By this time they had climbed well up the cliff; and presently they came on the open plateau on which stood Castle Dare, with its gaunt walls and its rambling courtyards, and its stretch of damp lawn with a few fuchsia-bushes and orange-lilies, that did not give a very ornamental look to the place.
"We have had heavy rains of late," he said, hastily; he hoped the house and its surroundings did not look too dismal.
And when they went inside and pa.s.sed through the sombre dining-hall, with its huge fireplace, and its dark weapons, and its few portraits dimly visible in the dusk, he said,--
"It is very gloomy in the daytime; but it is more cheerful at night."
And when they reached the small drawing-room he was anxious to draw her attention away from the antiquated furniture and the nondescript decoration by taking her to the window and showing her the great breadth of the summer sea, with the far islands, and the brown-sailed boat of the Gometra men coming back from Staffa. But presently in came Janet, and would take the fair stranger away to her room; and was as attentive to her as if the one were a great princess, and the other a meek serving-woman. And by and by Macleod, having seen his other guest provided for, went into the library and shut himself in, and sat down, in a sort of stupor. He could almost have imagined that the whole business of the morning was a dream; so strange did it seem to him that Gertrude White should be living and breathing under the same roof with himself.
Nature herself seemed to have conspired with Macleod to welcome and charm this fair guest. He had often spoken to her of the sunsets that shone over the Western seas; and he had wondered whether, during her stay in the North, she would see some strange sight that would remain forever a blaze of color in her memory. And now on this very first evening there was a spectacle seen from the high windows of Dare that filled her with astonishment, and caused her to send quickly for her father, who was burrowing among the old armor. The sun had just gone down. The western sky was of the color of a soda-water bottle become glorified; and in this vast breadth of shining clear green lay one long island of cloud--a pure scarlet. Then the sky overhead and the sea far below them were both of a soft roseate purple; and Fladda and Staffa and Lunga, out at the horizon, were almost black against that flood of green light. When he asked her if she had brought her water-colors with her, smiled. She was not likely to attempt to put anything like that down on paper.
Then they adjourned to the big hall, which was now lit up with candles; and Major Stuart had remained to dinner: and the gallant soldier, glad to have a merry evening away from his sighing wife, did his best to promote the cheerfulness of the party. Moreover, Miss White had got rid of her headache, and showed a greater brightness of face; so that both the old lady at the head of the table and her niece Janet had to confess to themselves that this English girl who was like to tear Keith Macleod away from them was very pretty, and had an amiable look, and was soft and fine and delicate in her manners and speech. The charming simplicity of her costume, too: had anybody ever seen a dress more beautiful with less pretence of attracting notice? Her very hands--they seemed objects fitted to be placed on a cushion of blue velvet under a gla.s.s shade, so white and small and perfectly formed were they. That was what the kindly-hearted Janet thought. She did not ask herself how these hands would answer if called upon to help--amidst the grime and smoke of a shepherd"s hut--the shepherd"s wife to patch together a pair of homespun trousers for the sailor son coming back from the sea.
"And now," said Keith Macleod to his fair neighbor, when Hamish had put the claret and the whiskey on the table, "since your head is well now, would you like to hear the pipes? It is an old custom of the house. My mother would think it strange to have it omitted," he added, in a lower voice.
"Oh, if it is a custom of the house," she said, coldly--for she thought it was inconsiderate of him to risk bringing back her headache--"I have no objection whatever."
And so he turned to Hamish and said something in the Gaelic. Hamish replied in English, and loud enough for Miss White to hear.
"It is no pibroch there will be this night, for Donald is away."
"Away?"
"Ay, just that. When he wa.s.s come back from the boat, he will say to me, "Hamish, it is no more of me or my pipes they want at Dare, and I am going away; and they can get some one else to play the pipes." And I wa.s.s saying to him then, "Donald, do not be a foolish lad; and if the English lady will not want the pibroch you made for her, perhaps at another time she will want it." And now, Sir Keith, it is Maggie MacFarlane; she wa.s.s coming up from Loch-na-Keal this afternoon, and who was it she will meet but our Donald, and he wa.s.s saying to her, "It is to Tobermory now that I am going, Maggie; and I will try to get a ship there; for it is no more of me or my pipes they will want at Dare.""
This was Hamish"s story; and the keen hawk-like eye of him was fixed on the English lady"s face all the time he spoke in his struggling and halting fashion.
"Confound the young rascal!" Macleod said, with his face grown red. "I suppose I shall have to send a messenger to Tobermory and apologize to him for interrupting him to-day." And then he turned to Miss White.
"They are like a set of children," he said, "with their pride and petulance."
