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

and sometimes makes me ashamed of myself; but then it is true, and it is better for both of us that it should be known. I could not undertake to be a hypocrite all my life. I must confess to you, whatever be the consequences, that I distinctly made a mistake when I thought it was such an easy thing to adopt a whole new set of opinions and tastes and habits. The old Adam, as your Scotch ministers would say, keeps coming back, to jog my elbow as an old familiar friend. And you would not have me conceal the fact from you? I know how difficult it will be for you to understand or sympathize with me. You have never been brought up to a profession, every inch of your progress in which you have to contest against rivals; and you don't know how jealous one is of one's position when it is gained. I think I would rather be made an old woman or sixty to-morrow morning, than get up and go out and find my name printed in small letters in the theatre-bills. And if I try to imagine what my feelings would be if I were to retire from the stage, surely that is in your interest as well as mine. How would you like to be tied for life to a person who was continually looking back to her past career with regret, and who was continually looking around her for objects of jealous and envious anger? Really, I try to do my duty by everybody. All the time I was at Castle Dare I tried to picture myself living there, and taking an interest in the fishing, and the farms, and so on; and if I was haunted by the dread that, instead of thinking about the fishing and the farms, I should be thinking of the triumphs of the actress who had taken my place in the attention of the public, I had to recognize the fact. It is wretched and pitiable, no doubt; but look at my training. If you tell me to be true to myself--that is myself. And at all events I feel more contented that I have made a frank-confession."

Surely it was a fair and reasonable letter? But the answer that came to it had none of its pleasant common-sense. It was all a wild appeal--a calling on her not to fall away from the resolves she had made--not to yield to those despondent moods. There was but the one way to get rid of her doubts and hesitations; let her at once cast aside the theatre, and all its associations and malign influences, and become his wife, and he would take her by the hand and lead her away from that besetting temptation. Could she forget the day on which she gave him the red rose? She was a woman; she could not forget.

She folded up the letter and held it in her hand, and went into her father's room. There was a certain petulant and irritated look on her face.

"He says he is coming up to London, papa," said she, abruptly.

"I suppose you mean Sir Keith Macleod," said he.

"Well, of course. And can you imagine anything more provoking--just at present, when we are rehearsing this new play, and when all the time I can afford Mr. Lemuel wants for the portrait? I declare the only time I feel quiet, secure, safe from the interference of anybody, and more especially the worry of the postman, is when I am having that portrait painted; the intense stillness of the studio is delightful, and you have beautiful things all around you. As soon as I open the door, I come out into the world again, with constant vexations and apprehensions all around. Why, I don't know but that at any minute Sir Keith Macleod may not come walking up to the gate!"

"And why should that possibility keep you in terror?" said her father, calmly.

"Well, not in terror," said she, looking down, "but--but anxiety, at least; and a very great deal of anxiety. Because I know he will want explanations, and promises, and I don't know what--just at the time I am most worried and unsettled about everything I mean to do."

Her father regarded her for a second or two.

"Well?" said he.

"Isn't that enough?" she said, with some indignation.

"Oh," said he, coldly, "you have merely come to me to pour out your tale of wrongs. You don't want me to interfere, I suppose. Am I to condole with you?"

"I don't know why you should speak to me like that, at all events," said she.

"Well, I will tell you," he responded, in the same cool, matter of fact way. "When you told me you meant to give up the theatre and marry Sir Keith Macleod, my answer was that you were likely to make a mistake. I thought you were a fool to throw away your position as an actress; but I did not urge the point. I merely left the matter in your own hands. Well, you went your own way. For a time your head was filled with romance--Highland chieftains, and gillies, and red-deer, and baronial halls, and all that stuff; and no doubt you persuaded that young man that you believed in the whole thing fervently, and there was no end to the names you called theatres and everybody connected with them. Not only that, but you must needs drag me up to the Highlands to pay a visit to a number of strangers with whom both you and I lived on terms of apparent hospitality and goodwill, but in reality on terms of very great restraint. Very well. You begin to discover that your romance was a little bit removed from the actual state of affairs--at least, you say so--"

"I say so!" she exclaimed.

