For one day Lady Macleod went into her son"s room and said to him, "Here is a letter, Keith, which I have written to Miss White. I wish you to read it."
He jumped to his feet, and hastily ran his eyes over the letter. It was a trifle formal, it is true; but it was kind, and it expressed the hope that Miss White and her father would next summer visit Castle Dare. The young man threw his arms round his mother"s neck and kissed her. "That is like a good mother," said he. "Do you know how happy she will be when she receives this message from you?"
Lady Macleod left him the letter to address. He read it over carefully; and though he saw that the handwriting was the handwriting of his mother, he knew that the spirit that had prompted these words was that of the gentle cousin Janet.
This concession had almost been forced from the old lady by the patience and mild persistence of Janet Macleod; but if anything could have a.s.sured her that she had acted properly in yielding, it was the answer which Miss Gertrude White sent in return. Miss White wrote that letter several times over before sending it off, and it was a clever piece of composition. The timid expressions of grat.i.tude; the hints of the writer"s sympathy with the romance of the Highlands and the Highland character; the deference shown by youth to age; and here and there just the smallest glimpse of humor, to show that Miss White, though very humble and respectful and all that, was not a mere fool. Lady Macleod was pleased by this letter. She showed it to her son one night at dinner. "It is a pretty hand," she remarked, critically.
Keith Macleod read it with a proud heart. "Can you not gather what kind of woman she is from that letter alone?" he said, eagerly. "I can almost hear her talk in it. Janet, will you read it too?"
Janet Macleod took the small sheet of perfumed paper and read it calmly, and handed it back to her aunt. "It is a nice letter," said she. "We must try to make Dare as bright as maybe when she comes to see us, that she will not go back to England with a bad account of the Highland people." That was all that was said at the time about the promised visit of Miss Gertrude White to Castle Dare. It was only as a visitor that Lady Macleod had consented to receive her. There was no word mentioned on either side of anything further than that. Mr. White and his daughter were to be in the Highlands next summer; they would be in the neighborhood of Castle Dare; Lady Macleod would be glad to entertain them for a time, and make the acquaintance of two of her son"s friends.
At all events, the proud old lady would be able to see what sort of woman this was whom Keith Macleod had chosen to be his wife.
And so the winter days and nights and weeks dragged slowly by; but always, from time to time, came those merry and tender and playful letters from the South, which he listened to rather than read. It was her very voice that was speaking to him, and in imagination he went about with her. He strolled with her over the crisp gra.s.s, whitened with h.o.a.r-frost, of the Regent"s Park; he hurried home with her in the chill gray afternoons--the yellow gas-lamps being lit--to the little tea-table. When she visited a picture gallery, she sent him a full report of that, even.
"Why is it," she asked, "that one is so delighted to look a long distance, even when the view is quite uninteresting? I wonder if that is why I greatly prefer landscapes to figure subjects. The latter always seem to me to be painted from models just come from the Hampstead Road.
There was scarcely a sea-piece in the exhibition that was not spoiled by figures, put in for the sake of picturesqueness, I suppose. Why, when you are by the sea you want to be alone, surely! Ah, if I could only have a look at those winter seas you speak of!"
He did not echo that wish at all. Even as he read he could hear the thunderous booming of the breakers into the giant caves. Was it for a pale rose-leaf to brave that fell wind that tore the waves into spindrift, and howled through the lonely chasms of Ben-an-Sloich?
To one of these precious doc.u.ments, written in the small, neat hand on pink-toned and perfumed paper, a postscript was added: "If you keep my letters," she wrote, and he laughed when he saw that _if_, "I wish you would go back to the one in which I told you of papa and me calling at Mr. Lemuel"s house, and I wish, dear Keith, you would burn it. I am sure it was very cruel and unjust. One often makes the mistake of thinking people affected when there is no affectation about them. And if a man has injured his health and made an invalid of himself, through his intense and constant devotion to his work, surely that is not anything to be laughed at? Whatever Mr. Lemuel may be, he is, at all events, desperately in earnest. The pa.s.sion that he has for his art, and his patience and concentration and self-sacrifice, seems to me to be nothing less than n.o.ble. And so, dear Keith, will you please to burn that impertinent letter?"
