Books: In Secret

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McKay laughed: "You know," he said, "there's no chance of trouble
here. Glenark is too small a village--"

"Didn't I land a brace of Boches at Banff?"

"That's true. Well, anyway, I'll be off, I expect, in a day or so."
He rose; "and now I'll show you a bed--"

"No; I've a dog-cart tied out yonder and a chaser lying at Glenark.
By Godfrey, I'm not finished with these Boche-jocks yet!"

"You're going?"

"You bet. I've a date to keep with a suspicious character--on a
trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by
Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here's
hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he'll dance!"

He emptied his glass, refused more. McKay took him to the wicket and
let him loose.

"Well, over the top, old scout!" said Sixty-seven cheerily,
exchanging a quick handclasp with McKay. And so the fog took him.

A week later they found his dead horse and wrecked dog-cart five
miles this side of Glenark Burn, lying in a gully entirely concealed
by whinn and broom. It was the noise the flies made that attracted
attention. As for the man himself, he floated casually into the
Firth one sunny day with five bullets in him and his throat cut very
horridly.

But, before that, other things happened on Isla Water--long before
anybody missed No. 67. Besides, the horse and dog-cart had been
hired for a week; and nobody was anxious except the captain of the
trawler, held under mysterious orders to await the coming of a man
who never came.

So McKay went back through the fog to his quaint, whitewashed
inheritance--this legacy from a Scotch grandfather to a Yankee
grandson--and when he came into the dark waist of the house he
called up very gently: "Are you awake, Miss Yellow-hair?"

"Yes. Is all well?"

"All's well," he said, mounting the stairs.

"Then--good night to you Kay of Isla!" she said.

"Don't you want to hear--"

"To-morrow, please."

"But--"

"As long as you say that all is well I refuse to lose any more
sleep!"

"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 sturdy 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 buttering a scone, she glanced about her at the new grass
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
button-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc--in
Gaelic--just reed-grass, 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 God 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 grass. 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 God, 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
transmuted.

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."

"What are you going to do with that rod?"

"Whip Isla for a yellow trout for you."

"Isla?"

"Not our Loch, but the quick water yonder."

"You know," she said, "to a Yankee girl those moors appear
rather--rather lonely."

"Forbidding?"

"No; beautiful in their way. But I am in awe of Glenark moors."

He smiled, lingering still to loop on a gossamer leader and a cast
of tiny flies.

"Have you--" she began, and smiled nervously.

"A gun?" he inquired coolly. "Yes, I have two strapped up under both
arms. But you must come too, Yellow-hair."

"You don't think it best to leave me alone even in your own house?"

"No, I don't think it best."

"I wanted to go with you anyway," she said, picking up a soft hat
and pulling it over her golden head.

On the way across Isla bridge and out along the sheep-path they
chatted unconcernedly. A faint aromatic odour made the girl aware of
broom and whinn and heath.

As they sauntered on along the edge of Isla Water the lapwings rose
into flight ahead. Once or twice the feathery whirr of brown grouse
startled her. And once, on the edge of cultivated land, a partridge
burst from the heather at her very feet--a "Frenchman" with his red
legs and gay feathers brilliant in the sun.

Sun and shadow and white cloud, heath and moor and hedge and
broad-tilled field alternated as they passed together along the edge
of Isla Water and over the road to Isla--the enchanting
river--interested in each other's conversation and in the loveliness
of the sunny world about them.

High in the blue sky plover called en passant; larks too were on the
wing, and throstles and charming feathered things that hid in
hedgerows and permitted glimpses of piquant heads and twitching
painted tails.

"It is adorable, this country!" Miss Erith confessed. "It steals
into your very bones; doesn't it?"

"And the bones still remain Yankee bones," he rejoined. "There's the
miracle, Yellow-hair."

"Entirely. You know what I think? The more we love the more loyal we
become to our own. I'm really quite serious. Take yourself for
example, Kay. You are most ornamental in your kilts and
heather-spats, and you are a better Yankee for it. Aren't you?"

"Oh yes, a hopeless Yankee. But that drop of Scotch blood is singing
tunes to-day, Yellow-hair."

"Let it sing--God bless it!"

He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her
gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front
of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay
tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer
son; America no son more loyal.

A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the
rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla
hurrying to the sea.

Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair
dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of
waterfalls. The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of
crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered
on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the
happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of
wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across
the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a
big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always
encountered in Isla during the season--always surprising and
exciting the angler with emotion forever new.

Over his shoulder he was saying to her: "Sea-trout and grilse don't
belong to Isla, but they come occasionally, Lady Yellow-hair."

"Like you and I, Kay--we don't belong here but we come."

"Where the McKay is, the Key of the World lies hidden in his
sporran," he laughed back at her over his shoulder where the clan
plaid fluttered above the cairngorm.

