Now, as Ranald knew, the path itself went straight ahead. He was sure that the man at her side had taken Miss Stewart’s arm again and forced her out of the path . . . Unless, of course, there was a track running down the further side of the wall which he had not noticed. He quickened his pace almost to a run.
As he arrived at the gap he heard their voices upraised together: hers protesting, “I cannot listen to you now . . . pray let me go on!” and the man’s, fired with passion, “You must, you shall listen, Miss Stewart! If you can listen to that dullard, young Robertson of Auchendrie——”
Ranald advanced through the gateposts. Yes, Miss Stewart’s companion had her by both hands, had her pressed up against the wall all among the snowladen brambles, her empty basket upside down on the ground. As Mr. Maclean’s indignant eyes took in this fact, however, it became a fact no longer, for the intemperate admirer instantly loosened his hold and faced round; his glance was as hot as a blow. The very evident relief in Miss Stewart’s face made Ranald glad indeed that he had come up.
Restraining himself with a good deal of difficulty, he raised his hat. “If this gentleman is escorting you home, madam,” he said, much more coolly than he felt, “I think he has mistaken the right path. May I assist you back to it?” And he offered his arm.
But it was struck aside, and he looked into a dark face lit by a pair of blazing eyes—a Highland face, too, no doubt of it, though its owner wore no tartan. “By what right do you interfere, sir? As you say, the path goes on—go you on with it! I am quite capable of escorting this lady.”
“I doubt that!” retorted Ranald. “And if you ask Miss Stewart herself, I think she will prefer the direct path to this patch of brambles, and, if not my escort, at least that of her kinsman, Mr. Robertson, who will shortly be returning this way.”
“Take yourself off!” shouted the other, as he would have shouted to a dog, his right hand going instinctively to his right hip—another proof of his race.
“Not until you do!” replied Ranald with equal animosity. “Miss Stewart——” But the girl had slipped behind them and was doing the best thing, perhaps, that she could have done by starting to walk away down the path. When he realised it her admirer made to follow her, but Ranald gripped him by the shoulder.
“No!” he exclaimed in the height of indignation, “no, not if you know so little how to behave to a lady!”
“Who are you that presume to teach a Griogarach manners?” flashed out the other; but before he could strike Ranald had closed with him. The veneer of good breeding and respect for the proximity of a lady ripped off in an instant, they struggled like two wildcats. Although Ranald looked the stronger and had slightly the advantage in height, the MacGregor was extraordinarily wiry and beside himself with fury; it was therefore doubtful how the encounter might have ended had it been carried further. But a man’s voice calling, “Bride, Bride—is that you, Bride?” all at once announced the approach of Malcolm Robertson, who could, apparently, see his kinswoman on the path ahead, though not the two men at grips behind the wall. The MacGregor, on that, made a final effort, tore himself free, sending Ranald staggering, dashed at the wall, was over it like a stoat, and was running down the farther side when Malcolm Robertson came through the gateposts to perceive his guest recovering his balance with difficulty.
“Dhia gleidh sinn!” he exclaimed, catching him by the arm. “What have you been at, Mr. Maclean, and who was it that jumped the wall just now?”
The panting Ranald put a hand to his throat and hastily rearranged his cravat. “Some unmannerly fellow who was molesting Miss Stewart—a MacGregor, by what he said.”
Malcolm’s placid brow grew black. “It will be Gregor MacGregor—Gregor Murray—from Glen Lyon, malediction on him! He is mad after her . . . and he does not always comport himself like a gentleman. I am glad you came by when you did. Was she much alarmed?—Let us go to her.”
Miss Bride Stewart, hearing his voice, had come to a stop. He hurried down the path to her.
“Oh, Bride, my dear”—there was all the distress and tenderness in his voice of one speaking to a beloved child—“I wish I had not left you to return alone! But who could guess——”
She slipped her hand into his arm and smiled up at him. “There’s naught to be perturbed at, Malcolm,” she answered, and her voice, sweet and cool as rain in spring, was steady, though she was paler than her wont. “I was a trifle startled, that was all. We all know that Mr. Gregor Murray is somewhat . . . impetuous.—But that is not to say that I do not thank you, Mr. Maclean, a thousand times, for your intervention.”
But Ranald Maclean was not so cool. His deep-buried but volcanic temper was fermenting. He had seen what Malcolm Robertson had not—this girl, who seemed to him of an elfin fragility, helpless before that unmannerly brute. He looked back. “I have a mind to go after Mr. Gregor Murray or MacGregor,” he said between his teeth, “and teach him a lesson he will not soon forget. Small wonder that the very name of his clan has been proscribed these hundred and forty years!”
“Oh pray, pray do not think of doing such a thing!” exclaimed Miss Stewart, evidently really alarmed at this prospect. “Mr. Gregor Murray will, I am sure, be sorry for his conduct and ask my pardon when next we meet.”
“If I had my will,” declared Malcolm Robertson with a vehemence which he had not yet shown, “he should never see you again. He is not of the Dunan or the Ardlarich MacGregors, here in Rannoch,” he explained to Ranald. “He lives at Roro, in Glen Lyon—a kinsman of the chief’s.”
“He goes back to Glen Lyon to-day,” said Bride. “That is why, I think, he particularly desired speech with me.” She coloured a little. “I ought to be going on home now, Malcolm, I think—and indeed ’tis not over-warm up here.”
Atmospherically it might not be so, but mentally, for one at least of the three, it was torrid. Yet Ranald had perforce cooled a little by the time that he and Malcolm Robertson bade farewell to Miss Stewart at the ferry over the little river on which she lived, to which they both escorted her. He did not suppose that he should see her a third time before his departure two days later; nor did he. And since nothing was likely ever to bring him into the land of Schiehallion again, he knew that, as far as he was concerned, Bride Stewart might have vanished into that enchanted country forbidden to mortals, which, to his thinking, was her true home. But he would not soon forget her.
CHAPTER V
(1)
At Fasnapoll, in Isle Askay, summer brought many a treasure dear to a child and left them for her on the white sands, or, better still, hid them in the shallow rock-pools of Camus a’ Chaisteil, among the sea anemones or the moss-green water-weeds. On this July morning of 1745, therefore, a sunburnt little girl of five or so, her homespun skirts kilted above her bare, wet sandy legs, was absorbedly dredging with her fingers in one such pool, the ends of her fair hair, which had come unbraided, dipping now and then into the clear water over which she stooped. Delightful and serious work; for one had to lay all one found of shells and coloured stones and small crabs in a neat pattern on the sand round the large starfish . . . only the crabs would not stay there. The child could not imagine why Uncle Ranald should prefer to sit over yonder on a rock, staring out to sea and not saying a word, even when she called out to him, testifying to her successes.
And in truth Uncle Ranald was, for once, paying Miss Helen Maclean scant attention, though he was conscious of her presence among the pools—the child who would wake for years yet with the