Macleod sought out the letter and carefully read it over. He came to the conclusion that he could see no just reason for complying with her demand. Frequently first impressions are best.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
A GRAVE.
In the by-gone days, this eager, active, stout-limbed young fellow had met the hardest winter with a glad heart. He rejoiced in its thousand various pursuits; he set his teeth against the driving hail; he laughed at the drenching spray that sprung high over the bows of his boat; and what harm ever came to him if he took the short-cut across the upper reaches of Loch Scridain, wading waist-deep through a mile of sea-water on a bitter January day? And where was the loneliness of his life when always, wherever he went by sea or sh.o.r.e, he had these old friends around him--the red-beaked sea-pyots whirring along the rocks; and the startled curlews, whistling their warning note across the sea; and the shy duck swimming far out on the smooth lochs; to say nothing of the black game that would scarcely move from their perch on the larch-trees as he approached, and the deer that were more distinctly visible on the far heights of Ben-an-Sloich when a slight sprinkling of snow had fallen?
But now all this was changed. The awfulness of the dark winter-time amidst those Northern seas overshadowed him. "It is like going into a grave," he had said to her. And, with all his pa.s.sionate longing to see her and have speech of her once more, how could he dare to ask her to approach these dismal solitudes? Sometimes he tried to picture her coming, and to read in imagination the look on her face. See now!--how she clings terrified to the side of the big open packet-boat that crosses the Frith of Lorn, and she dares not look abroad on the howling waste of waves. The mountains of Mull rise sad and cold and distant before her; there is no bright glint of sunshine to herald her approach.
This small dog-cart, now: it is a frail thing with which to plunge into the wild valleys, for surely a gust of wind might whirl into the chasm of roaring waters below Glen-More: who that has ever seen Glen-More on a lowering January day will ever forget it--its silence, its loneliness, its vast and lifeless gloom? Her face is pale now; she sits speechless and awestricken; for the mountain-walls that overhang this sombre ravine seem ready to fall on her, and there is an awful darkness spreading along their summits under the heavy swathes of cloud. And then those black lakes far down in the lone hollows, more death-like and terrible than any tourist-haunted Loch Coruisk: would she not turn to him and, with trembling hands, implore him to take her back and away to the more familiar and bearable South? He began to see all these things with her eyes. He began to fear the awful things of the winter-time and the seas.
The glad heart had gone out of him.
Even the beautiful aspects of the Highland winter had something about them--an isolation, a terrible silence--that he grew almost to dread.
What was this strange thing, for example? Early in the morning he looked from the windows of his room, and he could have imagined he was not at Dare at all. All the familiar objects of sea and sh.o.r.e had disappeared; this was a new world--a world of fantastic shapes, all moving and unknown--a world of vague ma.s.ses of gray, though here and there a gleam of lemon-color shining through the fog showed that the dawn was reflected on a gla.s.sy sea. Then he began to make out the things around him. That great range of purple mountains was Ulva--Ulva transfigured and become Alpine! Then those wan gleams of yellow light on the sea?--he went to the other window, and behold! the heavy bands of cloud that lay across the unseen peaks of Ben-an-Sloich had parted, and there was a blaze of clear, metallic, green sky; and the clouds bordering on that gleam of light were touched with a smoky and stormy saffron-hue that flashed and changed amidst the seething and twisting shapes of the fog and the mist. He turned to the sea again--what phantom-ship was this that appeared in mid-air, and apparently moving when there was no wind? He heard the sound of oars; the huge vessel turned out to be only the boat of the Gometra men going out to the lobster-traps. The yellow light on the gla.s.sy plain waxes stronger; new objects appear through the shifting fog; until at last a sudden opening shows him a wonderful thing far away--apparently at the very confines of the world--and awful in its solitary splendor. For that is the distant island of Staffa, and it has caught the colors of the dawn; and amidst the cold grays of the sea it shines a pale, transparent rose.
