Part 8 (1/2)

”You will go on strange roads and take the man you need,” said the gipsy again.

Marcella glimpsed her splendid knight riding in at the gate with her, and the farm-yard ceased to be muddy and dirty and decayed; it became a palace courtyard, with glittering courtiers thronging round. It did not occur to her that the gipsy had heard the Lashcairn legend in the village--the most natural thing for a legend-loving gipsy to hear--she was accustomed to believing anything she was told, and that the gipsy's words confirmed her own longings made them seem true.

”I'm afraid there's not much chance of strange roads for me,” she said, looking out over the sea with beating heart to where a distant ribbon of smoke on the horizon showed a s.h.i.+p bound for far ports.

”When were you born?”

Marcella told her and, taking a little stick from under her shawl, the gipsy scratched strange signs in the mud.

”You were born under the protection of Virgo,” said the gipsy, and Marcella's eyes grew round and big. ”You will go by strange paths and take the man you need. There will be many to hurt you. Fire and flood shall be your companions; in wounding you will heal, in losing you will gain; your body will be a battle-ground.”

”Oh, but how can you know?” cried Marcella, and suddenly all those stern Rationalists she had read, Huxley and Frazer, Hegel and Kraill, all very bearded and elderly, all very much muddled together, pa.s.sed before her eyes. ”It seems so silly to think you can see from those scratchy marks what I am going to do in years and years and years.”

But as the gipsy went away, smiling wisely, and asking none of the usual pieces of silver, all the Kelt in Marcella, which believed things had no roots, came rus.h.i.+ng to the surface and sent her indoors to write down the gipsy's prophecy. Later, with a sense of mischievous amus.e.m.e.nt she rummaged in the book-room to find one of the Rationalist books. But they had been sold, most of them. Professor Kraill's ”Questing Cells” was there and she copied the prophecy into it, on the fly-leaf.

”Talk about a battle-ground!” she said, smiling reflectively. ”Professor Kraill and a gipsy!”

She turned several pages, and once more got the feel of the book, though still much of it was Greek to her. Then she got down from the window seat, for her aunt was calling her to tea, and she was hungry.

There was an unusual pot of jam on the table. She looked at it in surprise as she sat down.

”That is some of Mrs. Mactavish's bramble jelly that she sent up for the funeral; I thought we'd not be needing it just then. But now I see it's beginning to get mildewed. So it'll need to be eaten before it's wasted,” said Aunt Janet, peeling off the top layer of furry green mould and handing the pot to Marcella.

”Oh I do love bramble jelly,” she cried, pa.s.sing it to Jean, who always ate with them in the good old feudal fas.h.i.+on, right at the foot of the long table. Jean took a small helping and so did Aunt Janet. After a while Marcella peered into the pot again.

”Shall we finish it up, Aunt?” she asked, and Aunt Janet shrugged her shoulders.

”To-day or to-morrow, what's the difference? Do you really like it so much as that?” she added, watching the girl curiously.

”I love it! Bramble jelly and seed cake! What do you think, Aunt? When I get very old and die, Mrs. Mactavish and Jock's wife will be in heaven already, brought for the purpose by the Angel Gabriel, and they'll make bramble jelly and seed cake for the love feast for me!” she said, eating a spoonful without spreading it on oatcake, encouraged by her aunt's unwonted extravagance. ”I can't be philosophical about bramble jelly!”

Aunt Janet watched the girl as though she could not believe in anything so sincere as this love of sweet things. Then she said a little sadly:

”There's not a thing on earth that I want or love.”

”Because you've ruled yourself out of everything! I love to want things because always they may be just round the corner. And if they aren't, there's the fun of thinking they are. And always there's another corner after the last one. I'd rather _die_ of hungriness than never be hungry.”

”Oh, you'll die of hungriness, I expect. That is, if you're lucky,” said Aunt Janet. ”I shall just drop out of life some day.”

Suddenly time gave a sharp leap forward and Marcella saw herself sitting there as Aunt Janet was sitting, a dead soul in a dulled body, waiting to drop out of life. The words of Wullie and the gipsy slid into her mind--”they go on strange roads”--and she got a swift vision of herself in armour riding out gaily along a strange road with her knight beside her. Elbowing that out came something she had seen that had amazed her a few days ago. In the evenings she and Aunt Janet sat in the book-room, into which they had taken a little table of Rose's and a few chairs.

Beside the fire-place had been one of those ancient presses in which the old farmer had kept his whisky, his pipes and his account books. When the man from Christy's came to buy the furniture he had noticed the beautifully carved oak doors of the press and offered such a tempting sum for them that Aunt Janet had let them go, nailing a piece of old crested tapestry across the press to hide her books and needlework inside. They usually sat there together, Marcella reading or dreaming, Aunt Janet sewing or sitting listless, not even dreaming. But into Marcella's dreams had come frequent movements of her aunt's hand going in behind the curtain. Several times when she had spoken to her, Aunt Janet had waited a few seconds before answering, and then had spoken in a queerly m.u.f.fled voice. One day, looking in the cupboard for needle and cotton, Marcella had seen a big paper bag full of sweets--a thing she had not seen at the farm since her mother died. They were acid drops; she took one or two and meant to ask her aunt for some in the evening when they sat together. But she forgot until, falling into one of her dreams and staring in the fire, she noticed her aunt take something almost slyly from the cupboard and put in her mouth behind the cover of her book, glancing at her furtively as she did so. The amazing fact that she was eating the acid drops secretly came into her mind and she sat trying to reason it out for some minutes.

”Mean thing--she doesn't want me to have any,” was her first thought which she dismissed a moment later as she remembered certain very distinct occasions when her aunt had been anything but mean, times when she had deliberately stayed away from a scanty meal that the others should have more--little sacrifices that Marcella was only just beginning to understand.

”I don't believe she's mean--anyway, I _know_ she isn't. I believe she doesn't have half enough to eat and these sweets make up for it! Or else--she likes sweets frightfully and doesn't want me to know she's so--so kiddish.”

Quick tears had sprung into Marcella's eyes, tears of pity and of impotence as she wondered what on earth she could do for Aunt Janet.

After a while, when she was quite sure the acid drop was swallowed, and no other had taken its place, she knelt down on the hearth and, after a minute, shyly drew herself over to her aunt's side.

”Aunt Janet,” she said, taking one of the thin blue-veined hands in hers, ”Auntie--”