“That is the boat that goes across the Black Water o’ Dee,” she said, pointing to a small boat which lay under the bank on the left.
“And do you never go anywhere else?” he asked, wondering how she came by her beauty and her manners.
“Only to the kirk on the Sabbaths,” she said, “when I can get some one to watch the boat for me.”
“I will watch the boat for you!” he said impulsively.
The girl looked distressed. This great gentleman was making fun of her, assuredly. She did not answer. Would he never go away?
“This is your way,” she said, pointing along the track in front. Indeed, there was only one way, and the information was superfluous.
The end of the white, rose-smothered boathouse was towards them. A tall, bowed woman’s figure passed quickly round the gable.
“Is that your aunt?” he asked.
“That is my Aunt Annie,” said the girl; “my aunt Barbara is confined to her bed.”
“And what is your name, if I may ask?”
The girl glanced at him. He was certainly not making fun of her now.
“My name is Grace Allen,” she said.
They paced together up the path. The bridle rein slipped from his arm, but his hand instinctively caught it, and Eulalie cropped crisply at the grasses on the bank, unregarded of her master.
They did not shake hands when they parted, but their eyes followed each other a long way.
“Where is the money?” said Aunt Barbara from her bed as Grace Allen came in at the open door.
“Dear me!” said the girl, frightened: “I have forgotten to ask him for it!”
“Did I ever see sic’ a lassie? Rin after him an get it; haste ye fast.”
But Gregory was far out of reach by the time Grace got to the door. The sound of hoofs came from high up the wooded heights.
Gregory Jeffray reached the Barr in time for late breakfast. There was a large company. The men were prowling discontentedly about, looking under covers or cutting slices from dishes on the sideboard; but the ladies were bright, and eagerly welcomed Gregory. He at least did not rise with a sore head and a bad temper every morning. They desired an account of his morning’s ride. On the way home he had changed his mind about telling of his adventure. He said that he had had a pleasant ride. It had been a beautiful morning.
“But have you nothing whatever to tell us?” they asked; for, indeed, they had a right to expect something.
Gregory had nothing. This was not usual, for at other times when he had nothing to tell it did not cost him much to make something up.
“You are very dull this morning, Fiscal,” said the youngest daughter of the house, who, being the baby and pretty, was pettishly privileged in speech.
But within him Gregory was saying, “What a blessing I forgot to pay the ferry!”
When he got outside he said to his host, “Is there such a place hereabouts as the Rhonefoot?”
“Why, yes, there is,” said Laird Cunningham of Barr. “But why do you ask? I thought a Fiscal should know everything without asking—even an ornamental one on his way to the Premiership.”
“Oh, I heard the name,” said Gregory. “It struck me as curious.”
That evening there came over the river from the Waterfoot of the Rhone the sound of a voice calling. Grace Allen sat thoughtfully looking out of the rose-hung window. Her face was an oval of perfect curve, crowned with a great mass of light brown hair, in which were red lights when the sun shone directly upon it. Her skin was clear, pale ivory, and even exertion hardly brought the latent under-flush of red to the surface.
“There’s somebody at the waterfit. Gang, lassie, an’ dinna be lettin’ them aff withoot their tippens (two pence) this time!” said her aunt Barbara from her bed. Annie Allen was accustomed to say nothing, and she did it now.
The boat to the Rhonefoot was seldom needed, and the oars were not in it. They leaned against the end of the cottage, and Grace Allen took them on her shoulder as she went down. She carried them as easily as another girl would carry a parasol.
Again there came the cry from the Rhonefoot.
Standing well back in the boat, so as to throw up the bow, she pushed off. The water was deep where the boat lay, and it had just been drawn half up on the bank. As Grace dipped her oars into the silent water the pool was so black that the blade of the oar was lost in the gloom before it got half-way down. Above there was a light wind moaning and rustling in the trees, but it did not stir even a ripple on the dark surface of the great pool of the Black Water of Dee.
Grace bent to her oars with a springing verve and force which made the tubby little boat draw towards the shore, with the whispering laps of water gliding under its sides. Three lines of wake were marked behind—a vague white turbulence in the middle and two winking lines of bubbles on either side where the oars had dipped.
When she reached the waterfoot, and the boat touched the shore, Grace Allen looked up to see Gregory Jeffray standing alone on the little copse-enclosed triangle of grass. He smiled pleasantly. She had not time to be surprised.
“What did you think of me this morning, running away without paying my fare?” he asked.
It seemed very natural that he should come. She was glad that he had not his horse.
“I thought you would come back again,” said Grace Allen, standing up, with one oar over the side ready to pull in or push off.
Gregory extended his hand as though to ask for hers to steady him as he came into the boat. Grace was surprised. No one ever did that at the Rhonefoot, but she thought it might be that he was a stranger and did not understand about boats. She held out her hand. Gregory leapt in beside her in a moment, but did not at once release her hand. She tried to pull it away.
“It is too little a hand to do so much hard work,” he said.
Instantly Grace became conscious that it was rough and hard with rowing. She had not thought of this before. He stooped and kissed it.
“Now,” he said, “let me row across for you, and sit in front of me where I can see you. You made me forget all about everything this morning, and now I must make up for it.”
It was a long way across, and evidently Gregory Jeffray was not a good oarsman, for it was dark when Grace Allen went indoors to her aunts. Her heart was bounding within her, and her bosom rose and fell as she breathed quickly and silently through her parted red lips. There was a new thing in her eye.
Every evening thereafter through all that glorious height of midsummer there was a cry at the waterfoot, and every evening Grace Allen went over to the edge of the Rhone wood to answer it. There the boat lay moored to a great stone upon the turf, while Gregory and she walked upon the flowery forest carpet, and the dry leaves clashed and muttered above them as the gloaming fell. These were days of rapture, each like a doorway into a yet fuller joy.
Over at the waterfoot the copses grew close; the green turf was velvet underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet him over the Black Water.
She rowed back alone, the simple soul that was in her forwandered and amazed with excess of joy. As she set the boat to the shore and came up the bank bearing the oars which were her wings into the world of love under the green alders, the light in the west, lingering clear and pure and cold, seemed to promise the dawn of yet brighter days.
But Aunt Annie watched her with silent pain. Barbara from her bed spoke sharp and cruel words which Grace Allen listened to not at all.