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

beautiful-eyed girl, whom he called Rose-leaf, talking to him in the quiet of the summer noon. This man had a look in his eyes like that of an animal that has been hunted to death, and is fain to lie down and give itself up to its pursuers in the despair of utter fatigue. He was looking at this letter. The composition of it had cost him only a whole night's agony. And when he sat down and wrote it in the blue-gray dawn, what had he not cast away?

"Oh no," he was saying now to his own conscience, "she will not call it deceiving! She will laugh when it is all over--she will call it a stratagem--she will say that a drowning man will catch at anything. And this is the last effort--but it is only a stratagem: she herself will absolve me, when she laughs and says, 'Oh, how could you have treated the poor theatres so?'"

A loud rattling overhead startled him.

"We must be at Erith," he said to himself; and then, after a pause of a second, he took the letter in his hand. He passed up the companion-way. Perhaps it was the sudden glare of the light around that falsely gave to his eyes the appearance of a man who had been drinking hard; but his voice was clear and precise as he said to Hamish,--

"Now, Hamish, you understand everything I have told you?"

"Oh yes, Sir Keith."

"And you will put away that nonsense from your head; and when you see the English lady that you remember, you will be very respectful to her, for she is a very great friend of mine; and if she is not at the theatre, you will go on to the other address, and Colin Laing will go with you in the cab. And if she comes back in the cab, you and Colin will go outside beside the driver, do you understand? And when you go ashore, you will take John Cameron with you, and you will ask the pier-master about the moorings."

"Oh yes, Sir Keith; have you not told me before?" Hamish said, almost reproachfully.

"You are sure you got everything on board last night?"

"There is nothing more that I can think of, Sir Keith."

"Here is the letter, Hamish."

And so he pledged himself to the last desperate venture.

Not long after that Hamish, and Laing, and John Cameron went in the dingy to the end of Erith pier, and left the boat there; and went along to the head of the pier, and had a talk with the pier-master. Then John Cameron went back, and the other two went on their way to the railway-station.

"And I will tell you this, Hamish," said the little black Celt, who swaggered a good deal in his walk, "that when you go in the train you will be greatly frightened; for you do not know how strong the engines are, and how they will carry you through the air."

"That is a foolish thing to say," answered Hamish, also speaking in the Gaelic; "for I have seen many pictures of trains; and do you say that the engines are bigger than the engines of the _Pioneer_, or the _Dunara Castle_, or the _Clansman_ that goes to Stornoway? Do not talk such nonsense to me. An engine that runs along the road, that is a small matter; but an engine that can take you up the Sound of Sleat, and across the Minch, and all the way to Stornoway, that is an engine to be talked about!"

But nevertheless it was with some inward trepidation that Hamish approached Erith station; and it was with an awestruck silence that he saw his cousin take tickets at the office; nor did he speak a word when the train came up and they entered and sat down in the carriage. Then the train moved off, and Hamish breathed more freely: what was this to be afraid of?

"Did I not tell you you would be frightened?" Colin Laing said.

"I am not frightened at all," Hamish answered, indignantly.

But as the train began to move more quickly, Hamish's hands, that held firmly by the wooden seat on which he was sitting, tightened and still further tightened their grasp, and his teeth got clinched, while there was an anxious look in his eyes. At length, as the train swung into a good pace, his fear got the better of him, and he called out,--

"Colin, Colin, she's run away?"

And then Colin Laing laughed aloud, and began to assume great airs; and told Hamish that he was no better than a lad kept for herding the sheep, who had never been away from his own home. This familiar air reassured Hamish; and then the train stopping at Abbey Wood proved to him that the engine was still under control.

"Oh yes, Hamish," continued his travelled cousin, "you will open your eyes when you see London; and you will tell all the people when you go back that you have never seen so great a place; but what is London to the cities and the towns and the palaces that I have seen? Did you ever hear of Valparaiso, Hamish? Oh yes, you will live a long time before you will get to Valparaiso! And Rio: why, I have known mere boys that have been to Rio. And you can sail a yacht very well, Hamish; and I do not grumble that you would be the master of the yacht, though I know the banks and the channels a little better than you, and it was quite right of you to be the master of the yacht; but you have not seen what I have seen. And I have been where there are mountains and mountains of gold--"

"Do you take me for a fool, Colin?" said Hamish, with a contemptuous smile.

