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

what you like; I would not marry you if you gave me a hundred yachts!"

"Gerty!"

The anguish of his face was growing wild with despair.

"I say, let the farce end! I had pity for you--yes, I had! Now--I hate you!"

He sprang up with a quick cry, as of one shot to the heart. He regarded her, in a bewildered manner, for one brief second; and then he gently said, "Good-night, Gerty! God forgive you!" and he staggered backward, and got out of the saloon, leaving her alone.

See! the night is still fine. All around this solitary bay there is a wall of rock, jet black, against the clear, dark sky, with its myriad twinkling stars. The new moon has arisen; but it sheds but little radiance yet down there in the south. There is a sharper gleam from one lambent planet--a thin line of golden-yellow light that comes all the way across from the black rocks until it breaks in flashes among the ripples close to the side of the yacht. Silence once more reigns around; only from time to time one hears the croak of a heron from the dusky shore.

What can keep this man up so late on deck? There is nothing to look at but the great bows of the yacht black against the pale gray sea, and the tall spars and the rigging going away up into the starlit sky, and the suffused glow from the skylight touching a yellow-gray on the main-boom. There is no need for the anchor-watch that Hamish was insisting on: the equinoctials are not likely to begin on such a night as this.

He is looking across the lapping gray water to the jet-black line of cliff. And there are certain words haunting him. He cannot forget them; he cannot put them away.

* * * * *


WHEREFORE IS LIGHT GIVEN TO HIM THAT IS IN MISERY, AND LIFE UNTO THE BITTER IN SOUL? * * * WHICH LONG FOR DEATH, BUT IT COMETH NOT; AND DIG FOR IT MORE THAN FOR HIDDEN TREASURES. * * * WHICH REJOICE EXCEEDINGLY, AND ARE GLAD WHEN THEY CAN FIND THE GRAVE.

* * * * *


Then, in the stillness of the night, he heard a breathing. He went forward, and found that Hamish had secreted himself behind the windlass. He uttered some exclamation in the Gaelic, and the old man rose and stood guiltily before him.

"Have I not told you to go below before? and will I have to throw you down into the forecastle?"

The old man stood irresolute for a moment. Then he said, also in his native tongue,--

"You should not speak like that to me, Sir Keith: I have known you many a year."

Macleod caught Hamish's hand.

"I beg your pardon, Hamish. You do not know. It is a sore heart I have this night."

"Oh, God help us! Do I not know that!" he exclaimed, in a broken voice; and Macleod, as he turned away, could hear the old man crying bitterly in the dark. What else could Hamish do now for him who had been to him as the son of his old age?

"Go below now, Hamish," said Macleod in a gentle voice and the old man slowly and reluctantly obeyed.

But the night had not drawn to day when Macleod again went forward, and said, in a strange, excited whisper,--

"Hamish, Hamish, are you awake now?"

Instantly the old man appeared; he had not turned into his berth at all.

"Hamish, Hamish, do you hear the sound?" Macleod said, in the same wild way; "do you not hear the sound?"

"What sound, Sir Keith?" said he; for indeed there was nothing but the lapping of the water along the side of the yacht and a murmur of ripples along the shore.

"Do you not hear it, Hamish? It is a sound as of a brass-band!--a brass-band playing music--as if it was in a theatre. Can you not hear it, Hamish?"

"Oh, God help us! God help us!" Hamish cried.

"You do not hear it, Hamish?" he said. "Ah, it is some mistake. I beg your pardon for calling you, Hamish: now you will go below again."

"Oh no, Sir Keith," said Hamish. "Will I not stay on deck now till the morning? It is a fine sleep I have had; oh yes, I had a fine sleep. And how is one to know when the equinoctials may not come on?"

"I wish you to go below, Hamish."

And now this sound that is ringing in his ears is no longer of the brass-band that he had heard in the theatre. It is quite different. It has all the ghastly mirth of that song that Norman Ogilvie used to sing in the old, half-forgotten days. What is it that he hears?


"King Death was a rare old fellow,
He sat where no sun could shine;
And he lifted his hand so yellow,
And poured out his coal-black wine!
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for the coal-black wine!"