He would like to have sent her, if he had got any skill of the brush, some brief memorandum of that beautiful thing; but indeed, and in any case, that was not the sort of painting she seemed to care for just then. Mr. Lemuel, and his Palace of Art, and his mediaeval saints, and what not, which had all for a time disappeared from Miss White"s letters, began now to monopolize a good deal of s.p.a.ce there; and there was no longer any impertinent playfulness in her references, but, on the contrary, a respect and admiration that occasionally almost touched enthusiasm. From hints more than statements Macleod gathered that Miss White had been made much of by the people frequenting Mr. Lemuel"s house. She had there met one or two gentlemen who had written very fine things about her in the papers; and certain highly distinguished people had been good enough to send her cards of invitation; and she had once or twice been persuaded to read some piece of dramatic poetry at Mr.
Lemuel"s afternoon parties; and she even suggested that Mr. Lemuel had almost as much as said that he would like to paint her portrait. Mr.
Lemuel had also offered her, but she had refused to accept, a small but marvellous study by Pinturicchio, which most people considered the gem of his collection.
Macleod, reading and re-reading these letters many a time in the solitudes of western Mull, came to the opinion that there must be a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt going on in London. And was it not natural that a young girl should like to be petted, and flattered, and made much of?
Why should he complain when she wrote to say how she enjoyed this and was charmed by that? Could he ask her to exchange that gay and pleasant life for this hibernation in Mull? Sometimes for days together the inhabitants of Castle Dare literally lived in the clouds. Dense bands of white mist lay all along the cliffs; and they lived in a semi-darkness, with the mournful dripping of the rain on the wet garden, and the mournful wash of the sea all around the sh.o.r.es. He was glad, then, that Gertrude White was not at Castle Dare.
But sometimes, when he could not forbear opening his heart to her, and pressing her for some more definite a.s.surance as to the future, the ordinary playful banter in which she generally evaded his urgency gave place to a tone of coldness that astonished and alarmed him. Why should she so cruelly resent this piteous longing of his? Was she no longer, then, so anxious to escape from the thraldom that had seemed so hateful to her?
"Hamish," said Macleod, abruptly, after reading one of these letters, "come, now, we will go and overhaul the _Umpire_, for you know she is to be made very smart this summer; for we have people coming all the way from London to Dare, and they must not think we do not know in Mull how to keep a yacht in shipshape."
"Ay, sir," said Hamish; "and if we do not know that in Mull, where will they be likely to know that?"
"And you will get the cushions in the saloon covered again; and we will have a new mirror for the ladies" cabin, and Miss Macleod, if you ask her, will put a piece of lace round the top of that, to make it look like a lady"s room. And then, you know, Hamish, you can show the little boy Johnny Wickes how to polish the bra.s.s; and he will polish the bra.s.s in the ladies" cabin until it is as white as silver. Because, you know, Hamish, they have very fine yachts in the South. They are like hotels on the water. We must try to be as smart as we can."
"I do not know about the hotels," said Hamish, scornfully. "And perhaps it is a fine thing to hef a hotel; and Mr. M"Arthur they say he is a ferry rich man, and he has ferry fine pictures too; but I was thinking that if I will be off the Barra Head on a bad night--between the Sgriobh bhan and the Barra Head on a bad night--it is not any hotel I will be wishing that I wa.s.s in, but a good boat. And the _Umpire_ she is a good boat; and I hef no fear of going anywhere in the world with her--to London or to Inverary, ay, or the Queen"s own castle on the island--and she will go there safe, and she will come back safe; and if she is not a hotel--well, perhaps she will not be a hotel; but she is a fine good boat, and she has swinging lamps whatever."