"Oh, the modesty of this young man! Wherever he takes off his cap he
is at home!" she cried.

He only laughed, and she saw the slim line curl, glisten, loop and
unroll in the long back cast, re-loop, and straighten out over Isla
like a silver spider's floating strand. Then silver leaped to meet
silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel
cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his
hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the
tremendous rush of the great fish.

Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler.
Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with
rod and gaff--happily aware of the grace in every unconscious
movement of his handsome lean body--the steady, keen poise of head
and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown
hands.

It came into her mind that he'd look like that on the firing-line
some day when his Government was ready to release him from his
obscure and terrible mission--the Government that was sending him
where such men as he usually perish unobserved, unhonoured,
repudiated even by those who send them to accomplish what only the
most brave and unselfish dare undertake.

A little cloud cast a momentary shadow across Isla. The sea-trout
died then, a quivering limber, metallic shape glittering on the
ripples.

In the intense stillness from far across the noon-day world she
heard the bells of Banff--a far, sweet reiteration stealing inland
on the wind. She had never been so happy in her life.

Swinging back across the moor together, he with slanting rod and
weighted creel, she with her wind-blown yellow hair and a bunch of
reed at her belt in his honour, both seemed to understand that they
had had their hour, and that the hour was ending--almost ended now.

They had remained rather silent. Perhaps grave thoughts of what lay
before them beyond the bright moor's edge--beyond the far blue
horizon--preoccupied their minds. And each seemed to feel that their
play-day was finished--seemed already to feel physically the
approach of that increasing darkness shrouding the East--that
hellish mist toward which they both were headed--the twilight of the
Hun.

Nothing stained the sky above them; a snowy cloud or two drifted up
there,--a flight of lapwings now and then--a lone curlew. The long,
squat white-washed house with its walled garden reflected in Isla
Water glimmered before them in the hollow of the rolling hills.

McKay was softly and thoughtfully whistling the "Lament for
Donald"--the lament of CLAN AOIDH--his clan.

"That's rather depressing, Kay--what you're whistling," said Evelyn
Erith.

He glanced up from his abstraction, nodded, and strode on humming
the "Over There" of that good bard George of Broadway.

After a moment the girl said: "There seem to be some people by Isla
Water."

His quick glance appraised the distant group, their summer tourist
automobile drawn up on the bank of Isla Water near the Bridge, the
hampers on the grass.

"Trespassers," he said with a shrug. "But it's a pretty spot by Isla
Bridge and we never drive them away."

She looked at them again as they crossed the very old bridge of
stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on
the grass were picnicking three people--a very good-looking girl, a
very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a
thin man of forty, well-dressed and of better appearance.

The short, stout, flashy young man was eating sandwiches with one
hand while with the other he held a fishing-rod out over the water.

McKay noticed this bit of impudence with a shrug. "That won't do,"
he murmured; and pausing at the parapet of the bridge he said
pleasantly: "I'm sorry to disturb you, but fishing isn't permitted
in Isla Water."

At that the flashy young man jumped up with unexpected nimbleness--a
powerful frame on two very vulgar but powerful legs.

"Say, sport," he called out, "if this is your fish-pond we're ready
to pay what's right. What's the damage for a dozen fish?"

"Americans--awful ones," whispered Miss Erith.

McKay rested his folded arms on the parapet and regarded the advance
of the flashy man up the grassy slope below.

"I don't rent fishing privileges," he said amiably.

"That's all right. Name your price. No millionaire guy I ever heard
of ever had enough money," returned the flashy man jocosely.

McKay, amused, shook his head. "Sorry," he said, "but I couldn't
permit you to fish."

"Aw, come on, old scout! We heard you was American same as us.
That's my sister down there and her feller. My name's Jim
Macniff--some Scotch somewhere. That there feller is Harry Skelton.
Horses is our business--Spitalfields Mews--here's my card--"
pulling it out--"I'll come up on the bridge--"

"Never mind. What are you in Scotland for anyway?" inquired McKay.

"The Angus Dhu stables at Inverness--auction next Wednesday. Horses
is our line, so we made it a holiday--"

"A holiday in the Banff country?"

"Sure, I ain't never seen it before. Is that your house?"

McKay nodded and turned away, weary of the man and his vulgarity.
"Very well, picnic and fish if you like," he said; and fell into
step beside Miss Erith.

They entered the house through the door in the garden. Later, when
Miss Erith came back from her toilet, but still wearing her outing
skirt, McKay turned from the long window where he had been standing
and watching the picnickers across Isla Bridge. The flashy man had a
banjo now and was strumming it and leering at the girl.

