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

cannot have patience with it. I am coming to London, Gerty."

"Oh, very well, Keith," said she, with an affectation of cheerful content; "then there is no use in our taking a solemn good-by just now--is there? You know how I hate scenes. And we shall part very good friends, shall we not? And when you come to London, we shall make up all our little differences, and have everything on a clear understanding. Is it a bargain? Here comes your cousin Janet--now show her that we are good friends, Keith! And, for goodness' sake, don't say that you mean to give up your shooting this year, or she will wonder what I have made of you. Give up your shooting! Why, a woman would as soon give up her right of being incomprehensible and whimsical and capricious--her right of teasing people, as I very much fear I have been teasing you, Keith. But it will be all set right when you come to London."

And from that moment to the moment of her departure Miss White seemed to breathe more freely, and she took less care to avoid Keith Macleod in her daily walks and ways. There was at last quite a good understanding between them, as the people around imagined.


CHAPTER XXXVIII.


AFRAID.

But the very first thing she did on reaching home again was to write to Macleod begging him to postpone his visit to London. What was the use? The company of which she formed a part was most probably going on an autumn tour; she was personally very busy. Surely it would not much interest him to be present at the production of a new piece in Liverpool?

And then she pointed out to him that, as she had her duties and occupations, so ought he to have. It was monstrous his thought of foregoing the shooting that year. Why, if he wanted some additional motive, what did he say to preserving as much grouse-plumage as would trim a cloak for her? It was a great pity that the skins of so beautiful a bird should be thrown away. And she desired him to present her kind regards to Lady Macleod and to Miss Macleod; and to thank them both for their great kindness.

Immediately after writing that letter Miss White seemed to grow very light-hearted indeed, and she laughed and chatted with Carry, and was exceedingly affectionate toward her sister.

"And what do you think of your own home now, Gerty?" said Miss Carry, who had been making some small experiments in arrangement.

"You mean, after my being among the savages?" said she. "Ah, it is too true, Carry. I have seen them in their war-paint; and I have shuddered at their spears; and I have made voyages in their canoes. But it is worth while going anywhere and doing anything in order to come back and experience such a sense of relief and quiet. Oh, what a delicious cushion! where did you get it, Carry?"

She sank back in the rocking-chair out on this shaded veranda. It was the slumbering noontide of a July day the foliage above and about the Regent's Canal hung motionless in the still sunlight; and there was a perfume of roses in the air. Here, at last, was repose. She had said that her notion of happiness was to be let alone; and--now that she had despatched that forbidding letter--she would be able to enjoy a quiet and languor free from care.

"Aha, Gerty, don't you know?" said the younger sister. "Well, I suppose, you poor creature, you don't know--you have been among the tigers and crocodiles so long. That cushion is a present from Mr. Lemuel to me--to me, mind, not to you--and he brought it all the way from Damascus some years ago. Oh, Gerty, if I was only three years older, shouldn't I like to be your rival, and have a fight with you for him!"

"I don't know what you mean," said the elder sister, sharply.

"Oh, don't you! Poor, innocent thing! Well, I am not going to quarrel with you this time, for at last you are showing some sense. How you ever could have thought of Mr. Howson, or Mr. Brook, or you know whom--I never could imagine; but here is some one now whom people have heard of--some one with fame like yourself--who will understand you. Oh Gerty, hasn't he lovely eyes?"

"Like a gazelle," said the other. "You know what Mr. ---- said--that he never met the appealing look of Mr. Lemuel's eyes without feeling in his pockets for a biscuit."

"He wouldn't say anything like that about you, Gerty," Carry said reproachfully.

"Who wouldn't?"

"Mr. Lemuel."

"Oh, Carry, don't you understand that I am so glad to be allowed to talk nonsense? I have been all strung up lately--like the string of a violin. Everything _au grand serieux_ I want to be idle, and to chat, and to talk nonsense. Where did you get that bunch of stephanotis?"

"Mr. Lemuel brought it last evening. He knew you were coming home to-day. Oh Gerty, do you know I have seen your portrait, though it isn't finished yet; and you look--you look like an inspired prophetess. I never saw anything so lovely!"

"Indeed!" said Miss White, with a smile; but she was pleased.

