"Sir Keith Macleod," the elder sister said, without thinking.
"Then he has been writing to you?"
"Certainly."
She marched out of the room. Gertrude White, unconscious of the fierce rage she had aroused, carelessly proceeded with her toilet, trying now one flower and now another in the ripples of her sun-brown hair, but finally discarding these half-withered things for a narrow band of blue velvet.
"Threescore o" n.o.bles rode up the king"s ha","
she was humming thoughtlessly to herself as she stood with her hands uplifted to her head, revealing the beautiful lines of her figure,
"But Bonnie Glenogie"s the flower o" them a"; Wi" his milk-white steed and his coal-black e"e: Glenogie, dear mither, Glenogie for me!"
At length she had finished, and was ready to proceed to her immediate work of overhauling domestic affairs. When Keith Macleod was struck by the exceeding neatness and perfection of arrangement in this small house, he was in nowise the victim of any stage-effect. Gertrude White was at all times and in all seasons a precise and accurate house-mistress. Hara.s.sed, as an actress must often be, by other cares; sometimes exhausted with hard work; perhaps tempted now and again by the self-satisfaction of a splendid triumph to let meaner concerns go unheeded; all the same, she allowed nothing to interfere with her domestic duties.
"Gerty," her father said, impatiently, to her a day or two before they left London for the provinces, "what is the use of your going down to these stores yourself? Surely you can send Jane or Marie. You really waste far too much time over the veriest trifles: how can it matter what sort of mustard we have?"
"And, indeed, I am glad to have something to convince me that I am a human being and a woman," she had said, instantly, "something to be myself in. I believe Providence intended me to be the manager of a Swiss hotel."
This was one of the first occasions on which she had revealed to her father that she had been thinking a good deal about her lot in life, and was perhaps beginning to doubt whether the struggle to become a great and famous actress was the only thing worth living for. But he paid little attention to it at the time. He had a vague impression that it was scarcely worth discussing about. He was pretty well convinced that his daughter was clever enough to argue herself into any sort of belief about herself, if she should take some fantastic notion into her head.
It was not until that night in Manchester that he began to fear there might be something serious in these expressions of discontent.
On this bright October morning Miss Gertrude White was about to begin her domestic inquiries, and was leaving her room humming cheerfully to herself something about the bonnie Glenogie of the song, when she was again stopped by her sister, who was carrying a bundle.
"I have got the skins," she said, gloomily. "Jane took them out."
"Will you look at them?" the sister said, kindly. "They are very pretty.
If they were not a present, I would give them to you, to make a jacket of them."
"_I_ wear them?" said she. "Not likely!"
Nevertheless she had sufficient womanly curiosity to let her elder sister open the parcel; and then she took up the otter-skins one by one, and looked at them.
"I don"t think much of them," she said.
The other bore this taunt patiently.
"They are only big moles, aren"t they? And I thought moleskin was only worn by working-people."
"I am a working-person too," Miss Gertrude White said: "but, in any case, I think a jacket of these skins will look lovely."
"Oh, do you think so? Well, you can"t say much for the smell of them."
"It is no more disagreeable than the smell of a sealskin jacket."
She laid down the last of the skins with some air of disdain.
"It will be a nice series of trophies, anyway--showing you know some one who goes about spending his life in killing inoffensive animals."
"Poor Sir Keith Macleod! What has he done to offend you, Carry?"
Miss Carry turned her head away for a minute; but presently she boldly faced her sister.
"Gerty, you don"t mean to marry a beauty man!"
Gerty looked considerably puzzled; but her companion continued, vehemently,--
"How often have I heard you say you would never marry a beauty man--a man who has been brought up in front of the looking-gla.s.s--who is far too well satisfied with his own good looks to think of anything or anybody else! Again and again you have said that, Gertrude White. You told me, rather than marry a self-satisfied c.o.xcomb, you would marry a misshapen, ugly little man, so that he would worship you all the days of your life for your condescension and kindness."
"Very well, then!"
"And what is Sir Keith Macleod but a beauty man?"
"He is not!" and for once the elder sister betrayed some feeling in the proud tone of her voice. "He is the manliest-looking man that I have ever seen; and I have seen a good many more men than you. There is not a man you know whom he could not throw across the ca.n.a.l down there. Sir Keith Macleod a beauty man!--I think he could take on a good deal more polishing, and curling, and smoothing without any great harm. If I was in any danger, I know which of all the men I have seen I would rather have in front of me--with his arms free; and I don"t suppose he would be thinking of any looking-gla.s.s! If you want to know about the race he represents, read English history, and the story of England"s wars. If you go to India, or China, or Africa, or the Crimea, you will hear something about the Macleods, I think!"
Carry began to cry.
"You silly thing, what is the matter with you?" Gertrude White exclaimed; but of course her arm was round her sister"s neck.
"It is true, then."
"What is true?"
"What people say."
"What do people say?"
"That you will marry Sir Keith Macleod."
"Carry!" she said, angrily, "I can"t imagine who has been repeating such idiotic stories to you, I wish people would mind their own business. Sir Keith Macleod marry me!"
"Do you mean to say he has never asked you?" Carry said, disengaging herself, and fixing her eyes on her sister"s face.
"Certainly not!" was the decided answer; but all the same, Miss Gertrude White"s forehead and cheeks flushed slightly.
"Then you know that he means to; and that is why you have been writing to me, day after day, about the romance of the Highlands, and fairy stories, and the pleasure of people who could live without caring for the public. Oh, Gerty, why won"t you be frank with me, and let me know the worst at once?"
"If I gave you a box on the ears," she said, laughing, "that would be the worst at once; and I think it would serve you right for listening to such t.i.ttle-tattle and letting your head be filled with nonsense.
Haven"t you sufficient sense to know that you ought not to compel me to speak of such a thing--absurd as it is? I cannot go on denying that I am about to become the wife of Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry; and you know the stories that have been going about for years past. Who was I last? The wife of a Russian n.o.bleman who gambled away all my earnings at Homburg.
You are fourteen now, Carry; you should have more sense."
Miss Carry dried her eyes; but she mournfully shook her head. There were the otter-skins lying on the table. She had seen plenty of the absurd paragraphs about her sister which good-natured friends had cut out of provincial and foreign papers and forwarded to the small family at South Bank. But the mythical Russian n.o.bleman had never sent a parcel of otter-skins. These were palpable and not to be explained away. She sorrowfully left the room, unconvinced.
And now Miss Gertrude White set to work with a will; and no one who was only familiar with her outside her own house would have recognized in this shifty, practical, industrious person, who went so thoroughly into all the details of the small establishment, the lady who, when she went abroad among the gayeties of the London season, was so eagerly sought after, and flattered, and petted, and made the object of all manner of delicate attentions. Her father, who suspected that her increased devotion to these domestic duties was but part of that rebellious spirit she had recently betrayed, had nevertheless to confess that there was no one but herself whom he could trust to arrange his china and dust his curiosities. And how could he resent her giving instructions to the cook, when it was his own dinner that profited thereby?
"Well, Gerty," he said that evening after dinner, "what do you think about Mr. ----"s offer? It is very good-natured of him to let you have the ordering of the drawing-room scene, for you can have the furniture and the color to suit your own costume."
"Indeed I shall have nothing whatever to do with it," said she, promptly. "The furniture at home is enough for me. I don"t wish to become the upholsterer of a theatre."