Macleod of Dare by William Black (book club reads TXT) 📕

were like two young fawns in their careless play. Miss Carry, indeed, seemed bent on tantalizing him by the manner in which she petted and teased and caressed her sister--scolding her, quarrelling with her, and kissing her all at once. The grave, gentle, forbearing manner in which the elder sister bore all this was beautiful to see. And then her sudden concern and pity when the wild Miss Carry had succeeded in scratching her finger with the thorn of a rose-bush! It was the tiniest of scratches: and all the blood that appeared was about the size of a pin-head. But Miss White must needs tear up her dainty little pocket-handkerchief, and bind that grievous wound, and condole with the poor victim as though she were suffering untold agonies. It was a pretty sort of idleness. It seemed to harmonize with this still, beautiful summer day, and the soft green foliage around, and the still air that was sweet with the scent of the flowers of the lime-trees. They say that the Gaelic word for the lower regions _ifrin_, is derived from _i bhuirn_, the island of incessant rain. To a Highlander, therefore must not this land of perpetual summer and sunshine have seemed to be heaven itself?

And even the malicious Carry relented for a moment.

"You said you were going to the Zoological Gardens," she said.

"Yes," he answered, "I am. I have seen everything I want to see in London but that."

"Because Gerty and I might walk across the Park with you, and show you the way."

"I very much wish you would," said he, "if you have nothing better to do."

"I will see if papa does not want me," said Miss White, calmly. She might just as well be walking in Regent's Park as in this small garden.

Presently the three of them set out.

"I am glad of any excuse," she said, with a smile, "for throwing aside that new part. It seems to me insufferably stupid. It is very hard that you should be expected to make a character look natural when the words you have to speak are such as no human being would use in any circumstance whatever."

Oddly enough, he never heard her make even the slightest reference to her profession without experiencing a sharp twinge of annoyance. He did not stay to ask himself why this should be so. Ordinarily he simply made haste to change the subject.

"Then why should you take the part at all?" said he, bluntly.

"Once you have given yourself up to a particular calling--you must accept its little annoyances," she said, frankly. "I cannot have everything my own way. I have been very fortunate in other respects. I never had to go through the drudgery of the provinces, though they say that is the best school possible for an actress. And I am sure the money and the care papa has spent on my training--you see, he had no son to send to college. I think he is far more anxious about my succeeding than I am myself."

"But you have succeeded," said Macleod. It was, indeed, the least he could say, with all his dislike of the subject.

"Oh, I do not call that success," said she, simply. "That is merely pleasing people by showing them little scenes from their own drawing-rooms transferred to the stage. They like it because it is pretty and familiar. And people pretend to be very cynical at present--they like things with 'no nonsense about them;' and I suppose this son of comedy is the natural reaction from the rant of the melodrama. Still, if you happen to be ambitious--or perhaps it is mere vanity?--if you would like to try what is in you--"

"Gerty wants to be a Mrs. Siddons: that's it," said Miss Carry, promptly.

Talking to an actress about her profession, and not having a word of compliment to say? Instead, he praised the noble elms and chestnuts of the Park, the broad white lake, the flowers, the avenues. He was greatly interested by the whizzing by overhead of a brace of duck.

"I suppose you are very fond of animals?" Miss White said.

"I am indeed," said he, suddenly brightening up. "And up at our place I give them all a chance. I don't allow a single weasel or hawk to be killed, though I have a great deal of trouble about it. But what is the result? I don't know whether there is such a thing as the balance of nature, or whether it is merely that the hawks and weasels and other vermin kill off the sickly birds: but I do know that we have less disease among our birds than I hear of anywhere else. I have sometimes shot a weasel, it is true, when I have run across him as he was hunting a rabbit--you cannot help doing that if you hear the rabbit squealing with fright long before the weasel is at him--but it is against my rule. I give them all a fair field and no favor. But there are two animals I put out of the list; I thought there was only one till this week--now there are two; and one of them I hate, the other I fear."

"Fear?" she said: the slight flash of surprise in her eyes was eloquent enough. But he did not notice it.