"What people to encounter in this corner of Paradise," she said
laughingly. And, as he did not smile: "You don't suppose there's
anything queer about them, do you, Kay?" At that he smiled: "Oh, no,
nothing of that sort, Yellow-hair. Only--it's rather odd. But bagmen
and their kind do come into the northland--why, Heaven knows--but
one sees them playing about."

"Of course those people are merely very ordinary Americans--nothing
worse," she said, seating herself at the table.

"What could be worse?" he returned lightly.

"Boche."

They were seated sideways to the window and opposite each other,
commanding a clear view of Isla Water and the shore where the
picnickers sprawled apparently enjoying the semi-comatose pleasure
of repletion.

"That other man--the thin one--has not exactly a prepossessing
countenance," she remarked.

"They can't travel without papers," he said.

For a little while luncheon progressed in silence. Presently Miss
Erith reverted to the picnickers: "The young woman has a foreign
face. Have you noticed?"

"She's rather dark. Rather handsome, too. And she appears rather
nice."

"Women of that class always appear superior to men of the same
class," observed Miss Erith. "I suppose really they are not superior
to the male of the species."

"I've always thought they were," he said.

"Men might think so."

He smiled: "Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to
size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this."

"Don't you?"

"I don't know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?"

"Oh, the moors--please, Kay!"

"What!" he exclaimed laughingly; "you're already a victim to Glenark
moors!"

"Kay, I adore them! ... Are you tired? ... Our time is short-our day
of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can ... before we--"

"Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?"

"If it please my lord."

"Now?"

"In the cool of the afternoon. Don't you want to be lazy with me in
your quaint old garden for an hour or two?"

"I'll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair."

When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside
chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers,
their hamper, and their car.

"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.
"Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."

The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark
lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her
in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the
liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.

"Kay?"

"Yes, Yellow-hair." Their voices were vague and dreamy.

"Tell me something."

"I'll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is
always warned."

"How?"

"A cold hand touches his hand in the dark."

"Kay!"

"It's so. It's called'the Cold Hand of Isla.' We are all doomed to
feel it."

"Absurd!"

"Not at all. That's a pretty story; isn't it? Now what more shall I
tell you?"

"Anything you like, Kay. I'm in paradise--or would be if only
somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep."

"Stories about what?"

"About YOU, Kay."

"I'll not talk about myself."

"Please!"

But he shook his head without smiling: "You know all there is," he
said--"and much that is--unspeakable."

"Kay!"

"What?"

"Never, never speak that way again!"

He remained silent.

"Because," she continued in her low, pretty voice, "it is not true.
I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very
moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say
to me, 'This is a boy who also is a real man!' ... And it was true,
Kay."

"You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that
beastly drunken--"

"Yes! Don't use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy,
asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man."

"You are merciful, but I know what you went through," he said
morosely.

She paid no attention: "I liked you instantly. I thought to myself,
'Now when he wakes he'll be what he looks like.' And you are!"

He stirred in his chair, sideways, and glanced at her.

"You know what I think about you, don't you?"

"No." She shouldn't have let their words drift thus far and she knew
it. Also at this point she should have diverted the conversation.
But she remained silent, aware of an indefinite pleasure in the
vague excitement which had quickened her pulse a little.

"Well, I shan't tell you," he said quietly.

"Why not?" And at that her heart added a beat or two.

"Because, even if I were different, you wouldn't wish me to."

"Why?"

"Because you and I are doomed to a rather intimate comradeship--a
companionship far beyond conventions, Yellow-hair. That is what is
ahead of us. And you will have enough to weary you without having
another item to add to it."

"What item?" At that she became very silent and badly scared. What
demon was prompting her to such provocation? Her own effrontery
amazed and frightened her, but her words seemed to speak themselves
independently of her own volition.

"Yellow-hair," he said, "I think you have guessed all I might have
dared say to you were I not on eternal probation."

"Probation?"

"Before a bitterly strict judge."

"Who?"

"Myself, Yellow-hair."

"Oh, Kay! You ARE a boy--nothing more than a boy--"

"Are you in love with me?"

"No," she said, astonished. "I don't think so. What an amazing thing
to say to a girl!"

"I thought I'd scare you," he remarked grimly.

"You didn't. I--I was scarcely prepared--such a nonsensical thing to
say! Why--why I might as well ask you if you are in--in--"

"In love with you? You wish to know, Yellow-hair?"

"No, I don't," she replied hastily. "This is--stupid. I don't
understand how we came to discuss such--such--" But she did know and
she bit her lip and gazed across Isla Water in silent exasperation.

What mischief was this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering
in every heather-scented breeze--laughing at her from every little
wave on Isla Water?--counselling her to this new and delicate
audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very
soul fluttering with a delicious laughter--an odd, perverse,
illogical laughter, alternately tremulous and triumphant!

Was she in love, then, with this man? She remembered his unconscious
head on her knees in the limousine, and the snow clinging to his
bright hair--

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