But even the presence of the swinging-lamps, which Hamish regarded as the highest conceivable point of luxury, did little to lessen the dolorousness of the appearance of the poor old _Umpire_. As Macleod, seated in the stern of the gig, approached her, she looked like some dingy old hulk relegated to the duty of keeping stores. Her top-mast and bowsprit removed; not a st.i.tch of cord on her; only the black iron shrouds remaining of all her rigging; her skylights and companion-hatch covered with waterproof--it was a sorry spectacle. And then when they went below, even the swinging-lamps were blue-moulded and stiff. There was an odor of damp straw throughout. All the cushions and carpets had been removed; there was nothing but the bare wood of the floor and the couches and the table; with a match-box saturated with wet, an empty wine-bottle, a newspaper five months old, a rusty corkscrew, a patch of dirty water--the leakage from the skylight overhead.
That was what Hamish saw.
What Macleod saw, as he stood there absently staring at the bare wood, was very different. It was a beautiful, comfortable saloon that he saw, all brightly furnished and gilded, and there was a dish of flowers--heather and rowan-berries intermixed--on the soft red cover of the table. And who is this that is sitting there, clad in sailor-like blue and white, and laughing, as she talks in her soft English speech?
He is telling her that, if she means to be a sailor"s bride, she must give up the wearing of gloves on board ship, although, to be sure, those gloved small hands look pretty enough as they rest on the table and play with a bit of bell-heather. How bright her smile is. She is in a mood for teasing people. The laughing face, but for the gentleness of the eyes, would be audacious. They say that the width between those long-lashed eyes is a common peculiarity of the artist"s face; but she is no longer an artist; she is only the brave young yachtswoman who lives at Castle Dare. The shepherds know her, and answer her in the Gaelic when she speaks to them in pa.s.sing; the sailors know her, and would adventure their lives to gratify her slightest wish; and the bearded fellows who live their solitary life far out at Dubh Artach lighthouse, when she goes out to them with a new parcel of books and magazines, do not know how to show their gladness at the very sight of her bonnie face. There was once an actress of the same name, but this is quite a different woman. And to-morrow--do you know what she is going to do to-morrow?--to-morrow she is going away in this very yacht to a loch in the distant island of Lewis, and she is going to bring back with her some friends of hers who live there; and there will be high holiday at Castle Dare. An actress? Her cheeks are too sun-browned for the cheeks of an actress.
"Well, sir?" Hamish said, at length; and Macleod started.
"Very well, then," he said, impatiently, "why don"t you go on deck and find out where the leakage of the skylight is?"
Hamish was not used to being addressed in this fashion, and walked away with a proud and hurt air. As he ascended the companion-way, he was muttering to himself in his native tongue,--
"Yes, I am going to find out where the leakage is, but perhaps it would be easier to find out below where the leakage is. If there is something the matter with the keel, is it the cross-trees you will go to to look for it? But I do not know what has come to the young master of late."
When Keith Macleod was alone, he sat down on the wooden bench and took out a letter, and tried to find there some a.s.surance that this beautiful vision of his would some day be realized. He read it and re-read it; but his anxious scrutiny only left him the more disheartened. He went up on deck. He talked to Hamish in a perfunctory manner about the smartening up of the _Umpire_. He appeared to have lost interest in that already.
And then again he would seek relief in hard work, and try to forget altogether this hated time of enforced absence. One night word was brought by some one that the typhoid fever had broken out in the ill-drained cottages of Iona, and he said at once that next morning he would go round to Bunessan and ask the sanitary inspector there to be so kind as to inquire into this matter, and see whether something could not be done to improve these hovels.
"I am sure the duke does not know of it, Keith," his cousin Janet said, "or he would have a great alteration made."
"It is easy to make alterations," said he, "but it is not easy to make the poor people take advantage of them. They have such good health from the sea-air that they will not pay attention to ordinary cleanliness.
