The Half-Hearted. Buchan John
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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
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 darkness were instinct with the quiet of ages. It needed but Lady Prue with her flounces and furbelows and Sir Pertinax with his cane and buckled shoon to re-create the ancient world before good Queen Anne had gone to her rest.
In one of the shadiest corners of a great lawn Lady Manorwater sat making tea. Bertha, with a broad hat shading her eyes, dozed over a magazine in a deck-chair. That morning she and Alice had broken the convention of the house and gone riding in the haughlands till lunch. Now she suffered the penalty and dozed, but her companion was very wide awake, being a tireless creature who knew not lethargy. Besides, there was sufficient in prospect to stir her curiosity. Lady Manorwater had announced some twenty times that day that her nephew Lewis would come to tea, and Alice, knowing the truth of the prophecy, was prepared to receive him.
The image of the forsaken angler remained clear in her memory, and she confessed to herself that he interested her. The girl had no connoisseur’s eye for character; her interest was the frank and unabashed interest in a somewhat mysterious figure who was credited by all his friends with great gifts and a surprising amiability. After breakfast she had captured one of the spectacled people, whose name was Hoddam. He was a little shy man, one of the unassuming tribe of students by whom all the minor intellectual work of the world is done, and done well. It is a great class, living in the main in red-brick villas on the outskirts of academic towns, marrying mild blue-stockings, working incessantly, and finally attaining to the fame of mention in prefaces and foot-notes, and a short paragraph in the Times at the last. … Mr. Hoddam did not seek the company of one who was young, pretty, an heiress, and presumably flippant, but he was flattered when she plainly sought him.
“Mr. Lewis Haystoun is coming here this afternoon,” she had announced. “Do you know him?”
“I have read his book,” said her victim.
“Yes, but did you not know him at Oxford? You were there with him, were you not?”
“Yes, we were there together. I knew him by sight, of course, for he was a very well-known person. But, you see, we belonged to very different sets.”
“How do you mean?” asked the blunt Alice.
“Well, you see,” began Mr. Hoddam awkwardly—absolute honesty was one of his characteristics—“he was very well off, and he lived with a sporting set, and he was very exclusive.”
“But I thought he was clever—I thought he was rather brilliant?”
“Oh, he was! Indubitably! He got everything he wanted, but then he got them easily and had a lot of time for other things, whereas most of us had not a moment to spare. He got the best First of his year and the St. Chad’s Fellowship, but I think he cared far more about winning the ‘Varsity Grind. Men who knew him said he was an extremely good fellow, but he had scores of rich sporting friends, and nobody else ever got to know him. I have heard him speak often, and his manner gave one the impression that he was a tremendous swell, you know, and rather conceited. People used to think him a sort of universal genius who could do everything. I suppose he was quite the ablest man that had been there for years, but I should think he would succeed ultimately as the man of action and not as the scholar.”
“You give him a most unlovely character,” said the girl.
“I don’t mean to. I own to being entirely fascinated by him. But he was never, I think, really popular. He was supposed to be intolerant of mediocrity; and also he used to offend quite honest, simple-minded people by treating their beliefs very cavalierly. I used to compare him with Raleigh or Henri IV.—the proud, confident man of action.”
Alice had pondered over Mr. Hoddam’s confessions and was prepared to receive the visitor with coldness. The vigorous little