"Are you sleepy, Yellow-hair?"
"I am."
"Aren"t you going to sit up and chat for a few--"
"I am not!"
"Have you no curiosity?" he demanded, laughingly.
"Not a bit. You say everything is all right. Then it is all right--when Kay of Isla says so! Good night!"
What she had said seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had uttered--words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words which no woman would utter except to a man in whom she believed.
And yet this girl knew him--knew what he had been--had seen him in the depths--had looked upon the wreck of him.
Out of those depths she had dragged what remained of him--not for his own sake perhaps--not for his beaux-yeux--but to save him for the service which his country demanded of him.
She had fought for him--endured, struggled spiritually, mentally, bodily to wrench him out of the coma where drink had left him with a stunned brain and crippled will.
And now, believing in her work, trusting, confident, she had just said to him that what he told her was sufficient security for her.
And on his word that all was well she had calmly composed herself for sleep as though all the dead chieftains of Isla stood on guard with naked claymores! Nothing in all his life had ever so thrilled him as this girl"s confidence.
And, as he entered his room, he knew that within him the accursed thing that had been, lay dead forever.
He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod when Miss Erith came upon him next morning,--a tall straight young man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was testing.
Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level eyes the girl saw what had happened--what she had wrought--that this young man had come into his own again--into his right mind and his manhood--and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men and peers.
He greeted her seriously, almost formally; and the girl, excited and a little upset by the sudden realisation of his victory and hers, laughed when he called her "Miss Erith."
"You called me Yellow-hair last night," she said. "I called you Kay.
Don"t you want it so?"
"Yes," he said reddening, understanding that it was her final recognition of a man who had definitely "come back."
Miss Erith was very lovely as she stood there in the garden whither breakfast was fetched immediately and laid out on a st.u.r.dy green garden-table--porridge, coffee, scones, jam, and an egg.
Chipping the latter she let her golden-hazel eyes rest at moments upon the young fellow seated opposite. At other moments, sipping her coffee or b.u.t.tering a scone, she glanced about her at the new gra.s.s starred with daisies, at the daffodils, the slim young fruit-trees,--and up at the old white facade of the ancient abode of the Lairds of Isla.
"Why the white flag up there, Kay?" she inquired, glancing aloft.
He laughed, but flushed a little. "Yankee that I am," he admitted, "I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of my forebears."
"Is it your clan flag?"
"Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh," he said smilingly. "The White Banner of the McKays."
"Good! And what may that be--that bunch of weed you wear in your b.u.t.ton-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc--in Gaelic--just reed-gra.s.s, Miss Yellow-hair."
"Your clan badge?"
"I believe so."
"You"re a good Yankee, Kay. You couldn"t be a good Yankee if you treated Scotch custom with contempt.... This jam is delicious. And oh, such scones!"
"When we go to Edinburgh we"ll tea on Princess Street," he remarked.
"It"s there you"ll fall for the Scotch cakes, Yellow-hair."
"I"ve already fallen for everything Scotch," she remarked demurely.
"Ah, wait! This Scotland is no strange land to good Americans. It"s a bonnie, sweet, clean bit of earth made by G.o.d out of the same batch he used for our own world of the West. Oh, Yellow-hair, I mind the first day I ever saw Scotland. "Twas across Princess Street--across acres of Madonna lilies in that lovely foreland behind which the Rock lifted skyward with Edinburgh Castle atop made out of grey silver slag! It was a brave sight, Yellow-hair. I never loved America more than at that moment when, in my heart, I married her to Scotland."
"Kay, you"re a poet!" she exclaimed.
"We all are here, Yellow-hair. There"s naught else in Scotland," he said laughing.
The man was absolutely transformed, utterly different. She had never imagined that a "cure" meant the revelation of this unsuspected personality--this alternation of pleasant gravity and boyish charm.
Something of what preoccupied her he perhaps suspected, for the colour came into his handsome lean features again and he picked up his rod, rising as she rose.
"Are there no instructions yet?" she inquired.
As he stood there threading the silk line through the guides he told her about the visit of No. 67.
"I fancy instructions will come before long," he remarked, casting a leaderless line out across the gra.s.s. After a moment he glanced rather gravely at her where she stood with hands linked behind her, watching the graceful loops which his line was making in the air.
"You"re not worried, are you, Yellow-hair?"
"About the Boche?"
"I meant that."
"No, Kay, I"m not uneasy."
And when the girl had said it she knew that she had meant a little more; she had meant that she felt secure with this particular man beside her.
It was a strange sort of peace that was invading her--an odd courage quite unfamiliar--an effortless pluck that had suddenly become the most natural thing in the world to this girl, who, until then, had clutched her courage desperately in both hands, commended her soul to G.o.d, her body to her country"s service.
Frightened, she had set out to do this service, knowing perfectly what sort of fate awaited her if she fell among the Boche.
Frightened but resolute she faced the consequences with this companion about whom she knew nothing; in whom she had divined a trace of that true metal which had been so dreadfully tarnished and trans.m.u.ted.
And now, here in this ancient garden--here in the sun of earliest summer, she had beheld a transfiguration. And still under the spell of it, still thrilled by wonder, she had so utterly believed in it, so ardently accepted it, that she scarcely understood what this transfiguration had also wrought in her. She only felt that she was no longer captain of their fate; that he was now; and she resigned her invisible insignia of rank with an unconscious little sigh that left her pretty lips softly parted.
At that instant he chanced to look up at her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. And she had looked at him out of those golden eyes when he had been less than a mere brute beast.... That was very hard to know and remember .... But it was the price he had to pay--that this fresh, sweet, clean young thing had seen him as he once had been, and that he never could forget what she had looked upon.
"Kay!"
"Yes, Lady Yellow-hair."