"When the public see that, they will know what you are really like, Gerty--instead of buying your photograph in a shop from a collection of ballet-dancers and circus women. That is where you ought to be--in the Royal Academy: not in a shop-window with any mountebank. Oh, Gerty, do you know who is your latest rival in the stationers' windows? The woman who dresses herself as a mermaid and swims in a transparent tank, below water--Fin-fin they call her. I suppose you have not been reading the newspapers?"

"Not much."

"There is a fine collection for you upstairs. And there is an article about you in the _Islington Young Men's Improvement Association_. It is signed _Trismegistus_. Oh, it is beautiful, Gerty--quite full of poetry! It says you are an enchantress striking the rockiest heart, and a well of pure emotion springs up. It says you have the beauty of Mrs. Siddons and the genius of Rachel."

"Dear me!"

"Ah, you don't half believe in yourself, Gerty," said the younger sister, with a critical air. "It is the weak point about you. You depreciate yourself, and you make light of other people's belief in you. However, you can't go against your own genius. That is too strong for you. As soon as you get on the stage, then you forget to laugh at yourself."

"Really, Carry, has papa been giving you a lecture about me?"

"Oh, laugh away? but you know it is true. And a woman like you--you were going to throw yourself away on a--"

"Carry! There are some things that are better not talked about," said Gertrude White, curtly, as she rose and went indoors.

Miss White betook herself to her professional and domestic duties with much alacrity and content, for she believed that by her skill as a letter-writer she could easily ward off the importunities of her too passionate lover. It is true that at times, and in despite of her playful evasion, she was visited by a strange dread. However far away, the cry of a strong man in his agony had something terrible in it. And what was this he wrote to her in simple and calm words?--

"Are our paths diverging, Gerty? and if that is so, what will be the end of it for me and for you? Are you going away from me? After all that has passed, are we to be separated in the future, and you will go one way and I must go the other way, with all the world between us, so that I shall never see you again? Why will you not speak? You hint of lingering doubts and hesitations. Why have you not the courage to be true to yourself--to be true to your woman's heart--to take your life in your own hands, and shape it so that it shall be worthy of you?"

Well, she did speak in answer to this piteous prayer. She was a skilful letter-writer:

"It may seem very ungrateful in an actress, you know, dear Keith, to contest the truth of anything said by Shakespeare; but I don't think, with all humility, there ever was so much nonsense put into so small a space as there is in these lines that everybody quotes at your head--


"To thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man."


"'Be true to yourself,' people say to you. But surely every one who is conscious of failings, and deceitfulness, and unworthy instincts, would rather try to be a little better than himself? Where else would there be any improvement, in an individual or in society? You have to fight against yourself, instead of blindly yielding to your wish of the moment. I know I, for one, should not like to trust myself. I wish to be better than I am--to be other than I am--and I naturally look around for help and guidance. Then, you find people recommending you absolutely diverse ways of life, and with all show of authority and reason, too; and in such an important matter ought not one to consider before making a final choice?"

Miss White's studies in mental and moral science, as will readily be perceived, had not been of a profound character. But he did not stay to detect the obvious fallacy of her argument. It was all a maze of words to him. The drowning man does not hear questions addressed to him. He only knows that the waters are closing over him, and there is no arm stretched out to save.

"I do not know myself for two minutes together," she wrote. "What is my present mood, for example? Why, one of absolute and ungovernable hatred--hatred of the woman who would take my place if I were to retire from the stage. I have been thinking of it all the morning--picturing myself as an unknown nonentity, vanished from the eyes of the public, in a social grave. And I have to listen to people praising the new actress; and I have to read columns about her in the papers; and I am unable to say, 'Why, all that and more was written and said about me!' What has an actress to show for herself if once she leaves the stage? People forget her the next day; no record is kept of her triumphs. A painter, now, who spends years of his life in earnest study--it does not matter to him whether the public applaud or not, whether they forget or not. He has always before him these evidences of his genius; and among his friends he can choose his fit audience. Even when he is an old man, and listening to the praise of all the young fellows who have caught the taste of the public, he can, at all events, show something of his work as testimony of what he was. But an actress, the moment she leaves the stage, is a snuffed-out candle. She has her stage-dresses to prove that she acted certain parts; and she may have a scrap-book with cuttings of criticisms from the provincial papers! You know, dear Keith, all this is very heart-sickening; and I am quite aware that it will trouble you, as it troubles me,