"Hear me out," the father said, patiently. "I don't want to offend you, Gerty, but I wish to speak plainly. You have an amazing faculty for making yourself believe anything that suits you. I have not the least doubt but that you have persuaded yourself that the change in your manner toward Keith Macleod was owing to your discovering that their way of life was different from what you expected; or perhaps that you still had a lingering fancy for the stage--anything you like. I say you could make yourself believe anything. But I must point out to you that any acquaintance of yours--an outsider--would probably look on the marked attentions Mr. Lemuel has been paying you; and on your sudden conversion to the art-theories of himself and his friends; and on the revival of your ambitious notions about tragedy--"

"You need say no more," said she, with her face grown quickly red, and with a certain proud impatience in her look.

"Oh, yes, but I mean to say more," her father said, quietly, "unless you wish to leave the room. I mean to say this--that when you have persuaded yourself somehow that you would rather reconsider your promise to Sir Keith Macleod--am I right?--that it does seem rather hard that you should grow ill-tempered with him and accuse him of being the author of your troubles and vexations. I am no great friend of his--I disliked his coming here at the outset; but I will say he is a manly young fellow, and I know he would not try to throw the blame of any change in his own sentiments on to some one else. And another thing I mean to say is--that your playing the part of the injured Griselda is not quite becoming, Gerty: at all events, I have no sympathy with it. If you come and tell me frankly that you have grown tired of Macleod, and wish somehow to break your promise to him, then I can advise you."

"And what would you advise, then," said she, with equal calmness, "supposing that you choose to throw all the blame on me."

"I would say that it is a woman's privilege to be allowed to change her mind; and that the sooner you told him so the better."

"Very simple!" she said, with a flavor of sarcasm in her tone. "Perhaps you don't know that man as I know him."

"Then you _are_ afraid of him?"

She was silent.

"These are certainly strange relations between two people who talk of getting married. But, in any case, he cannot suffocate you in a cave, for you live in London; and in London it is only an occasional young man about Shoreditch who smashes his sweetheart with a poker when she proposes to marry somebody else. He might, it is true, summon you for breach of promise; but he would prefer not to be laughed at. Come, come, Gerty, get rid of all this nonsense. Tell him frankly the position, and don't come bothering me with pretended wrongs and injuries."

"Do you think I ought to tell him?" said she, slowly.

"Certainly."

She went away and wrote to Macleod; but she did not wholly explain her position. She only begged once more for time to consider her own feelings. It would be better that he should not come just now to London. And if she were convinced, after honest and earnest questioning of herself, that she had not the courage and strength of mind necessary for the great change in her life she had proposed, would it not be better for his happiness and hers that the confession should be made?

Macleod did not answer that letter, and she grew alarmed. Several days elapsed. One afternoon, coming home from rehearsal, she saw a card lying on the tray on the hall-table.

"Papa," said she, with her face somewhat paler than usual, "Sir Keith Macleod is in London!"


CHAPTER XXXIX.


A CLIMAX.

She was alone in the drawing-room. She heard the bell ring, and the sound of some one being let in by the front door. Then there was a man's step in the passage outside. The craven heart grew still with dread.

But it was with a great gentleness that he came forward to her, and took both of her trembling hands, and said,--

"Gerty, you do not think that I have come to be angry with you--not that!"

He could not but see with those anxious, pained, tender eyes of his that she was very pale; and her heart was now beating so fast--after the first shock of fright--that for a second or two she could not answer him. She withdrew her hands. And all this time he was regarding her face with an eager, wistful intensity.

"It is--so strange--for me to see you again," said he, almost in a bewildered way. "The days have been very long without you--I had almost forgotten what you were like. And now--and now--oh, Gerty, you are not angry with me for troubling you?"

She withdrew a step and sat down.

"There is a chair," said she. He did not seem to understand what she meant. He was trying to read her thoughts in her eyes, in her manner, in the pale face; and his earnest gaze did not leave her for a moment.

"I know you must be greatly troubled and worried, Gerty; and--and I tried not to come; but your last letter was like the end of the world for me. I thought everything might go then. But then I said, 'Are you a man, and to be cast down by that? She is bewildered by some passing doubt; her mind is sick for the moment; you must go to her, and recall her, and awake her