Chapter XI: A Rival

‘Hullo! Semple!’

‘Hullo! Alec!’

‘Didn’t expect to see _you_ here.’

‘As little did I expect to see _you_.’

‘When did you come?’

‘Only last night; by an excursion steamer.’

‘Staying with Uncle James?’

‘Yes: he asked me to spend my holidays down here, and I thought I might as well come.’

‘How long do you get?’

‘Three weeks; but I may take a month.’

An unreasonable jealousy of his cousin sprang up in Alec’s breast at that moment. Five minutes before he was perfectly satisfied with his lot; now, because another occupied a more favourable position than himself, he was miserable. He had been able to meet Laura nearly every day; but this fellow was to live under the same roof with her, to eat at the same table, to breathe the same air. To see her and talk to her would be his rival’s daily, hourly privilege.

‘Splendid hills!’ said Semple.

Alec made no reply. The scenery was too sacred a subject to be discussed with one like Semple.

‘What do you do with yourself all day?’ asked the new-comer.

‘Oh, I take a swim in the morning, give the boys their lessons from ten to one; then I generally take a row, or a walk, or read some Horace.’

‘I should think you’d get dreadfully tired of it, after a bit. There are no places where they play tennis, I suppose?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘I expect I shall find it rather dull.’

Another jealous pang shot through Alec’s heart. Laura and his cousin were agreed on this point. What more natural than that they should amuse each other? In a day or two Semple would be on better terms with Laura than he was himself. Of course he would fall in love with her--and she?

Anyone watching the course of affairs at Glendhu would have thought that Alec’s foreboding was in a fair way of being realized. Laura was very gracious to her guardian’s nephew, and overlooked in the prettiest manner his little vulgarities. The two were constantly together, and neither seemed to feel the want of a more extended circle of acquaintance. It was nobody’s fault, for Semple had been invited to Glendhu before Mr. Taylor’s death had caused Laura to become a member of Mr. Lindsay’s family; but Miss Lindsay determined that she would at least introduce another guest into the house. She wrote to Alec’s sister, and asked her to spend a fortnight at Loch Long.

When the invitation reached the Castle Farm, Margaret’s first impulse was to decline it without saying anything to her father, partly out of shyness and a sense of the deficiencies in her wardrobe, partly because she could not easily at that season be spared from the farm. But when Mr. Lindsay asked if there was anything in her aunt’s letter, Margaret felt bound to mention the matter to him; and he at once insisted upon her going.

Margaret’s advent, however, made little practical difference in the usual order of things at Glendhu. Mr. Semple at first offered her a share of his attentions; but she received them so coldly that he soon ceased to trouble himself about her, and devoted himself to Laura as before, while Margaret seemed perfectly contented with her own society when Miss Lindsay was not with her guests.

There was little intimacy between the two girls, and the blame of this could not fairly be attributed to Laura.

‘I am so glad you have come, Miss Lindsay,’ she had said on the first occasion when they were left alone together. ‘May I call you “Margaret”? I think it is such a perfectly lovely name.’

‘Of course you may,’ said the matter-of-fact Margaret.

‘And you will call me “Laura,” of course.’

But Margaret avoided making any reply to this, and practically declined to adopt the more familiar style of address; and Laura soon returned to the more formal ‘Miss Lindsay.’

Alec was, of course, more frequently at his uncle’s, now that his sister was staying there; but his visits did not afford him much satisfaction. With Semple he had little in common. There was a natural want of sympathy between the two; and besides, Semple looked down upon Alec as being ‘countrified,’ while Alec was disposed to hold his cousin in contempt for his ignorance of everything unconnected with the making and the sale of paraffin oil. As to Laura, he seldom had a chance of saying much to her; while his intercourse with his sister was more constrained than it had ever been before. Margaret saw quite plainly that as her brother was talking to her, his eyes and his heart were hankering after Laura Mowbray; and she felt mortified by his want of interest in what she said to him, though she was too proud to show her feeling, except by an additional coldness of manner.

One evening Alec called at Glendhu, and, as usual, he found the younger portion of the family in the garden. Margaret was sitting by herself on a bench overlooking the sea, with some knitting in her hand, while the other two were sauntering along one of the paths at a little distance. Alec waited till they came up, and then he said:

‘I have borrowed Mr. Fraser’s light skiff; suppose we all go for a row? You can row one skiff and I the other,’ he added, turning to Semple.

