The Eagle Cliff, R. M. Ballantyne [best fiction books to read .txt] 📗

I usually convert the expedition into a search for plants.”

“Oh, then, you are fond of botany!” exclaimed the girl, with a flush of pleasure and awakened interest. “I am so glad of that, because—because—”

“Well, why do you hesitate, Miss Moss?” asked Barret, with a surprised look and a smile.

“Well, I don’t quite like to lay bare my selfishness; but the truth is, there are some rare plants in terribly inaccessible places, which can only be reached by creatures in male attire. In fact, I was trying to secure one of these on the Eagle Cliff when I fell, and was so nearly killed at the time you rescued me.”

“Pray don’t give the little service I rendered so dignified a name as ‘rescue.’ But it rejoices me to know that I can be of further service to you—all the more that you are now so helpless; for if you found climbing the precipices difficult before, you will find it impossible now with your injured arm. By the way, I was very glad to find that I had been mistaken in thinking that your arm was broken. Has it given you much pain?”

“Yes, a good deal; but I am very, very thankful it was no worse. And now I must show you some of the plants I have been trying to bring up since I came here,” said Milly, with animation. “Of course, I cannot walk about to show them to you, so I will point them out, and ask you to fetch the pots—that is, if you have nothing better to do, and won’t be bored.”

Barret protested earnestly that he had nothing—could have nothing—better to do, and that even if he had he wouldn’t do it. As for being bored, the idea of such a state of mind being possible in the circumstances was ridiculous.

Milly was rejoiced. Here she had unexpectedly found a friend to sympathise with her intelligently. Her uncle, she was well aware, sympathised with her heartily, but not intelligently; for his knowledge of botany, he told her frankly, was inferior to that of a tom-cat, and he was capable of little more in that line than to distinguish the difference between a cabbage and a potato.

At it, therefore, the two young people went with real enthusiasm—we might almost say with red-hot enthusiasm—for botany was only a superstructure, so to speak, love being the foundation of the whole affair.

But let not the reader jump to hasty conclusions. Barret and Milly, being young and inexperienced, were absolutely ignorant at that time of the true state of matters. Both were earnest and straightforward—both were ardently fond of botany, and neither, up to that period, had known what it was to fall in love. What more natural, then, than that they should attribute their condition to botany? There is, indeed, a sense in which their idea was correct, for sympathy is one of the most precious seeds with which poor humanity is entrusted, and did not botany enable these two to unite in planting that seed, and is not sympathy the germ of full-blown love? If so, may they not be said to have fallen in love botanically? We make no assertion in regard to this. We merely, and modestly, put the question, leaving it to the intelligent reader to supply the answer—an exceedingly convenient mode of procedure when one is not quite sure of the answer one’s self.

To return. Having got “at it,” Barret and Milly continued at it for several hours, during which period they either forgot, or did not care to remember, the flight of time. They also contrived, during that time, to examine, discuss, and comment upon, a prodigious number of plants, all of which, being in pots or boxes, were conveyed by the youth to the empty stand at the side of the fair invalid. The minute examination with a magnifying glass of corolla, and stamen, and calyx, etcetera, rendered it necessary, of course, that these inquiries into the mysteries of Nature should bring the two heads pretty close together; one consequence being that the seed-plant of sympathy was “forced” a good deal, and developed somewhat after the fashion of those plants which Hindoo jugglers cause magically to sprout, blossom, and bloom before the very eyes of astonished beholders—with this difference, however, that whereas the development of the jugglers is deceptive as well as quick, that of our botanists was genuine and natural, though rapid.

The clang of the luncheon gong was the first thing that brought them to their senses.

“Surely there must be some mistake! Junkie must be playing with—no, it is indeed one o’clock,” exclaimed Milly, consulting in unbelief a watch so small that it seemed like cruelty to expect it to go at all, much less to go correctly.

As she spoke, the door of the conservatory opened, and Mrs Gordon appeared with affected indignation on her usually mild countenance.

“You naughty child!” she exclaimed, hurrying forward. “Did I not warn you to stay no longer than an hour? and here you are, flushed, and no doubt feverish, in consequence of staying the whole forenoon. Take my arm, and come away directly.”

“I pray you, Mrs Gordon, to lay the blame on my shoulders,” said Barret. “I fear it was my encouraging Miss Moss to talk of her favourite study that induced her to remain.”

“I would be only too glad to lay the blame on your shoulders if I could lay Milly’s weakness there too,” returned the lady. “It is quite evident that you would never do for a nurse. Strong men like you have not sympathy enough to put yourself in the place of invalids, and think how they feel. I would scold you severely, sir, if you were not my guest. As it is, I will forgive you if you promise me not to mention the subject of botany in the presence of my niece for a week to come.”

“The condition is hard,” said Barret, with a laugh; “but I promise—that is, if Miss Moss does not force the subject on me.”

“I promise that, Mr Barret; but I also attach a condition.”

