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

to herself; and you will see her laugh again!' And so I am here, Gerty; and if I am troubling you at a bad time--well, it is only for a moment or two; and you will not mind that? You and I are so different, Gerty! You are all-perfect. You do not want the sympathy of any one. You are satisfied with your own thinkings; you are a world to yourself. But I cannot live without being in sympathy with you. It is a craving--it is like a fire--Well, I did not come here to talk about myself."

"I am sorry you took so much trouble," she said, in a low voice--and there was a nervous restraint in her manner. "You might have answered my letter, instead."

"Your letter!" he exclaimed. "Why Gerty, I could not talk to the letter. It was not yourself. It was no more part of yourself than a glove. You will forget that letter, and all the letters that ever you wrote; let them go away like the leaves of former autumns that are quite forgotten; and instead of the letters, be yourself--as I see you now--proud-spirited and noble--my beautiful Gerty--my wife!"

He make a step forward and caught her hand. She did not see that there were sudden tears in the imploring eyes. She only knew that this vehemence seemed to suffocate her.

"Keith," said she, and she gently disengaged her hand, "will you sit down, and we can talk over this matter calmly, if you please; but I think it would have been better if you left us both to explain ourselves in writing. It is difficult to say certain things without giving pain--and you know I don't wish to do that--"

"I know," said he, with an absent look on his face; and he took the chair she had indicated, and sat down beside her; and now he was no longer regarding her eyes.

"It is quite true that you and I are different," said she, with a certain resolution in her tone, as if she was determined to get through with a painful task--"very seriously different in everything--in our natures, and habits, and opinions, and all the rest of it. How we ever became acquainted I don't know; I am afraid it was not a fortunate accident for either of us. Well--"

Here she stopped. She had not prepared any speech; and she suddenly found herself without a word to say, when words, words, words were all she eagerly wanted in order to cover her retreat. And as for him, he gave her no help. He sat silent--his eyes downcast--a tired and haggard look on his face.

"Well," she resumed, with a violent effort, "I was saying, perhaps we made a mistake in our estimates of each other. That is a very common thing; and sometimes people find out in time, and sometimes they don't. I am sure you agree with me, Keith?"

"Oh yes, Gerty," he answered, absently.

"And then--and then--I am quite ready to confess that I may have been mistaken about myself; and I am afraid you encouraged the mistake. You know, I am quite sure, I am not the heroic person you tried to make me believe I was. I have found myself out, Keith; and just in time before making a terrible blunder. I am very glad that it is myself I have to blame. I have got very little resolution. 'Unstable as water'--that is the phrase: perhaps I should not like other people to apply it to me; but I am quite ready to apply it to myself; for I know it to be true; and it would be a great pity if any one's life were made miserable through my fault. Of course, I thought for a time that I was a very courageous and resolute person--you flattered me into believing it; but I have found myself out since. Don't you understand, Keith?"

He gave a sign of assent; his silence was more embarrassing than any protest or appeal.

"Oh, I could choose such a wife for you, Keith!--a wife worthy of you--a woman as womanly as you are manly; and I can think of her being proud to be your wife, and how all the people who came to your house would admire and love her--"

He looked up in a bewildered way.

"Gerty," he said, "I don't quite know what it is you are speaking about. You are speaking as if some strange thing had come between us; and I was to go one way, and you another, through all the years to come. Why, that is all nonsense! See! I can take your hand--that is the hand that gave me the red rose. You said you loved me, then; you cannot have changed already. I have not changed. What is there that would try to separate us? Only words, Gerty!--a cloud of words humming round the ears and confusing one. Oh, I have grown heart-sick of them in your letters, Gerty; until I put the letters away altogether, and I said, 'They are no more than the leaves of last autumn: when I see Gerty, and take her hand, all the words will disappear then.' Your hand is not made of words, Gerty; it is warm and kind, and gentle--it is a woman's hand. Do you think words are able to make me let go my grasp of it? I put them away--I do not hear any more of them. I only know that you are beside me, Gerty; and I hold your hand!"

He was no longer the imploring lover: there was a strange elation, a sort of triumph, in his tone.

