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

shame on Macleod of Dare!"

Macleod regarded the old man's angry vehemence almost indifferently; he had grown to pay little heed to anything around him.--

"Oh yes, it is a fine thing for the English lady," said Hamish, with the same proud fierceness, "to come here and amuse herself. But she does not know the Mull men yet. Do you think, Sir Keith, that any one of your forefathers would have had this shame put upon him? I think not. I think he would have said, 'Come, lads, here is a proud madam that does not know that a man's will is stronger than a woman's will; and we will teach her a lesson. And before she has learned that lesson, she will discover that it is not safe to trifle with a Macleod of Dare.' And you ask me if I will go to the wedding! I have known you since you were a child, Sir Keith; and I put the first gun in your hand; and I saw you catch your first salmon: it is not right to laugh at an old man."

"Laughing at you Hamish? I gave you an invitation to a wedding!"

"And if I was going to that wedding," said Hamish, with a return of that fierce light to the gray eyes, "do you know how I would go to the wedding? I would take two or three of the young lads with me. We would make a fine party for the wedding. Oh yes, a fine party! And if the English church is a fine church, can we not take off our caps as well as any one? But when the pretty madam came in, I would say to myself, 'Oh yes, my fine madam, you forgot it was a Macleod you had to deal with, and not a child, and you did not think you would have a visit from two or three of the Mull lads!'"

"And what then?" Macleod said, with a smile, though this picture of his sweetheart coming into the church as the bride of another man had paled his cheek.

"And before she had brought that shame on the house of Dare," said Hamish, excitedly, "do you not think that I would seize her--that I would seize her with my own hands? And when the young lads and I had thrust her down into the cabin of the yacht--oh yes, when we had thrust her down and put the hatch over, do you think the proud madam would be quite so proud?"

Macleod laughed a loud laugh.

"Why, Hamish, you want to become a famous person! You would carry off a popular actress, and have all the country ringing with the exploit! And would you have a piper, too, to drown her screams--just as Macdonald of Armadale did when he came with his men to South Uist and carried off Flora Macdonald's mother?"

"And was there ever a better marriage than that--as I have heard many a man of Skye say?" Hamish exclaimed, eagerly. "Oh yes, it is good for a woman to know that a man's will is stronger than a woman's will! And when we have the fine English madam caged up in the cabin, and we are coming away to the North again, she will not have so many fine airs, I think. And if the will cannot be broken, it is the neck that can be broken; and better that than that Sir Keith Macleod should have a shame put on him."

"Hamish, Hamish, how will you dare to go into the church at Salen next Sunday?" Macleod said; but he was now regarding the old man with a strange curiosity.

"Men were made before churches were thought of," Hamish said, curtly; and then Macleod laughed, and rode on.

The laugh soon died away from his face. Here was the stone bridge on which she used to lean to drop pebbles into the whirling clear water. Was there not some impression even yet of her soft warm arm on the velvet moss? And what had the voice of the streamlet told him in the days long ago--that the summer-time was made for happy lovers; that she was coming; that he should take her hand and show her the beautiful islands and the sunlit seas before the darkening skies of the winter came over them. And here was the summer sea; and moist, warm odors were in the larch-wood; and out there Ulva was shining green, and there was sunlight on the islands and on the rocks of Erisgeir. But she--where was she? Perhaps standing before a mirror; with a dress all of white; and trying how orange-blossoms would best lie in her soft brown hair. Her arms are uplifted to her head; she smiles: could not one suddenly seize her now by the waist and bear her off, with the smile changed to a blanched look of fear? The wild pirates have got her; the Rose-leaf is crushed in the cruel Northern hands; at last--at last--what is in the scabbard has been drawn, and declared, and she screams in her terror!

Then he fell to brooding again over Hamish's mad scheme. The fine English church of Hamish's imagination was no doubt a little stone building that a handful of sailors could carry at a rush. And of course the yacht must needs be close by; for there was no land in Hamish's mind that was out of sight of the salt-water. And what consideration would this old man have for delicate fancies and studies in moral science? The fine madam had been chosen to be the bride of Macleod of Dare; that was enough. If her will would not bend, it would have to be broken; that was the good old way. Was there ever a happier wife than the Lady of Armadale, who had been carried screaming downstairs in the night-time, and placed in her lover's boat, with the pipes playing a wild pibroch all the time?

