you are carrying. I might go on
and quote the next couplet too--
"'Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace,
But there was nae smile on Kilmeny's face.'
"Why are you looking so sober?"
Kilmeny did not have her slate with her and could not answer; but
Eric guessed from something in her eyes that she was bitterly
contrasting the beauty of the ballad's heroine with her own
supposed ugliness.
"Come down to the house, Kilmeny. I have something there to show
you--something lovelier than you have ever seen before," he said,
with boyish pleasure shining in his eyes. "I want you to go and
put on that muslin dress you wore last Sunday evening, and pin up
your hair the same way you did then. Run along--don't wait for
me. But you are not to go into the parlour until I come. I want
to pick some of those Mary-lilies up in the orchard."
When Eric returned to the house with an armful of the long
stemmed, white Madonna lilies that bloomed in the orchard Kilmeny
was just coming down the steep, narrow staircase with its striped
carpeting of homespun drugget. Her marvelous loveliness was
brought out into brilliant relief by the dark wood work and
shadows of the dim old hall.
She wore a trailing, clinging dress of some creamy tinted fabric
that had been her mother's. It had not been altered in any
respect, for fashion held no sway at the Gordon homestead, and
Kilmeny thought that the dress left nothing to be desired. Its
quaint style suite her admirably; the neck was slightly cut away
to show the round white throat, and the sleeves were long, full
"bishops," out of which her beautiful, slender hands slipped like
flowers from their sheaths. She had crossed her long braids at
the back and pinned them about her head like a coronet; a late
white rose was fastened low down on the left side.
"'A man had given all other bliss
And all his worldly wealth for this--
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips,'"
quoted Eric in a whisper as he watched her descend. Aloud he
said,
"Take these lilies on your arm, letting their bloom fall against
your shoulder--so. Now, give me your hand and shut your eyes.
Don't open them until I say you may."
He led her into the parlour and up to the mirror.
"Look," he cried, gaily.
Kilmeny opened her eyes and looked straight into the mirror
where, like a lovely picture in a golden frame, she saw herself
reflected. For a moment she was bewildered. Then she realized
what it meant. The lilies fell from her arm to the floor and she
turned pale. With a little low, involuntary cry she put her
hands over her face.
Eric pulled them boyishly away.
"Kilmeny, do you think you are ugly now? This is a truer mirror
than Aunt Janet's silver sugar bowl! Look--look--look! Did you
ever imagine anything fairer than yourself, dainty Kilmeny?"
She was blushing now, and stealing shy radiant glances at the
mirror. With a smile she took her slate and wrote naively,
"I think I am pleasant to look upon. I cannot tell you how glad
I am. It is so dreadful to believe one is ugly. You can get
used to everything else, but you never get used to that. It
hurts just the same every time you remember it. But why did
mother tell me I was ugly? Could she really have thought so?
Perhaps I have become better looking since I grew up."
"I think perhaps your mother had found that beauty is not always
a blessing, Kilmeny, and thought it wiser not to let you know you
possessed it. Come, let us go back to the orchard now. We
mustn't waste this rare evening in the house. There is going to
be a sunset that we shall remember all our lives. The mirror
will hang here. It is yours. Don't look into it too often,
though, or Aunt Janet will disapprove. She is afraid it will
make you vain."
Kilmeny gave one of her rare, musical laughs, which Eric never
heard without a recurrence of the old wonder that she could laugh
so when she could not speak. She blew an airy little kiss at her
mirrored face and turned from it, smiling happily.
On their way to the orchard they met Neil. He went by them with
an averted face, but Kilmeny shivered and involuntarily drew
nearer to Eric.
"I don't understand Neil at all now," she wrote nervously. "He
is not nice, as he used to be, and sometimes he will not answer
when I speak to him. And he looks so strangely at me, too.
Besides, he is surly and impertinent to Uncle and Aunt."
"Don't mind Neil," said Eric lightly. "He is probably sulky
because of some things I said to him when I found he had spied on
us."
That night before she went up stairs Kilmeny stole into the
parlour for another glimpse of herself in that wonderful mirror
by the light of a dim little candle she carried. She was still
lingering there dreamily when Aunt Janet's grim face appeared in
the shadows of the doorway.
"Are you thinking about your own good looks, lassie? Ay, but
remember that handsome is as handsome does," she said, with
grudging admiration--for the girl with her flushed cheeks and
shining eyes was something that even dour Janet Gordon could not
look upon unmoved.
Kilmeny smiled softly.
"I'll try to remember," she wrote, "but oh, Aunt Janet, I am so
glad I am not ugly. It is not wrong to be glad of that, is it?"
The older woman's face softened.
"No, I don't suppose it is, lassie," she conceded. "A comely
face is something to be thankful for--as none know better than
those who have never possessed it. I remember well when I was a
girl--but that is neither here nor there. The Master thinks you
are wonderful bonny, Kilmeny," she added, looking keenly at the
girl.
Kilmeny started and a scarlet blush scorched her face. That, and
the expression that flashed into her eyes, told Janet Gordon all
she wished to know. With a stifled sigh she bade her niece good
night and went away.
Kilmeny ran fleetly up the stairs to her dim little room, that
looked out into the spruces, and flung herself on her bed,
burying her burning face in the pillow. Her aunt's words had
revealed to her the hidden secret of her heart. She knew that
she loved Eric Marshall--and the knowledge brought with it a
strange anguish. For was she not dumb? All night she lay
staring wide-eyed through the darkness till the dawn.