"Why, Gerty, do you know why I have come to London? It is to carry you off--not with the pipes yelling to drown your screams, as Flora Macdonald's mother was carried off by her lover, but taking you by the hand, and waiting for the smile on your face. That is the way out of all our troubles, Gerty: we shall be plagued with no more words then. Oh, I understand it all, sweetheart--your doubts of yourself, and your thinking about the stage: it is all a return of the old and evil influences that you and I thought had been shaken off forever. Perhaps that was a little mistake; but no matter. You will shake them off now, Gerty. You will show yourself to have the courage of a woman. It is but one step, and you are free! Gerty," said he, with a smile on his face, "do you know what that is?"

He took from his pocket a printed document, and opened it. Certain words there that caught her eye caused her to turn even paler than she had been; and she would not even touch the paper. He put it back.

"Are you frightened, sweetheart? No! You will take this one step, and you will see how all those fancies and doubts will disappear forever! Oh, Gerty, when I got this paper into my pocket to-day, and came out into the street, I was laughing to myself; and a poor woman said, 'You are very merry, sir; will you give a poor old woman a copper?' 'Well,' I said, 'here is a sovereign for you, and perhaps you will be merry too?'--and I would have given every one a sovereign, if I had had it to give. But do you know what I was laughing at?--I was laughing to think what Captain Macallum would do when you went on board as my wife. For he put up the flags for you when you were only a visitor coming to Dare; but when I take you by the hand, Gerty, as you are going along the gangway, and when we get on to the paddle-box, and Captain Macallum comes forward, and when I tell him that you are now my wife, why, he will not know what to do to welcome you! And Hamish, too--I think Hamish will go mad that day. And then, sweetheart, you will go along to Erraidh, and you will go up to the signal-house on the rocks, and we will fire a cannon to tell the men at Dubh-Artach to look out. And what will be the message you will signal to them, Gerty, with the great white boards? Will you send them your compliments, which is the English way? Ah, but I know what they will answer to you. They will answer in the Gaelic; and this will be the answer that will come to you from the lighthouse--'_A hundred thousand welcomes to the young bride!_' And you will soon learn the Gaelic, too; and you will get used to our rough ways: and you will no longer have any fear of the sea. Some day you will get so used to us that you will think the very sea-birds to be your friends, and that they know when you are going away and when you are coming back, and that they know you will not allow any one to shoot at them or steal their eggs in the springtime. But if you would rather not have our rough ways, Gerty, I will go with you wherever you please--did I not say that to you, sweetheart? There are many fine houses in Essex--I saw them when I went down to Woodford with Major Stuart. And for your sake I would give up the sea altogether; and I would think no more about boats; and I would go to Essex with you if I was never to see one of the sea-birds again. That is what I will do for your sake, Gerty, if you wish; though I thought you would be kind to the poor people around us at Dare, and be proud of their love for you, and get used to our homely ways. But I will go into Essex, if you like, Gerty--so that the sea shall not frighten you; and you will never be asked to go into one of our rough boats any more. It shall be just as you wish, Gerty; whether you want to go away into Essex, or whether you will come away with me to the North, that I will say to Captain Macallum, 'Captain Macallum, what will you do, now that the English lady has been brave enough to leave her home and her friends to live with us? and what are we to do now to show that we are proud and glad of her coming?'"

Well, tears did gather in her eyes as she listened to this wild, despairing cry, and her hands were working nervously with a book she had taken from the table; but what answer could she make. In self-defence against this vehemence she adopted an injured air.

"Really, Keith," said she, in a low voice, "you do not seem to pay any attention to anything I say or write. Surely I have prepared you to understand that my consent to what you propose is quite impossible--for the present, at least? I asked for time to consider."

"I know--I know," said he. "You would wait, and let those doubts close in upon you. But here is a way to defeat them all. Sweetheart, why do you not rise and give me your hand, and say 'Yes?' There would be no more doubts at all!"

"But surely, Keith, you must understand me when I say that rushing into a marriage in this mad way is a very dangerous thing. You won't look or listen to anything I suggest. And really--well, I think you should have some little consideration for me--"

He regarded her for a moment with a look almost of wonder; and then he said, hastily,--

"Perhaps you are right, Gerty;