Macleod was in the library that night when Hamish came to him with some papers. And just as the old man was about to leave, Macleod said to him,--

"Well, that was a pretty story you told me this morning, Hamish, about the carrying off the young English lady. And have you thought any more about it?"

"I have thought enough about it," Hamish said, in his native tongue.

"Then perhaps you could tell me, when you start on this fine expedition, how you are going to have the yacht taken to London? The lads of Mull are very clever, Hamish, I know; but do you think that any one of them can steer the _Umpire_ all the way from Loch-na-Keal to the river Thames?"

"Is it the river Thames?" said Hamish, with great contempt. "And is that all--the river Thames? Do you know this, Sir Keith, that my cousin Colin Laing, that has a whiskey-shop now in Greenock, has been all over the world, and at China and other places; and he was the mate of many a big vessel; and do you think he could not take the _Umpire_ from Loch-na-Keal to London? And I would only have to send a line to him and say, 'Colin, it is Sir Keith Macleod himself that will want you to do this;' and then he will leave twenty or thirty shops, ay, fifty and a hundred shops, and think no more of them at all. Oh yes, it is very true what you say Sir Keith. There is no one knows better than I the soundings in Loch Scridain and Loch Tua; and you have said yourself that there is not a bank or a rock about the islands that I do not know; but I have not been to London--no, I have not been to London. But is there any great trouble in getting to London? No, none at all, when we have Colin Laing on board."

Macleod was apparently making a gay joke of the matter; but there was an anxious, intense look in his eyes all the same--even when he was staring absently at the table before him.

"Oh yes, Hamish," he said, laughing in a constrained manner, "that would be a fine story to tell. And you would become very famous--just as if you were working for fame in a theatre; and all the people would be talking about you. And when you got to London, how would you get through the London streets?"

"It is my cousin who would show me the way: has he not been to London more times than I have been to Stornoway?"

"But the streets of London--they would cover all the ground between here and Loch Scridain; and how would you carry the young lady through them?"

"We would carry her," said Hamish, curtly.

"With the bagpipes to drown her screams?"

"I would drown her screams myself," said Hamish, with a sudden savageness; and he added something that Macleod did not hear.

"Do you know that I am a magistrate, Hamish?"

"I know it, Sir Keith."

"And when you come to me with this proposal, do you know what I should do?"

"I know what the old Macleods of Dare would have done," said Hamish, proudly, "before they let this shame come on them. And you, Sir Keith--you are a Macleod, too; ay, and the bravest lad that ever was born in Castle Dare! And you will not suffer this thing any longer, Sir Keith; for it is a sore heart I have from the morning till the night; and it is only a serving-man that I am; but sometimes when I will see you going about--and nothing now cared for, but a great trouble on your face--oh, then I say to myself, 'Hamish, you are an old man, and you have not long to live; but before you die you will teach the fine English madam what it is to bring a shame on Sir Keith Macleod!'"

"Ah, well, good-night-now, Hamish; I am tired," he said; and the old man slowly left.

He was tired--if one might judge by the haggard cheeks and the heavy eyes; but he did not go to sleep. He did not even go to bed. He spent the livelong night, as he had spent too many lately, in nervously pacing to and fro within this hushed chamber; or seated with his arms on the table, and the aching head resting on the clasped hands. And again those wild visions came to torture him--the product of a sick heart and a bewildered brain; only now there was a new element introduced. This mad project of Hamish's at which he would have laughed in a saner mood, began to intertwist itself with all these passionate longings and these troubled dreams of what might yet be possible to him on earth; and wherever he turned it was suggested to him; and whatever was the craving and desire of the moment, this, and this only, was the way to reach it. For if one were mad with pain, and determined to crush the white adder that had stung one, what better way than to seize the hateful thing and cage it so that it should do no more harm among the sons of men? Or if one were mad because of the love of a beautiful white Princess--and she far away, and dressed in bridal robes: what better way than to take her hand and say, "Quick, quick, to the shore! For the summer seas are waiting for you, and there is a home for the bride far away in the North?" Or if it was only one wild, despairing effort--one last means of trying--to bring her heart back again? Or if