“Which is—?”

“That you go to Eagle Cliff some day this week, and find for me a particular plant for which I have sought for a long time in vain, but which I am told is to be found there.”

“Most willingly. Nothing could give me greater pleasure,” returned the youth, with an air of such eager enthusiasm that he felt constrained to add,—“you see, the acquisition of new and rare plants has been a sort of passion with me for many years, and I am quite delighted to find that there is a possibility of not only gratifying it here, but of being able at the same time to contribute to your happiness.”

They reached the house as he made this gallant speech, and Milly went straight to her room.

The only members of the household who sat down to luncheon that day were Mrs Gordon, Archie, the enthusiastic photographer, and Flo, with her black doll; and the only guest, besides Barret, was McPherson, the skipper of the lost yacht. The rest were all out rambling by mountain, loch, or stream.

“Milly won’t appear again to-day,” said the hostess, as she sat down. “I knew that she had overdone it. The shock to her system has been far too severe to admit of botanical discussions.”

Barret professed himself overwhelmed with a sense of guilt, and promised to avoid the dangerous subject in future.

“Mother,” exclaimed Flo, who was a good but irrepressible child, “what d’ee t’ink? Archie have pofografft dolly, an’ she’s as like as—as—two peas. Isn’t she, Archie?”

“Quite as like as that, Flo,” replied Archie, with a laugh; “liker, if anything.”

“By the way, how did you get on with your photographing yesterday afternoon, Archie?” asked Barret.

“Pretty well with some of the views; but I ruined the last one, because father would have me introduce Captain McPherson and his man McGregor.”

“Is that so, captain?” asked Mrs Gordon.

“Oo, ay; it iss true enough,” answered the skipper, with a grim smile. “He made a queer like mess o’ me, what-ë-ver.”

“How was it, Archie?”

“Well, mother, this is how it was. You know the waterfall at the head of Raven’s Nook? Well, I have long wanted to take that, so I went up with father and Mr Mabberly. We found the captain and McGregor sitting there smoking their pipes, and when I was arranging the camera, the captain said to me—”

“No, Maister Archie,” interrupted the skipper; “I did not say anything to Shames. You should be more parteekler. But Shames said something to me, what-ë-ver.”

“Just so; I forgot,” continued Archie. “Well, McGregor said to the captain, ‘What would you think if we wass to sit still an’ co into the pictur’?’”

“Oo, ay; that was just it, an’ fery like him too,” said the skipper, laughing at Archie’s imitation, though he failed to recognise the similarity to his own drawling and nasal tones. People always do thus fail. We can never see ourselves!

“Well,” continued Archie, “father insisted that I was to take them, though they quite spoiled the view. So I did; but in the very middle of the operation, what did the captain do but insist on changing his—”

“Not at all, Maister Archie,” again interrupted the skipper; “you have not got the right of it. It wass Shames said to me that he thought you had feenished, an’ so I got up; an’ then you roared like a wild bullock to keep still, and so what could I do but keep still? an so—”

“Exactly; that was it,” cried Archie, interrupting in his turn; “but you kept still standing, and so there were three figures in the picture when it was done, and your fist in the standing one came right in front of your own nose in the sitting one, for all the world as if you were going to knock yourself down. Such a mess it was altogether!”

“That iss fery true. It wass a mess, what-ë-ver!”

“You must show me this curious photograph, Archie, after lunch,” said Barret; “it must be splendid.”

“But it is not so splendid as my dolly,” chimed in Flo. “I’ll show you zat after lunch too.”

Accordingly, after the meal was over, Archie carried Barret off to his workshop. Then Flo took him to the nursery, where she not only showed him the portrait of the nigger doll, which was a striking likeness—for dolls invariably sit well—but took special pains to indicate the various points which had “come out” so “bootifully”—such as the nails which Junkie had driven into its wooden head for the purpose of making it behave better; the chip that Junkie had taken off the end of its nose when he tried to convert that feature into a Roman; the deep line drawn round the head close to the hair by Junkie, when, as the chief of the Micmac Indians, he attempted to scalp it; and the hole through the right eye, by which Junkie proposed to let a little more light into its black brain.

Having seen and commented on all these things, Barret retired to the smoking-room, not to smoke, but to consult a bundle of newspapers which the post had brought to the house that day.

For it must not be imagined that the interests and amusements by which he was surrounded had laid the ghost of the thin, little old lady whom he had mur— at least run down—in London. No; wherever he went, and whatever he did, that old lady, like Nemesis, pursued him. When he looked down, she lay sprawling—a murdered, at least a manslaughtered, victim—at his feet. When he looked up, she hung, like the sword of Damocles, by a single fibre of maiden’s hair over his head.

It was of no use that his friend Jackman rallied him on the point.

“My dear fellow,” he would say, “don’t you see that if you had really killed her, the thing would have been published far and wide all over the kingdom, with a minute description, and