‘Oh, delightful!’ cried Laura. ‘It is just the evening for a row. You will come, Miss Lindsay, won’t you?’

‘I have no objections,’ said Margaret, quite indifferently.

Laura turned and ran into the house for wraps, while a rather awkward silence fell upon the rest of the party. Semple moved away from Margaret almost at once, and hung about the French window, so as to be ready to intercept Laura as soon as she issued from the house. Alec felt in a manner bound to remain with his sister; and she would not see his evident desire to follow Semple to the house, and so have a chance of securing Laura for his companion. When at length the English girl appeared, with a dark-green plaid thrown over her shoulder, Semple sprang at once to her side; and, without paying the slightest attention to Alec or his sister, they hurried down to the water’s edge. In a few minutes more they had appropriated the best of the two boats (the one Alec had borrowed) and were floating far out on the loch.

Alec could not help his disappointment appearing in his face; and his sister noticed and resented it.

‘Don’t row at such a furious rate; you’ll snap the oars,’ she said tranquilly, as her brother sent the boat careering over the waves.

He stopped, and tried to look pleasant, but he could not shut his ears to the gay laughter that came to him across the water from the other boat.

‘They seem merry enough,’ said Alec.

‘Yes,’ said Margaret spitefully. ‘Miss Mowbray seems in very good spirits, considering that her uncle has not been dead much more than a month.’

‘How unjust you are!’ cried Alec hotly. ‘As if she ought to shut herself up, and never laugh, because her uncle died! It would be hypocrisy if she did.’

‘There I quite agree with you,’ said Margaret, with an ill-natured smile.

‘You mean that Laura could not be sincerely sorry?’

‘I think she is very shallow and heartless,’ said Margaret, sweetly tranquil as ever.

Alec was furious.

‘You girls are all alike,’ he said with suppressed passion. ‘Either you are always kissing and praising one another, or running each other down. And the more refinement, and delicacy, and beauty another girl has, the more you depreciate her.’

Margaret merely curled her lip contemptuously, and sat trailing her hand through the water, without making any reply.

Nothing more was said till Alec was helping his sister out of the boat on their returning to land.

‘Don’t let us quarrel. I am sorry if I have vexed you, Maggie,’ he said.

‘I’m not vexed,’ she answered, in a not very reassuring tone, keeping her eyes upon the rocks at her feet.

Her brother’s real offence was that he had fallen in love with Laura, and that she now occupied a very secondary place in his heart. And that she could not forgive.

‘Won’t you come up to the house?’ she asked.

‘No; and you can tell that cad that the next time he wants Mr. Fraser’s boat he had better borrow it himself.’

So saying, Alec shouldered the oars and strode away.

Though he had defended Laura passionately when his sister spoke her mind about that young lady, Alec felt that he had been badly used. He had certainly made the proposal to the whole party, but he had pointedly looked at Laura and spoken to her; and she had replied in the same way. There was, indeed, a tacit understanding between them at the moment, that she would be his partner for the evening; and it was chiefly from a spirit of coquetry that she had chosen to ignore it afterwards.

But Laura showed no trace of embarrassment when she met Alec in the village next day.

‘Why didn’t you come into the house last night?’ she said with a smile.

‘I didn’t think it mattered.’

‘Why are you so cross? I suppose I have managed to offend you again. I never saw anyone so touchy and unreasonable!’

‘It doesn’t very much matter--does it?’

‘Why?’

‘I mean, you don’t really care whether--oh!--never mind.’

‘Now, I really believe you are annoyed because I went in your cousin’s boat last night, instead of yours. But what could I do? I couldn’t say, “I prefer to go with Mr. Lindsay”--could I?’

‘No; but--but you never seem to think of me at all now, Miss Mowbray.’

‘Nonsense!’ answered the girl, as a pleased blush came over her face. ‘And to prove my goodwill, I’ll tell you what I will do. I will let you take me for a row this evening.’

‘Will you?’

This was said so eagerly that Laura could not help blushing again.

‘The others are going to dine at Mr. Grainger’s to-night, over at Loch Lomond side.’

