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

ought not to give you a hint--seeing that you had met Miss White first at her house--that the young lady was rather clever at flirtation, and that you ought to keep a sharp lookout. But then you would only have blazed up in anger. It was no use talking to you. And then, after all, I said that if you were so bent on marrying her, the chances were that you would have no difficulty, for I thought the bribe of her being called Lady Macleod would be enough for any actress. As for this man Lemuel, no doubt he is a very great man, as people say; but I don't know much about these things myself; and--and--I think it is very plucky of Mrs. Ross to cut off two of her lions at one stroke. It shows she must have taken an uncommon liking for you. So you must cheer up, Macleod. If woman take a fancy to you like that, you'll easily get a better wife than Miss White would have made. Mind you, I don't go back from anything I ever said of her. She is a handsome woman, and no mistake; and I will say that she is the best waltzer that I ever met with in the whole course of my life--without exception. But she's the sort of woman who, if I married her, would want some looking after--I mean, that is my impression. The fact is, Macleod, away there in Mull you have been brought up too much on books and your own imagination. You were ready to believe any pretty woman, with soft English ways, an angel. Well, you have had a twister; but you'll come through it; and you will get to believe, after all, that women are very good creatures just as men are very good creatures, when you get the right sort. Come now, Macleod, pull yourself together; Perhaps I have just as hard an opinion of her conduct towards you as you have yourself. But you know what Tommy Moore, or some fellow like that says--'Though she be not fair to me, what the devil care I how fair she be?' And if I were you, I would have a drop of brandy--but not half a tumblerful."

But neither Lieutenant Ogilvie's pert common-sense, nor his apt and accurate quotation, nor the proffered brandy, seemed to alter much the mood of this haggard-faced man. He rose.

"I think I am going now," said he, in a low voice. "You won't take it unkindly, Ogilvie, that I don't stop to talk with you: it is a strange story you have told me--I want time to think over it. Good-by!"

"The fact is, Macleod," Ogilvie stammered, as he regarded his friend's face, "I don't like to leave you. Won't you stay and dine with our fellows? or shall I see if I can run up to London with you?"

"No, thank you, Ogilvie," said he. "And have you any message for the mother and Janet?"

"Oh, I hope you will remember me most kindly to them. At least, I will go to the station with you, Macleod."

"Thank you, Ogilvie; but I would rather go alone. Good-by, now."

He shook hands with his friend, in an absent sort of way, and left. But while yet his hand was on the door, he turned and said,--

"Oh, do you remember my gun that has the shot barrel and the rifle barrel?"

"Yes, certainly."

"And would you like to have that, Ogilvie?--we sometimes had it when we were out together."

"Do you think I would take your gun from you, Macleod?" said the other. "And you will soon have plenty of use for it now."

"Good-by, then, Ogilvie," said he, and he left, and went out into the world of rain, and lowering skies, and darkening moors.

And when he went back to Dare it was a wet day also; but he was very cheerful; and he had a friendly word for all whom he met; and he told the mother and Janet that he had got home at last, and meant to go no more a-roving. But that evening, after dinner, when Donald began to play the Lament for the memory of the five sons of Dare, Macleod gave a sort of stifled cry, and there were tears running down his cheeks--which was a strange thing for a man; and he rose and left the hall, just as a woman would have done. And his mother sat there, cold, and pale, and trembling; but the gentle cousin Janet called out, with a piteous trouble in her eyes,--

"Oh, auntie, have you seen the look on our Keith's face, ever since he came ashore to-day?"

"I know it, Janet," said she. "I have seen it. That woman has broken his heart; and he is the last of my six brave lads!"

They could not speak any more now; for Donald had come up the hall; and he was playing the wild, sad wail of the _Cumhadh-na-Cloinne_.


CHAPTER XLI.


A LAST HOPE.

Those sleepless nights of passionate yearning and despair--those days of sullen gloom, broken only by wild cravings for revenge that went through his brain like spasms of fire--these were killing this man. His face grew haggard and gray; his eyes morose and hopeless; he shunned people as if he feared their scrutiny; he brooded over the past in a silence he did not wish to have broken by any human voice. This was no longer Macleod of Dare. It was the wreck of a man--drifting no one knew whither.