This is all that needs be said about the manner of Miss White"s coming to Dare, besides these two circ.u.mstances: First of all, whether it was that Macleod was too flurried, and Janet too busy, and Lady Macleod too indifferent to attend to such trifles, the fact remains that no one, on Miss White"s entering the house, had thought of presenting her with a piece of white heather, which, as every one knows, gives good health and good fortune and a long life to your friend. Again, Hamish seemed to have acquired a serious prejudice against her from the very outset. That night, when Castle Dare was asleep, and the old dame Christina and her husband were seated by themselves in the servants" room, and Hamish was having his last pipe, and both were talking over the great events of the day, Christina said, in her native tongue,
"And what do you think now of the English lady, Hamish?"
Hamish answered with an old and sinister saying:
"_A fool would he be that would burn his harp to warm her._"
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
THE GRAVE OF MACLEOD OF MACLEOD.
The monotonous sound of the waterfall, so far from disturbing the new guest of Castle Dare, only soothed her to rest; and after the various fatigues, if not the emotions, of the day, she slept well. But in the very midst of the night she was startled by some loud commotion that seemed to prevail both within and without the house; and when she was fully awakened it appeared to her that the whole earth was being shaken to pieces in the storm. The wind howled in the chimneys; the rain dashed on the window-panes with a rattle as of musketry; far below she could hear the awful booming of the Atlantic breakers. The gusts that drove against the high house seemed ready to tear it from its foothold of rock and whirl it inland; or was it the sea itself that was rising in its thunderous power to sweep away this bauble from the face of the mighty cliffs? And then the wild and desolate morning that followed! Through the bewilderment of the running water on the panes she looked abroad on the tempest-riven sea--a slate-colored waste of hurrying waves with wind-swept streaks of foam on them--and on the lowering and ever-changing clouds. The fuchsia-bushes on the lawn tossed and bent before the wind; the few orange-lilies, wet as they were, burned like fire in this world of cold greens and grays. And then, as she stood and gazed, she made out the only sign of life that was visible. There was a cornfield below the larch-plantation; and though the corn was all laid flat by the wet and the wind, a cow and her calf that had strayed into the field seemed to have no difficulty in finding a rich, moist breakfast. Then a small girl appeared, vainly trying with one hand to keep her kerchief on her head, while with the other she threw stones at the marauders. By and by even these disappeared; and there was nothing visible outside but that hurrying and desolate sea, and the wet, bedraggled, comfortless sh.o.r.e. She turned away with a shudder.
All that day Keith Macleod was in despair. As for himself, he would have had sufficient joy in the mere consciousness of the presence of this beautiful creature. His eyes followed her with a constant delight; whether she took up a book, or examined the cunning spring of a sixteenth-century dagger, or turned to the dripping panes. He would have been content even to sit and listen to Mr. White sententiously lecturing Lady Macleod about the Renaissance, knowing that from time to time those beautiful, tender eyes would meet his. But what would she think of it?
Would she consider this the normal condition of life in the Highlands--this being boxed up in an old-fashioned room, with doors and windows firmly closed against the wind and the wet, with a number of people trying to keep up some sort of social intercourse, and not very well succeeding? She had looked at the portraits in the dining-hall--looming darkly from their black backgrounds, though two or three were in resplendent uniforms; she had examined all the trophies of the chase--skins, horns, and what not--in the outer corridor; she had opened the piano, and almost started back from the discords produced by the feebly jangling old keys.
"You do not cultivate music much," she had said to Janet Macleod, with a smile.
"No," answered Janet, seriously. "We have little use for music here--except to sing to a child now and again, and you know you do not want a piano for that."
And then the return to the cold window, with the constant rain and the beating of the white surge on the black rocks. The imprisonment became torture--became maddening. What if he were suddenly to murder this old man and stop forever his insufferable prosing about Bernada Siena and Andrea Mantegna? It seemed so strange to hear him talk of the unearthly calm of Raphael"s "St. Michael"--of the beautiful, still landscape of it, and the mysterious joy on the face of the angel--and to listen at the same moment to the wild roar of the Atlantic around the rocks of Mull. If Macleod had been alone with the talker, he might have gone to sleep. It was like the tolling of a bell. "The artist pa.s.ses away, but he leaves his soul behind.... We can judge by his work of the joy he must have experienced in creation, of the splendid dreams that have visited him, of the triumph of completion.... Life without an object--a pursuit demanding the sacrifice of our constant care--what is it? The existence of a pig is n.o.bler--a pig is of some use.... We are independent of weather in a great city; we do not need to care for the seasons; you take a hansom and drive to the National Gallery, and there all at once you find yourself in the soft Italian climate, with the most beautiful women and great heroes of chivalry all around you, and with those quaint and loving presentations of sacred stories that tell of a time when art was proud to be the meek handmaid of religion. Oh, my dear Lady Macleod, there is a "Holy Family" of Giotto"s--"
So it went on; and Macleod grew sick at heart to think of the impression that this funereal day must have had on the mind of his fair stranger.
