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

is at the open gangway: and, at the top of the iron steps, there is only one Macleod sees--all in white and blue--and he has caught her eyes--at last! at last!

He seized the rope and sprang up the iron ladder.

"Welcome to you, sweetheart!" said he, in a low voice, and his trembling hand grasped hers.

"How do you, Keith?" said she. "Must we go down these steps?"

He had no time to wonder over the coldness--the petulance almost--of her manner: for he had to get both father and daughter safely conducted into the stern of the boat; and their luggage had to be got in; and he had to say a word or two to the steward; and finally he had to hand down some loaves of bread to the man next him, who placed them in the bottom of the boat.

"The commissariat arrangements are primitive," said Mr. White, in an undertone, to his daughter; but she made no answer to his words or his smile. But, indeed, even if Macleod had overheard, he would have taken no shame to himself that he had secured a supply of white bread for his guests. Those who had gone yachting with Macleod--Major Stuart, for example, or Norman Ogilvie--had soon learned not to despise their host's highly practical acquaintance with tinned meats, pickles, condensed milk, and suchlike things. Who was it had proposed to erect a monument to him for his discovery of the effect of introducing a leaf of lettuce steeped in vinegar between the folds of a sandwich?

Then he jumped down into the boat again; and the great steamer steamed away; and the men struck their oars into the water.

"We will soon take you ashore now," said he, with a glad light on his face; but so excited was he that he could scarcely get the tiller-ropes right; and certainly he knew not what he was saying. And as for her--why was she so silent after the long separation? Had she no word at all for the lover who had so hungered for her coming?

And then Donald, perched high at the bow, broke away into his wild welcome of her; and there was a sound now louder than the calling of the sea birds and the rushing of the seas. And if the English lady knew that this proud and shrill strain had been composed in honor of her, would it not bring some color of pleasure to the pale face? So thought Donald at least; and he had his eyes fixed on her as he played as he had never played before that day. And if she did not know the cunning modulations and the clever fingering, Macleod knew them, and the men knew them; and after they got ashore they would say to him,--

"Donald, that was a good pibroch you played for the English lady."

But what was the English lady's thanks? Donald had not played over sixty seconds when she turned to Macleod and said,--

"Keith I wish you would stop him. I have a headache."

And so Macleod called out at once, in the lad's native tongue. But Donald could not believe this thing, though he had seen the strange lady turn to Sir Keith. And he would have continued had not one of the men turned to him and said,--

"Donald, do you not hear? Put down the pipes."

For an instant the lad looked dumbfounded; then he slowly took down the pipes from his shoulder and put them beside him, and then he turned his face to the bow, so that no one should see the tears of wounded pride that had sprung to his eyes. And Donald said no word to any one till they got ashore; and he went away by himself to Castle Dare, with his head bent down and his pipes under his arm; and when he was met at the door by Hamish, who angrily demanded why he was not down at the quay with his pipes, he only said,--

"There is no need of me or my pipes any more at Dare; and it is somewhere else that I will now go with my pipes."

But meanwhile Macleod was greatly concerned to find his sweetheart so cold and distant; and it was all in vain that he pointed out to her the beauties of this summer day--that he showed her the various islands he had often talked about, and called her attention to the skarts sitting on the Erisgeir rocks, and asked her--seeing that she sometimes painted a little in water-color--whether she noticed the peculiar, clear, intense, and luminous blue of the shadows in the great cliffs which they were approaching. Surely no day could have been more auspicious for her coming to Dare?

"The sea did not make you ill?" he said.

"Oh no," she answered; and that was true enough, though it had produced in her agonizing fears of becoming ill which had somewhat ruffled her temper. And besides, she had a headache. And then she had a nervous fear of small boats.

"It is a very small boat to be out in the open sea," she remarked, looking at the long and shapely gig that was cleaving the summer waves.

"Not on a day like this, surely," said he, laughing. "But we will make a good sailor of you before you leave Dare, and you will think yourself safer in a boat like this than in a big steamer. Do you know that the steamer you came in, big as it is, draws only five feet of water?"

If he had told her that the steamer drew five tons of coal she could just as well have understood him. Indeed, she was not paying much attention to him. She had an eye for the biggest of the waves that were running by the side of the white boat.

