Read Ebook: Der Moloch by Wassermann Jakob

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Ebook has 936 lines and 34951 words, and 19 pages

Desirous of getting away alike from his observation and vicinity, Mary lifted her line in haste, but, alas! it was caught by the root of a silver birch, which held it fast a little beneath the water, and from which, after drawing off her gloves, she sought in vain to disentangle it. Here was a dilemma.

'Permit me?' said the stranger, planting his rod in the turf, and lifting his hat as he came towards her. He at once succeeded in releasing her hook and line, while Jack at once fraternised with him.

'Thanks--thank you so much,' said Mary, colouring a little, as she quickly wound the line up, and with a bow passed on to a part of the stream some yards further down; the stranger had looked at her shapely white hand, as if he longed to take it within his own, and, as if by magnetism, was strongly attracted towards it.

But Mary--who intended to catch just one more fish--had barely resumed her operations before a most unforeseen mishap occurred to her. After a 'spate,' the water of the May is often dark in some places, and to reach a pool wherein she knew by past experience some fine trout were sure to be lurking, by the assistance of a stone she reached a flat boulder fully six feet from the bank, but her foot--light thought it was--had barely left the former ere it turned over in the current and vanished, leaving her isolated amid the stream, whereat her terrier yelped and barked furiously.

The distance was too great for her to leap; moreover, the bank was steep there, and to fall would end in a complete immersion, and, gathering her skirts above her little booted feet, she looked around her with a comical air of perplexity and dismay, which her companion of the rod was not slow to perceive, and again he instantly approached, but this time with an absolute smile rippling all over his face.

'You cannot leap this distance without risk, and so must permit me to assist you again,' said he, stepping at once into the water, which rose midway up his long fishing-boots. He put an arm round her--a strong arm she felt it to be--and at once lifted her to the bank.

'I have to thank you again, sir,' said Mary, blushing in earnest now.

'I am so glad that I was within sight--you were quite in a scrape, perched on that fragment of rock, with the dark water eddying round you,' said he, again lifting his hat; 'but perhaps you can repay me by indicating the nearest path to Craigmhor?'

Mary did so, on which, still lingering near, he remarked,

'And so these are the Birks of Invermay, so famed in Scottish song, and story, too, I believe? It is indeed a lovely spot!'

'Lovely, indeed,' replied Mary, as the praise of her native glen went straight to her heart; 'even we, who live here all the year round, never tire of its beauty.'

'But I only know the May,' replied Mary, taking her rod to pieces as a hint that she was about to withdraw, on which the stranger began to do the same.

'I have fished for trout in many places--even in the Lake of Geneva,' said he, 'and, curiously enough, the fish there are precisely the same as those in Lough Neagh in Ireland.'

'In weather so clear and light as this--even after flood--it is no easy task to lure them to destruction here,' replied Mary, 'and a light enough basket is often carried home, even from the best parts of the stream.'

'Such has been my fortune to-day,' said he, as he quietly proceeded by her side; but now Mary remembered that the path she had indicated to him as leading to Craigmhor was also the one she had to pursue to reach Birkwoodbrae.

'Our May trout are very beautiful, and are as good in quality as in appearance,' remarked Mary, scarcely knowing what to say.

'I hope you do not venture to such places as this in winter,' said he, pointing to some rocks that overhung the shaded stream.

'Why?' asked Mary, laughing.

'Because, when the water freezes--as I suppose it does--and these rocks are covered with snow, there must be danger.'

'I fear you look at them with a Londoner's eyes.'

'I am a Londoner--in one fashion--Captain Colville of the Guards.'

'Oh, I do not fear the snow,' said Mary; 'I have been up on the summit of yonder hill when it was covered deep with snow,' she added, pointing to a spur of the Ochils, while her eyes kindled, for under the shadow of those mountains she was born; 'but I was only a child then.'

'And what object took you up at such a time, may I ask?'

'To save a wee pet lamb, that else must have perished in the snow.'

'And did you carry it down?'

'Yes--of course.'

'We call that place Crow Court,' said Mary.

'Why?' he asked.

'Because sometimes in summer the crows collect there in such numbers that the green hillside is blackened with them, as if they had all been summoned for the occasion; and sometimes they have been known to wait for a day or two while other crows were winging their way hither from every quarter of the sky. Then a great clamour and noise ensue among them, and the whole will fall upon one or two crows that have been guilty of something, and after picking and rending them to death they disperse in flights as they came.'

The Guardsman knew not what to make of this bit of natural history, and could only stroke his moustache again.

Something in this girl's sweet but determined profile--something in the freshness of her character, and her slightly grave manner, as that of one already accustomed, but gently, to rule others, had a strange charm for Leslie Colville--for such was his name--though he was evidently a man accustomed to the ways of West-End belles and Belgravian mammas. Yet this girl never flattered him even by a smile, and her violet-blue eyes met his keen dark hazel ones as calmly as if their sexes were reversed, while her whole manner had the provoking indifference and the conscious air of self-possession which can only be acquired in the best society; and yet, to his very critical eye, her costume was rather unsuited to the atmosphere of Regent Street and Tyburnia, being extremely plain, and destitute of every accessory in the way of brooch, bracelet, ring, or even the inevitable bow.

To him it seemed quite refreshing to talk to a girl who, with all her loveliness, evidently seemed not to know how to flirt or even think about it.

'I must now bid you good-morning,' said Mary, on reaching a hedge-bordered path that led to her home.

'What is the name of that house so charmingly embosomed among birches?' he asked.

'Birkwoodbrae.'

'Birkwoodbrae--indeed!' he repeated, with a start that Mary detected, but believed it to be simulated, and felt somewhat offended in consequence.

'The name seems to interest you,' said she, coldly, almost with hauteur.

'Do you reside there?' he asked, while regarding her so curiously that Mary felt her natural colour deepen.

'Yes, and have done so since my father's death,' and, bowing again, she quickly withdrew, while he, with hat in hand, looked after her.

'These are the last trout we shall have for a time--of my own fishing at least, Ellinor,' said Mary, as she relieved herself of the basket and told of the forenoon adventures.

'Why?'

'I should think not,' replied Ellinor, laughing at her sister's unusual air of annoyance.

But the sisters had not heard the last of Captain Leslie Colville.

THE INTRODUCTION.

A day or two after the rencontre we have narrated, when the sisters were quietly reading in their little drawing-room, the curtained windows of which opened to the lovely glen, through which May flows, visitors were announced--two strangers and their old friend the parish minister.

The latter entered, hat in hand, with the cheery confidence of one who knew he was welcome, saying,

'My dear girls, allow me to introduce two new friends--Captain Colville and Sir Redmond Sleath--Miss Wellwood--Miss Ellinor Wellwood.'

A few well-bred bows, with the subsequent inevitable remarks about the weather followed, and as all seated themselves, Dr. Wodrow said,

'We have had a long ramble by the Linn, and even as far as the King's Haugh, and have just dropped in to have a cup of afternoon tea, my dears.'

Mary sweetly gave a smile of welcome and assent, as her hand went to the bell.

The old minister, who knew that for reasons yet to be explained, Captain Colville was anxious to see once more the fair girl whom he had met and succoured by Mayside, had artfully arranged the proper introduction, which had now come to pass, and the end of which he--good, easy, and unthinking man--could little then foresee.

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