But as they sat at dinner that evening, Hamish came in and said a few words to his master. Instantly Macleod"s face lighted up, and quite a new animation came into his manner.
"Do you know what Hamish says?" he cried--"that the night is quite fine?
And Hamish has heard our talking of seeing the cathedral at Iona by moonlight, and he says the moon will be up by ten. And what do you say to running over now? You know we cannot take you in the yacht, for there is no good anchorage at Iona; but we can take you in a very good and safe boat; and it will be an adventure to go out in the night-time."
It was an adventure that neither Mr. White nor his daughter seemed too eager to undertake; but the urgent vehemence of the young man--who had discovered that it was a fine and clear starlit night--soon overcame their doubts and there was a general hurry of preparation. The desolation of the day, he eagerly thought, would be forgotten in the romance of this night excursion. And surely she would be charmed by the beauty of the starlit sky, and the loneliness of the voyage, and their wandering over the ruins in the solemn moonlight?
Thick boots and waterproofs--these were his peremptory instructions. And then he led the way down the slippery path, and he had a tight hold of her arm; and if he talked to her in a low voice so that none should overhear, it is the way of lovers under the silence of the stars. They reached the pier, and the wet stone steps; and here, despite the stars, it was so dark that perforce she had to permit him to lift her off the lowest step and place her in security in what seemed to her a great hole of some kind or other. She knew, however, that she was in a boat, for there was a swaying hither and thither even in this sheltered corner.
She saw other figures arrive--black between her and the sky--and she heard her father"s voice above. Then he, too, got into the boat; the two men forward hauled up the huge lugsail; and presently there was a rippling line of sparkling white stars on each side of the boat, burning for a second or two on the surface of the black water.
"I don"t know who is responsible for this madness," Mr. White said--and the voice from inside the great waterproof coat sounded as if it meant to be jocular--"but really, Gerty, to be on the open Atlantic in the middle of the night, in an open boat--"
"My dear sir," Macleod said, laughing, "you are as safe as if you were in bed. But I am responsible in the meantime, for I have the tiller. Oh, we shall be over in plenty of time to be clear of the banks."
"What did you say?"
"Well," Macleod admitted, "there are some banks, you know, in the Sound of Iona; and on a dark night they are a little awkward when the tide is low; but I am not going to frighten you--"
"I hope we shall have nothing much worse than this," said Mr. White, seriously.
For, indeed, the sea, after the squally morning, was running pretty high; and occasionally a cloud of spray came rattling over the bows, causing Macleod"s guests to pull their waterproofs still more tightly round their necks. But what mattered the creaking of the cordage, and the plunging of the boat, and the rushing of the seas, so long as that beautiful clear sky shone overhead?
"Gertrude," said he, in a low voice, "do you see the phosphorous-stars on the waves? I never saw them burn more brightly."
"They are very beautiful," said she. "When do we get to land, Keith?"
"Oh, pretty soon," said he. "You are not anxious to get to land?"
"It is stormier than I expected."
"Oh, this is nothing," said he. "I thought you would enjoy it."
However, that summer night"s sail was like to prove a tougher business than Keith Macleod had bargained for. They had been out scarcely twenty minutes when Miss White heard the man at the bow call out something, which she could not understand, to Macleod. She saw him crane his neck forward, as if looking ahead; and she herself, looking in that direction, could perceive that from the horizon almost to the zenith the stars had become invisible.
"It may be a little bit squally," he said to her, "but we shall soon be under the lee of Iona. Perhaps you had better hold on to something."
The advice was not ill-timed; for almost as he spoke the first gust of the squall struck the boat, and there was a sound as if everything had been torn asunder and sent overboard. Then, as she righted just in time to meet the crash of the next wave, it seemed as though the world had grown perfectly black around them. The terrified woman seated there could no longer make out Macleod"s figure; it was impossible to speak amidst this roar; it almost seemed to her that she was alone with those howling winds and heaving waves--at night on the open sea. The wind rose, and the sea too; she heard the men call out and Macleod answer; and all the time the boat was creaking and groaning as she was flung high on the mighty waves only to go staggering down into the awful troughs behind.
"Oh, Keith!" she cried--and involuntarily she seized his arm--"are we in danger?"