"Yes," said he, rather gloomily. "I suppose it is superstition, or you may have it in your blood; but the horror I have of the eyes of a snake--I cannot tell you of it. Perhaps I was frightened when I was a child--I cannot remember; or perhaps it was the stories of the old women. The serpent is very mysterious to the people in the Highlands: they have stories of watersnakes in the lochs: and if you get a nest of seven adders with one white one, you boil the white one, and the man who drinks the broth knows all things in heaven and earth. In the Lewis they call the serpent _righinn_, that is, '_a princess;_' and they say that the serpent is a princess bewitched. But that is from fear--it is a compliment--"

"But surely there are no serpents to be afraid of in the Highlands?" said Miss White. She was looking rather curiously at him.

"No," said he, in the same gloomy way. "The adders run away from you if you are walking through the heather. If you tread on one, and he bites your boot, what then? He cannot hurt you. But suppose you are out after the deer, and you are crawling along the heather with your face to the ground, and all at once you see the two small eyes of an adder looking at you and close to you--"

He shuddered slightly--perhaps it was only an expression of disgust.

"I have heard," he continued, "that in parts of Islay they used to be so bad that the farmers would set fire to the heather in a circle, and as the heather burned in and in you could see the snakes and adders twisting and curling in a great ball. We have not many with us. But one day John Begg, that is the schoolmaster, went behind a rock to get a light for his pipe; and he put his head close to the rock to be out of the wind; and then he thought he stirred something with his cap; and the next moment the adder fell on to his shoulder, and bit him in the neck. He was half mad with the fright; but I think the adder must have bitten the cap first and expended its poison; for the schoolmaster was only ill for about two days, and then there was no more of it. But just think of it--an adder getting to your neck--"

"I would rather not think of it," she said, quickly. "What is the other animal--that you hate?"

"Oh!" he said, lightly, "that is a very different affair--that is a parrot that speaks. I was never shut up in the house with one till this week. My landlady's son brought her home one from the West Indies; and she put the cage in a window recess on my landing. At first it was a little amusing; but the constant yelp--it was too much for me. '_Pritty poal! pritty poal!_' I did not mind so much; but when the ugly brute, with its beady eyes and its black snout, used to yelp, '_Come and kiz me! come and kiz me!_' I grew to hate it. And in the morning, too, how was one to sleep? I used to open my door and fling a boot at it; but that only served for a time. It began again."

"But you speak of it as having been there. What became of it?"

He glanced at her rather nervously--like a schoolboy--and laughed.

"Shall I tell you?" he said, rather shamefacedly. "The murder will be out sooner or later. It was this morning. I could stand it no longer. I had thrown both my boots at it; it was no use. I got up a third time, and went out. The window, that looks into a back yard, was open. Then I opened the parrot's cage. But the fool of an animal did not know what I meant--or it was afraid--and so I caught him by the back of the neck and flung him out. I don't know anything more about him."

"Could he fly?" said the big-eyed Carry, who had been quite interested in this tragic tale.

"I don't know," Macleod said, modestly. "There was no use asking him. All he could say was, '_Come and kiz me;_' and I got tired of that."

"Then you have murdered him!" said the elder sister in an awestricken voice; and she pretended to withdraw a bit from him. "I don't believe in the Macleods having become civilized, peaceable people. I believe they would have no hesitation in murdering any one that was in their way."

"Oh, Miss White," said he, in protest, "you must forget what I told you about the Macleods; and you must really believe they were no worse than the others of the same time. Now I was thinking of another story the other day, which I must tell you--"

"Oh, pray, don't," she said, "if it is one of those terrible legends--"

"But I must tell you," said he, "because it is about the Macdonalds; and I want to show you that we had not all the badness of those times. It was Donald Gorm Mor; and his nephew Hugh Macdonald, who was the heir to the chieftainship, he got a number of men to join him in a conspiracy to have his uncle murdered. The chief found it out, and forgave him. That was not like a Macleod," he admitted, "for I never heard of a Macleod of those days forgiving anybody. But again Hugh Macdonald engaged in a conspiracy; and then Donald Gorm Mor thought he would put an end to the nonsense. What did he do? He put his nephew into a deep and foul dungeon--so the story says--and left him without food or water for a whole day. Then there was salt beef lowered into the dungeon; and Macdonald he devoured the salt beef; for he was starving with hunger. Then they left him alone. But you can imagine the thirst of a man who has been eating salt beef, and who has had no water for a day or two. He was mad with thirst. Then they lowered a cup into the dungeon--you may imagine the eagerness with which the poor fellow saw it coming