‘But I am to be with the Frasers to-night!’ exclaimed Alec in dismay. ‘Would not to-morrow night do as well?’ Then, seeing that his companion did not seem to care for this change of plans, he added: ‘But I dare say I can manage to get away by half-past eight. That would not be too late, would it? It is quite light until after nine.’

‘I will be in the garden, then; but I must go now,’ said Laura hurriedly, as she bade him good-day.

The evening went by as on leaden feet with Alec Lindsay, as he talked to Mr. Fraser, or listened to his wife’s interminable easy-going complaints about her children and her servants, and tried to appear interested, and at his ease. He could not keep the thought of the coming meeting out of his mind.

With rather a lame excuse he left Mr. Fraser’s house not many minutes after the appointed time, and very soon afterwards he was gliding under the garden-wall of Glendhu. For some minutes no one was visible, and Alec began to fear that a new disappointment was in store for him. But presently a figure began to move through the shadows of the trees. It was Laura! She stepped without a word over the loose rocks and stones; then, hardly touching Alec’s outstretched hand, she lightly took her place at the stern, and met Alec’s gaze with a smile.

‘Do you know, I feel horribly guilty, and all through you,’ she said, as the boat moved swiftly out into the loch.

‘Why should it make any difference that there is no discontented fellow-creature in another boat behind us?’ asked Alec gaily.

Laura shook her head, but made no reply. Leaning back in the stern she took off her hat, and let the cool breeze blow upon her face. Alec thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. The delicate curves of her features, the peach-like complexion, the melting look in her eyes, made him feel as if the girl seated near him was something more than human.

‘Don’t you think we have gone far enough?’ said Laura gently, when Alec had rowed some way in silence.

He stopped, resting on his oars.

‘How still it is--and how beautiful!’ she exclaimed in the same low voice.

Not a sound but the faint lapping of the water on the boat fell upon their ears. The hills were by this time in darkness, and the stars were beginning to glimmer in the twilight sky. Beyond the western hills the sky was still bright, with a glow that seemed less that of the sunken sun, than some mysterious halo of the northern night. A faint phosphorescence lingered about the drops of sea-water upon the oars. Nothing but the distant lights in the cottage windows seemed to be in any way connected with the commonplace, everyday world.

‘Hadn’t we better go back? It is really getting dark,’ said Laura, as gently as before; and Alec obediently dipped his oars and turned the bow of the boat towards Glendhu.

All his life long Alec remembered that silent row in the dim, unearthly twilight. There was no need for words. They were sitting, as it were, ‘on the shores of old romance,’ and tasting the dew of fairyland. That hidden land was for this short hour revealed to them; they were breathing the enchanted air.

It was almost dark when Alec shipped his oars and drew the boat along the rocks outside the garden-wall.

‘How dreadfully late it is! I hope they have not come back,’ said Laura, as she rose to go ashore.

Alec took her hand, so small and white, with the tiny blue veins crossing it, in his own rough brown fingers, and when he had helped the girl ashore he stooped and kissed it.

A moment afterwards, a soft ‘good-night’ from the garden assured him that the act of homage had not been taken amiss. If he had lingered a minute or two longer he would have heard Miss Lindsay’s voice calling out in some anxiety, and Laura Mowbray’s silvery accents replying:

‘Yes; here I am, Miss Lindsay--it is so much cooler out of doors. My headache is almost quite gone, thank you; the cool sea-breeze has driven it away. How did you enjoy your party? How I wish I could have gone with you!’

But before Laura reached the house, Alec was once more far out in the loch. He wished to be alone, to indulge the sweet intoxication which was burning in his veins.

When at last he returned to his little room he found a letter awaiting him which had been sent on from home. The address was in an unfamiliar handwriting, and breaking the seal he read as follows:

‘CAEN LODGE, HIGHGATE, N.,
‘_July 10, 187-_.

‘MY DEAR LINDSAY,

‘You will be surprised to hear that you may see me the day
after this reaches you. I want to see how your beautiful
river scenery looks in this glorious summer weather. If it
is not convenient for me to stay at the farm, I can easily
find quarters elsewhere.

‘Ever yours,
‘HUBERT BLAKE.’

As Alec foresaw, when he read this note, Blake found existence at the Castle Farm with the sole companionship of Mr. Lindsay to be quite impracticable; and next day he arrived at Arrochar and took up his quarters in the little inn at the head of the pier.