But she plucked up her spirits somewhat on getting ashore; and she made the prettiest of little courtesies to Lady Macleod; and she shook hands with Major Stuart, and gave him a charming smile; and she shook hands with Janet, too, whom she regarded with a quick scrutiny. So this was the cousin that Keith Macleod was continually praising?

"Miss White has a headache, mother," Macleod said, eager to account beforehand for any possible constraint in her manner. "Shall we send for the pony?"

"Oh no," Miss White said, looking up at the bare walls of Dare. "I shall be very glad to have a short walk now--unless you, papa, would like to ride?"

"Certainly not--certainly not," said Mr. White, who had been making a series of formal remarks to Lady Macleod about his impressions of the scenery of Scotland.

"We will get you a cup of tea," said Janet Macleod, gently, to the new-comer, "and you will lie down for a little time, and I hope the sound of the waterfall will not disturb you. It is a long way you have come: and you will be very tired, I am sure."

"Yes, it is a pretty long way," she said; but she wished this over-friendly woman would not treat her as if she were a spoiled child. And no doubt they thought, because she was English, she could not walk up to the farther end of that fir-wood?

So they all set out for Castle Dare; and Macleod was now walking--as many a time he had dreamed of his walking--with his beautiful sweetheart; and there were the very ferns that he thought she would admire; and here the very point in the fir-wood where he would stop her and ask her to look out on the blue sea, with Inch Kenneth, and Ulva, and Staffa, all lying in the sunlight, and the razor-fish of land--Coll and Tiree--at the horizon. But instead of being proud and glad, he was almost afraid. He was so anxious that everything should please her that he dared scarce bid her look at anything. He had himself superintended the mending of the steep path; but even now the recent rains had left some puddles. Would she not consider the moist, warm odors of this larch-wood as too oppressive?

"What is that?" she said, suddenly.

There was a sound far below them of the striking of oars in the water, and another sound of one or two men monotonously chanting a rude sort of chorus.

"They are taking the gig on to the yacht," he said.

"But what are they singing?"

"Oh, that is _Fhir a bhata_" said he; "it is the common boat-song. It means, _Good-by to you, boatman, a hundred times, wherever you may be going._"

"It is very striking, very effective, to hear singing and not see the people," she said. "It is the very prettiest introduction to a scene; I wonder it is not oftener used. Do you think they could write me down the words and music of that song?"

"Oh no, I think not," said he, with a nervous laugh. "But you will find something like it, no doubt, in your book."

So they passed on through the plantation; and at last they came to an open glade; and here was a deep chasm spanned by a curious old bridge of stone almost hidden by ivy; and there was a brawling stream dashing down over the rocks and flinging spray all over the briers, and queen of the meadow, and foxgloves on either bank.

"That is very pretty," said she; and then he was eager to tell her that this little glen was even more beautiful when the rowan-trees showed their rich clusters of scarlet berries.

"Those bushes there, you mean," said she. "The mountain-ash?"

"Yes."

"Ah," she said, "I never see those scarlet berries without wishing I was a dark woman. If my hair were black, I would wear nothing else in it."

By this time they had climbed well up the cliff; and presently they came on the open plateau on which stood Castle Dare, with its gaunt walls and its rambling courtyards, and its stretch of damp lawn with a few fuchsia-bushes and orange-lilies, that did not give a very ornamental look to the place.

"We have had heavy rains of late," he said, hastily; he hoped the house and its surroundings did not look too dismal.

And when they went inside and passed through the sombre dining-hall, with its huge fireplace, and its dark weapons, and its few portraits dimly visible in the dusk, he said,--

"It is very gloomy in the daytime; but it is more cheerful at night."

And when they reached the small drawing-room he was anxious to draw her attention away from the antiquated furniture and the nondescript decoration by taking her to the window and showing her the great breadth of the summer sea, with the far islands, and the brown-sailed boat of the Gometra men coming back from Staffa. But presently in came Janet, and would take the fair stranger away to her room; and was as attentive to her as if the one were a great princess, and the other a meek serving-woman. And by and by Macleod, having seen his other guest provided for, went into the library and shut himself in, and sat down, in a sort of stupor. He could almost have imagined that the whole business of the morning was a dream; so strange did it seem to him that Gertrude White should be living and breathing under the same roof with himself.

Nature herself seemed to have conspired with Macleod to welcome and charm this fair guest. He had often spoken to her of the sunsets that shone