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

Serenity was the prevailing feature in the character of old Allan Gordon, the laird of Kinlossie; but when that amiable, portly, grand, silver-headed old gentleman suddenly met an unknown young man of fine proportions carrying his favourite niece, wrapped up as a bundle in his arms, all his serenity disappeared, and he stared, glared, almost gasped, with mingled astonishment and consternation.

A very brief explanation, however, quickly sufficed to charge his susceptible spirit to overflowing with a compound of grave anxiety and heartfelt gratitude.

“Come in, my dear sir, come in; luckily our doctor is spending the day with me. But for you, my poor dear Milly might have been— This way, to her own room. Are you sure the arm is broken?”

“I fear so,” replied Barret, entering the mansion; but before he could proceed farther his words were drowned in a shriek of surprise from four little Gordons, aged from sixteen to four, who yelled rather than demanded to know what ailed their cousin—ranging from Archie’s, “What’s wrong with Cousin Milly,” to Flora’s, “Wass wong wid Cuzn Miwy?”

By that time Mrs Gordon, a pleasant-voiced lady, with benignity in her, looks, appeared on the scene, followed quickly by a man and several maid servants, all of whom added to the confusion, in the midst of which Cousin Milly was conveyed to her room and deposited on her bed. The family doctor, a rotund little man of fifty-five, was speedily in attendance.

“So fortunate that the doctor happens to be here,” said the laird, as he led Barret to the library and offered him a glass of wine. “No! you don’t drink? Well, well, as you please. Here, Duncan, fetch milk, lemonade, coffee, hot, at once. You must be tired after carrying her so far, even though she is a light weight. But, forgive me; in my anxiety about my poor niece I have quite forgotten to ask either your name or how you came here, for no steamer has been to the island for a week past. Pray be seated, and, wherever you may be bound for ultimately, make up your mind that my house is to be your home for a week at least. We suffer no visitor ever to leave us under that period.”

“You are very kind,” returned the young man, smiling, “and I accept your proffered hospitality most gladly. My name is John Barret. I came to the other side of the island in a yacht, and swam on shore in my clothes with six companions, spent the night at Cove, and have walked over here to make known these facts to you.”

“You speak in riddles, my young friend,” returned the laird, with an amused look.

“Yet I speak the truth,” returned Barret, who thereupon gave a circumstantial account of the disaster that had befallen himself and his friends.

“Excuse me,” said Mr Gordon, rising; throwing up the window he shouted to a man who was passing at the moment, “Roderick, get the big waggonette ready to go to Cove, and bring it round here as fast as you can. You see,” he added to Barret, “the road is considerably longer than the short cut by which you came, and we must have them all over here without delay. Don’t distress yourself about room. We have plenty of accommodation. But come, I’ll take you to your own room, and when you have made yourself comfortable, we will talk over your future plans. Just let me say, however, to prevent your mind running away on wrong ideas, that in the circumstances we won’t allow you to leave us for two months. The post goes out to-morrow, so you can write to your father and tell him so.”

Thus running on in a rich hearty voice, the hospitable Allan Gordon conducted Barret to a room in the southern wing of the rambling old edifice, and left him there to meditate on his good fortune, and enjoy the magnificent prospect of the island-studded firth or fiord from which the mansion derived its name.

While the waggonette was away for the rest of the wrecked party, the laird, finding that Milly’s arm was not actually broken, though severely bruised, sat down to lunch with restored equanimity, and afterwards drove Barret in his dog-cart to various parts of his estate.

“Your friends cannot arrive for several hours, you see,” he said on starting, “and we don’t dine till seven; so you could not be better engaged than in making acquaintance with the localities of our beautiful island. It may seem a little wild to you in its scenery, but there are thousands of picturesque points, and what painters call ‘bits’ about it, as my sweet little Milly Moss will tell you when she recovers; for she is an enthusiastic painter, and has made innumerable drawings, both in water-colour and oils, since she came to stay here. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you, Mr Barret, for rescuing the poor girl from her perilous position.”

“I count myself fortunate indeed in having been led to the spot so opportunely,” said Barret; “and I sincerely hope that no evil effects may result from her injuries. May I ask if she resides permanently with you at Kinlossie?”

“I wish she did,” said the laird, fervently; “for she is like a sunbeam in the house. No, we have only got the loan of her, on very strict conditions too, from her mother, who is a somewhat timid lady of an anxious temperament. I’ve done my best to fulfil the conditions, but they are not easy.”

“Indeed! How is that?”

“Well, you see, my sister is firmly convinced that there is deadly danger in wet feet, and one of her conditions is that Milly is not to be allowed to wet her feet. Now you know it is not easy for a Londoner to understand the difficulty of keeping one’s feet dry while skipping over the mountains and peat-hags of the Western Isles.”

“From which I conclude that Mrs Moss is a Londoner,” returned Barret, with a laugh.

“She is. Although a Gordon, and born in the Argyll Highlands, she was sent to school in London, where she was married at the age of seventeen, and has lived there ever since. Her husband is dead, and nothing that I have been able to say has yet tempted her to pay me a visit. She regards my home here as a wild, uninhabitable region, though she has never seen it, and besides, is getting too old and feeble to venture, as she says, on a long voyage. Certes, she is not yet feeble in mind, whatever she may be in body; but she’s a good, amiable, affectionate woman, and I have no fault to find with her, except in regard to her severe conditions about Milly, and her anxiety to get her home again. After all, it is not to be wondered at, for Milly is her only child; and I am quite sure if I had not gone to London, and made all sorts of promises to be extremely careful of Milly and personally take her home again, she never would have let her come at all. See, there is one of Milly’s favourite views,” said the laird, pulling up, and pointing with his whip to the scene in front, where a range of purple hills formed a fine background to the loch, with its foreground of tangle-covered stones; “she revels in depicting that sort of thing.”

Barret, after expressing his thorough approval of the young girl’s taste in the matter of scenery, asked if Milly’s delicate health was the cause of her mother’s anxiety.

“Delicate health!” exclaimed the laird. “Why, man, sylph-like though she appears, she has got the health of an Amazon. No, no, there’s nothing wrong with my niece, save in the imagination of my sister. We will stop at this cottage for a few minutes. I want to see one of my men, who is not very well.”

He pulled up at the door of a little stone hut by the roadside, which possessed only one small window and one chimney, the top of which consisted of an old cask, with the two ends knocked out. A bare-legged boy ran out of the hut to hold the horse.

“Is your brother better to-day?” asked the laird.

“No, sir; he’s jist the same.”

“Mind your head,” said the laird, as he stooped to pass the low doorway, and led his friend into the hut.

The interior consisted of one extremely dirty room, in which the confined air was further vitiated by tobacco smoke and the fumes of whisky. One entire side of it was occupied by two box-beds, in