It is a strange mirth. It might almost make a man laugh. For do we not laugh gently when we bury a young child, and put the flowers over it, and know that it is at peace? The child has no more pain at the heart. Oh, Norman Ogilvie, are you still singing the wild song? and are you laughing now?--or is it the old man Hamish that is crying in the dark?

* * * * *



"There came to him many a maiden,
Whose eyes had forgot to shine;
And widows with grief o'erladen,
For a draught of his sleepy wine.
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for the coal-black wine!"


It is such a fine thing to sleep--when one has been fretting all the night, and spasms of fire go through the brain! Ogilvie, Ogilvie, do you remember the laughing Duchess? do you think she would laugh over one's grave; or put her foot on it, and stand relentless, with anger in her eyes? That is a sad thing; but after it is over there is sleep.

* * * * *



"All came to the rare old fellow,
Who laughed till his eyes dropped brine,
As he gave them his hand so yellow,
And pledged them, in Death's black wine!
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for the coal-black wine!"


Hamish!--Hamish!--will you not keep her away from me! I have told Donald what pibroch he will play; I want to be at peace now. But the brass-band--the brass-band--I can hear the blare of the trumpets; Ulva will know that we are here, and the Gometra men, and the sea-birds too, that I used to love. But she has killed all that now, and she stands on my grave. She will laugh, for she was light-hearted, like a young child. But you, Hamish, you will find the quiet grave for me; and Donald will play the pibroch for me that I told him of; and you will say no word to her of all that is over and gone.

* * * * *


See--he sleeps. This haggard-faced man is stretched on the deck; and the pale dawn, arising in the east, looks at him; and does not revive him, but makes him whiter still. You might almost think he was dead. But Hamish knows better than that; for the old man comes stealthily forward; and he has a great tartan plaid in his hand's; and very gently indeed he puts it over his young master. And there are tears running down Hamish's face; and he says "The brave lad! the brave lad!"


CHAPTER XLVI.


THE END.

"Duncan," said Hamish, in a low whisper--for Macleod had gone below, and they thought he might be asleep in the small, hushed stateroom, "this is a strange-looking day, is it not? And I am afraid of it in this open bay, with an anchorage no better than a sheet of paper for an anchorage. Do you see now how strange-looking it is?"

Duncan Cameron also spoke in his native tongue; and he said,--

"That is true, Hamish. And it was a day like this there was when the _Solan_ was sunk at her moorings in Loch Hourn. Do you remember, Hamish? And it would be better for us now if we were in Loch Tua, or Loch-na-Keal, or in the dock that was built for the steamer at Tiree. I do not like the look of this day."

Yet to an ordinary observer it would have seemed that the chief characteristic of this pale, still day, was extreme and settled calm. There was not a breath of wind to ruffle the surface of the sea; but there was a slight, glassy swell, and that only served to show curious opalescent tints under the suffused light of the sun. There were no clouds; there was only a thin veil of faint and sultry mist all across the sky; the sun was invisible, but there was a glare of yellow at one point of the heavens. A dead calm; but heavy, oppressed, sultry. There was something in the atmosphere that seemed to weigh on the chest.

"There was a dream I had this morning," continued Hamish, in the same low tones. "It was about my little granddaughter Christina. You know my little Christina, Duncan. And she said to me, 'What have you done with Sir Keith Macleod? Why have you not brought him back? He was under your care, grandfather.' I did not like that dream."

"Oh, you are becoming as bad as Sir Keith Macleod himself?" said the other. "He does not sleep. He talks to himself. You will become like that if you pay attention to foolish dreams, Hamish."

Hamish's quick temper leaped up.

"What do you mean, Duncan Cameron, by saying, 'as bad as Sir Keith Macleod?' You--you come from Ross: perhaps they have not good masters there. I tell you there is not any man in Ross, or in Sutherland either, is as good a master, and as brave a lad, as Sir Keith Macleod--not any one, Duncan Cameron!"

"I did not mean anything like that, Hamish," said the other, humbly. "But there was a breeze this morning. We could have got over to Loch Tua. Why did we stay here, where there is no shelter and no anchorage?