And in those dark and morbid reveries there was no longer any bewilderment. He saw clearly how he had been tricked and played with. He understood now the coldness she had shown on coming to Dare; her desire to get away again; her impatience with his appeals; her anxiety that communication between them should be solely by letter. "Yes, yes," he would say to himself--and sometimes he would laugh aloud in the solitude of the hills, "she was prudent. She was a woman of the world, as Stuart used to say. She would not quite throw me off--she would not be quite frank with me--until she had made sure of the other. And in her trouble of doubt, when she was trying to be better than herself, and anxious to have guidance, _that_ was the guide she turned to--the woman-man, the dabbler in paint-boxes, the critic of carpets and wall-papers!"

Sometimes he grew to hate her. She had destroyed the world for him. She had destroyed his faith in the honesty and honor of womanhood. She had played with him as with a toy--a fancy of the brain--and thrown him aside when something new was presented to her. And when a man is stung by a white adder, does he not turn and stamp with his heel? Is he not bound to crush the creature out of existence, to keep God's earth and the free sunlight sweet and pure?

But then--but then--the beauty of her! In dreams he heard her low, sweet laugh again; he saw the beautiful brown hair; he surrendered to the irresistible witchery of the clear and lovely eyes. What would not a man give for one last, wild kiss of the laughing and half-parted lips? His life? And if that life happened to be a mere broken and useless thing--a hateful thing--would he not gladly and proudly fling it away? One long, lingering, despairing kiss, and then a deep draught of Death's black wine!

One day he was riding down to the fishing-station, when he met John MacIntyre, the postman, who handed him a letter, and passed on. Macleod opened this letter with some trepidation, for it was from London; but it was in Norman Ogilvie's handwriting.

"DEAR MACLEOD,--I thought you might like to hear the latest news.
I cut the enclosed from a sort of half-sporting, half-theatrical
paper our fellows get; no doubt the paragraph is true enough. And
I wish it was well over and done with, and she married out of
hand; for I know until that is so you will be torturing yourself
with all sorts of projects and fancies. Good-by old fellow. I
suppose when you offered me the gun, you thought your life had
collapsed altogether, and that you would have no further use for
anything. But no doubt, after the first shock, you have thought
better of that. How are the birds? I hear rather bad accounts
from Ross, but then he is always complaining about something.

"Yours sincerely, NORMAN OGILVIE."

And then he unfolded the newspaper cutting which Ogilvie had enclosed. The paragraph of gossip announced that the Piccadilly Theatre would shortly be closed for repairs; but that the projected provincial tour of the company had been abandoned. On the re-opening of the theatre, a play, which was now in preparation, written by Mr. Gregory Lemuel, would be produced. "It is understood," continued the newsman, "that Miss Gertrude White, the young and gifted actress who has been the chief attraction at the Piccadilly Theatre for two years back, is shortly to be married to Mr. L. Lemuel, the well-known artist; but the public have no reason to fear the withdrawal from the stage of so popular a favorite, for she has consented to take the chief role in the new play, which is said to be of a tragic nature."

Macleod put the letter and its enclosure into his pocket, and rode on. The hand that held the bridle shook somewhat; that was all.

He met Hamish.

"Oh, Hamish!" he cried, quite gayly. "Hamish, will you go to the wedding?"

"What wedding, sir?" said the old man; but well he knew. If there was any one blind to what had been going on, that was not Hamish; and again and again he had in his heart cursed the English traitress who had destroyed his master's peace.

"Why, do you not remember the English lady that was here not so long ago? And she is going to be married. And would you like to go to the wedding, Hamish!"

He scarcely seemed to know what he was saying in this wild way; there was a strange look in his eyes, though apparently he was very merry. And this was the first word he had uttered about Gertrude White to any living being at Dare ever since his last return from the South.

Now what was Hamish's answer to this gay invitation? The Gaelic tongue is almost devoid of those meaningless expletives which, in other languages, express mere annoyance of temper; when a Highlander swears, he usually swears in English. But the Gaelic curse is a much more solemn and deliberate affair.

"_May her soul dwell in the lowermost hall of perdition!_"--that was the answer that Hamish made; and there was a blaze of anger in the keen eyes and in the proud and handsome face.

"Oh, yes," continued the old man, in his native tongue, and he spoke rapidly and passionately, "I am only a serving-man, and perhaps a serving-man ought not to speak; but perhaps sometimes he will speak. And have I not seen it all, Sir Keith?--and no more of the pink letters coming; and you going about a changed man, as if there was nothing more in life for you? And now you ask me if I will go to the wedding? And what do I say to you, Sir Keith? I say this to you--that the woman is not now living who will put that