But now that two or three of the young girls and children are ill, perhaps it is a good time to have something done."
Next morning, when he rose before it was daybreak, there was every promise of a fine day. The full moon was setting behind the western seas, lighting up the clouds there with a dusky yellow; in the east there was a wilder glare of steely blue high up over the intense blackness on the back of Ben-an-Sloich; and the morning was still, for he heard, suddenly piercing the silence, the whistle of a curlew, and that became more and more remote as the unseen bird winged its flight far over the sea. He lit the candles, and made the necessary preparations for his journey; for he had some message to leave at Kinloch, at the head of Loch Scridain, and he was going to ride round that way. By and by the morning light had increased so much that he blew out the candles.
No sooner had he done this than his eye caught sight of something outside that startled him. It seemed as though great clouds of golden-white, all ablaze in sunshine, rested on the dark bosom of the deep. Instantly he went to the window; and then he saw that these clouds were not clouds at all, but the islands around glittering in the "white wonder of the snow," and catching here and there the shafts of the early sunlight that now streamed through the valleys of Mull. The sudden marvel of it! There was Ulva, shining beautiful as in a sparkling bridal veil; and Gometra a paler blue-white in the shadow; and Colonsay and Erisgeir also a cold white; and Staffa pale gray; and then the sea that the gleaming islands rested on was a mirror of pale-green and rose-purple hues reflected from the morning sky. It was all dream-like, so still, and beautiful, and silent. But he now saw that that fine morning would not last. Behind the house clouds of a suffused yellow began to blot out the sparkling peaks of Ben-an-Sloich. The colors of the plain of the sea were troubled with gusts of wind until they disappeared altogether. The sky in the north grew an ominous black, until the farther sh.o.r.es of Loch Tua were dazzling white against that bank of angry cloud. But to Bunessan he would go.
Janet Macleod was not much afraid of the weather at any time, but she said to him at breakfast, in a laughing way,
"And if you are lost in a snowdrift in Glen Finichen, Keith, what are we to do for you?"
"What are you to do for me?--why, Donald will make a fine Lament; and what more than that?"
"Cannot you send one of the Camerons with a message, Keith?" his mother said.
"Well, mother," said he, "I think I will go on to Fhion-fort and cross over to Iona myself, if Mr. Mackinnon will go with me. For it is very bad the cottages are there, I know; and if I must write to the duke, it is better that I should have made the inquiries myself."
And, indeed, when Macleod set out on his stout young pony Jack, paying but little heed to the cold driftings of sleet that the sharp east wind was sending across, it seemed as though he were destined to perform several charitable deeds all on the one errand. For, firstly, about a mile from the house, he met Duncan the policeman, who was making his weekly round in the interests of morality and law and order, and who had to have his book signed by the heritor of Castle Dare as sure witness that his peregrinations had extended so far. And Duncan was not at all sorry to be saved that trudge of a mile in the face of those bitter blasts of sleet; and he was greatly obliged to Sir Keith Macleod for stopping his pony, and getting out his pencil with his benumbed fingers, and putting his initials to the sheet. And then, again, when he had got into Glen Finichen, he was talking to the pony and saying,--"Well, Jack, I don"t wonder you want to stop, for the way this sleet gets down one"s throat is rather choking. Or are you afraid of the sheep loosening the rocks away up there, and sending two or three hundred-weight on our head?"
Then he happened to look up the steep sides of the great ravine, and there, quite brown against the snow, he saw a sheep that had toppled over some rock, and was now lying with her legs in the air. He jumped off his pony, and left Jack standing in the middle of the road. It was a stiff climb up that steep precipice, with the loose stones slippery with the sleet and snow; but at last he got a good grip of the sheep by the back of her neck, and hauled her out of the hole into which she had fallen, and put her, somewhat dazed but apparently unhurt, on her legs again. Then he half slid and half ran down the slope again, and got into the saddle.