"Not quite that," said the other, "but am I not to believe my own eyes?"

"And if there were the great mountains of gold," said Hamish, "why did you not fill your pockets with the gold? and would not that be better than selling whiskey in Greenock?"

"Yes; and that shows what an ignorant man you are, Hamish," said the other, with disdain. "For do you not know that the gold is mixed with quartz and you have got to take the quartz out? But I dare say now you do not know what quartz is; for it is a very ignorant man you are, although you can sail a yacht. But I do not grumble at all. You are master of your own yacht, just as I am the master of my own shop. But if you were coming into my shop, Hamish, I would say to you, 'Hamish, you are the master here, and I am not the master; and you can take a glass of anything that you like.' That is what people who have travelled all over the world, and seen princes and great cities and palaces, call _politeness_. But how could you know anything about _politeness?_ You have lived only on the west coast of Mull; and they do not even know how to speak good Gaelic there."

"That is a lie, Colin!" said Hamish, with decision, "We have better Gaelic there than any other Gaelic that is spoken."

"Were you ever in Lochaber, Hamish?"

"No, I was never in Lochaber."

"Then do not pretend to give an opinion about the Gaelic--especially to a man who has travelled all over the world, though perhaps he cannot sail a yacht as well as you, Hamish."

The two cousins soon became friends again, however. And now, as they were approaching London, a strange thing became visible. The blue sky grew more and more obscured. The whole world seemed to be enveloped in a clear brown haze of smoke.

"Ay, ay," said Hamish, "that is a strange thing."

"What is a strange thing, Hamish?"

"I was reading about it in a book many a time--the great fire that was burning in London for years and years and years, and have they not quite got it out yet, Colin?"

"I do not know what you are talking about, Hamish," said the other, who had not much book-learning, "but I will tell you this, that you may prepare yourself now to open your eyes. Oh yes, London will make you open your eyes wide; though it is nothing to one who has been to Rio, and Shanghai, and Rotterdam, and other places like that."

Now these references to foreign parts only stung Hamish's pride, and when they did arrive at London Bridge he was determined to show no surprise whatever. He stepped into the four-wheeled cab that Colin Laing chartered, just as if four-wheeled cabs were as common as sea-gulls on the shores of Loch-na-Keal. And though his eyes were bewildered and his ears dinned with the wonderful sights and sounds of this great roaring city--that seemed to have the population of all the world pouring through its streets--he would say nothing at all. At last the cab stopped; the two men were opposite the Piccadilly Theatre.

Then Hamish got out and left his cousin with the cab, He ascended the wide steps; he entered the great vestibule; and he had a letter in his hand. The old man had not trembled so much since he was a schoolboy.

"What do you want, my man?" some one said, coming out of the box-office by chance. Hamish showed the letter.

"I wass to hef an answer, sir if you please, sir, and I will be opliged," said Hamish, who had been enjoined to be very courteous.

"Take it round to the stage entrance," said the man, carelessly.

"Yes, sir, if you please, sir," said Hamish; but he did not understand; and he stood.

The man looked at him; called for some one: a young lad came, and to him was given the letter.

"You may wait here, then," said he to Hamish; "but I think rehearsal is over, and Miss White has most likely gone home."

The man went into the box-office again; Hamish was left alone there, in the great empty vestibule. The Piccadilly Theatre had seldom seen within its walls a more picturesque figure than this old Highlandman, who stood there with his sailor's cap in his hand, and with a keen excitement in the proud and fine face. There was a watchfulness in the gray eyes like the watchfulness of an eagle. If he twisted his cap rather nervously, and if his heart beat quick, it was not from fear.

Now, when the letter was brought to Miss White, she was standing in one of the wings, laughing and chatting with the stage manager. The laugh went from her face. She grew quite pale.

"Oh, Mr. Cartwright," said she, "do you think I could go down to Erith and be back before six in the evening?"

"Oh yes, why not?" said he carelessly.

But she scarcely heard him. She was still staring at that sheet of paper, with its piteous cry of the sick man. Only to see her once more--to shake hands in token of forgiveness--to say good-by for the last time: what woman with the heart of a woman could resist this despairing prayer?

"Where is the man who brought this letter?" said she.

"In front, miss," said the young lad, "by the box-office."

Very quickly she made her way along the gloomy and empty corridors, and there in the twilit hall she found the gray-haired old sailor, with his cap held