Macleod of Dare

"Oh, I hope you will remember me most kindly to them. At least, I will go to the station with you, Macleod."

"Thank you, Ogilvie; but I would rather go alone. Good-by, now."

He shook hands with his friend, in an absent sort of way, and left. But while yet his hand was on the door, he turned and said,--

"Oh, do you remember my gun that has the shot barrel and the rifle barrel?"

"Yes, certainly."

"And would you like to have that, Ogilvie?--we sometimes had it when we were out together."

"Do you think I would take your gun from you, Macleod?" said the other.

"And you will soon have plenty of use for it now."

"Good-by, then, Ogilvie," said he, and he left, and went out into the world of rain, and lowering skies, and darkening moors.

And when he went back to Dare it was a wet day also; but he was very cheerful; and he had a friendly word for all whom he met; and he told the mother and Janet that he had got home at last, and meant to go no more a-roving. But that evening, after dinner, when Donald began to play the Lament for the memory of the five sons of Dare, Macleod gave a sort of stifled cry, and there were tears running down his cheeks--which was a strange thing for a man; and he rose and left the hall, just as a woman would have done. And his mother sat there, cold, and pale, and trembling; but the gentle cousin Janet called out, with a piteous trouble in her eyes,--

"Oh, auntie, have you seen the look on our Keith"s face, ever since he came ash.o.r.e to-day?"

"I know it, Janet," said she. "I have seen it. That woman has broken his heart; and he is the last of my six brave lads!"

They could not speak any more now; for Donald had come up the hall; and he was playing the wild, sad wail of the _c.u.mhadh-na-Cloinne_.

CHAPTER XLI.

A LAST HOPE.

Those sleepless nights of pa.s.sionate yearning and despair--those days of sullen gloom, broken only by wild cravings for revenge that went through his brain like spasms of fire--these were killing this man. His face grew haggard and gray; his eyes morose and hopeless; he shunned people as if he feared their scrutiny; he brooded over the past in a silence he did not wish to have broken by any human voice. This was no longer Macleod of Dare. It was the wreck of a man--drifting no one knew whither.

And in those dark and morbid reveries there was no longer any bewilderment. He saw clearly how he had been tricked and played with. He understood now the coldness she had shown on coming to Dare; her desire to get away again; her impatience with his appeals; her anxiety that communication between them should be solely by letter. "Yes, yes," he would say to himself--and sometimes he would laugh aloud in the solitude of the hills, "she was prudent. She was a woman of the world, as Stuart used to say. She would not quite throw me off--she would not be quite frank with me--until she had made sure of the other. And in her trouble of doubt, when she was trying to be better than herself, and anxious to have guidance, _that_ was the guide she turned to--the woman-man, the dabbler in paint-boxes, the critic of carpets and wall-papers!"

Sometimes he grew to hate her. She had destroyed the world for him. She had destroyed his faith in the honesty and honor of womanhood. She had played with him as with a toy--a fancy of the brain--and thrown him aside when something new was presented to her. And when a man is stung by a white adder, does he not turn and stamp with his heel? Is he not bound to crush the creature out of existence, to keep G.o.d"s earth and the free sunlight sweet and pure?

But then--but then--the beauty of her! In dreams he heard her low, sweet laugh again; he saw the beautiful brown hair; he surrendered to the irresistible witchery of the clear and lovely eyes. What would not a man give for one last, wild kiss of the laughing and half-parted lips? His life? And if that life happened to be a mere broken and useless thing--a hateful thing--would he not gladly and proudly fling it away? One long, lingering, despairing kiss, and then a deep draught of Death"s black wine!

One day he was riding down to the fishing-station, when he met John MacIntyre, the postman, who handed him a letter, and pa.s.sed on.

Macleod opened this letter with some trepidation, for it was from London; but it was in Norman Ogilvie"s handwriting.

"DEAR MACLEOD,--I thought you might like to hear the latest news.

I cut the enclosed from a sort of half-sporting, half-theatrical paper our fellows get; no doubt the paragraph is true enough. And I wish it was well over and done with, and she married out of hand; for I know until that is so you will be torturing yourself with all sorts of projects and fancies. Good-by old fellow. I suppose when you offered me the gun, you thought your life had collapsed altogether, and that you would have no further use for anything. But no doubt, after the first shock, you have thought better of that. How are the birds? I hear rather bad accounts from Ross, but then he is always complaining about something.

"Yours sincerely, NORMAN OGILVIE."

And then he unfolded the newspaper cutting which Ogilvie had enclosed.

The paragraph of gossip announced that the Piccadilly Theatre would shortly be closed for repairs; but that the projected provincial tour of the company had been abandoned. On the re-opening of the theatre, a play, which was now in preparation, written by Mr. Gregory Lemuel, would be produced. "It is understood," continued the newsman, "that Miss Gertrude White, the young and gifted actress who has been the chief attraction at the Piccadilly Theatre for two years back, is shortly to be married to Mr. L. Lemuel, the well-known artist; but the public have no reason to fear the withdrawal from the stage of so popular a favorite, for she has consented to take the chief role in the new play, which is said to be of a tragic nature."

Macleod put the letter and its enclosure into his pocket, and rode on.

The hand that held the bridle shook somewhat; that was all.

He met Hamish.

"Oh, Hamish!" he cried, quite gayly. "Hamish, will you go to the wedding?"

"What wedding, sir?" said the old man; but well he knew. If there was any one blind to what had been going on, that was not Hamish; and again and again he had in his heart cursed the English traitress who had destroyed his master"s peace.

"Why, do you not remember the English lady that was here not so long ago? And she is going to be married. And would you like to go to the wedding, Hamish!"

He scarcely seemed to know what he was saying in this wild way; there was a strange look in his eyes, though apparently he was very merry. And this was the first word he had uttered about Gertrude White to any living being at Dare ever since his last return from the South.

Now what was Hamish"s answer to this gay invitation? The Gaelic tongue is almost devoid of those meaningless expletives which, in other languages, express mere annoyance of temper; when a Highlander swears, he usually swears in English. But the Gaelic curse is a much more solemn and deliberate affair.

"_May her soul dwell in the lowermost hall of perdition!_"--that was the answer that Hamish made; and there was a blaze of anger in the keen eyes and in the proud and handsome face.

"Oh, yes," continued the old man, in his native tongue, and he spoke rapidly and pa.s.sionately, "I am only a serving-man, and perhaps a serving-man ought not to speak; but perhaps sometimes he will speak. And have I not seen it all, Sir Keith?--and no more of the pink letters coming; and you going about a changed man, as if there was nothing more in life for you? And now you ask me if I will go to the wedding? And what do I say to you, Sir Keith? I say this to you--that the woman is not now living who will put that shame on Macleod of Dare!"

Macleod regarded the old man"s angry vehemence almost indifferently; he had grown to pay little heed to anything around him.--

"Oh yes, it is a fine thing for the English lady," said Hamish, with the same proud fierceness, "to come here and amuse herself. But she does not know the Mull men yet. Do you think, Sir Keith, that any one of your forefathers would have had this shame put upon him? I think not. I think he would have said, "Come, lads, here is a proud madam that does not know that a man"s will is stronger than a woman"s will; and we will teach her a lesson. And before she has learned that lesson, she will discover that it is not safe to trifle with a Macleod of Dare." And you ask me if I will go to the wedding! I have known you since you were a child, Sir Keith; and I put the first gun in your hand; and I saw you catch your first salmon: it is not right to laugh at an old man."

"Laughing at you Hamish? I gave you an invitation to a wedding!"

"And if I was going to that wedding," said Hamish, with a return of that fierce light to the gray eyes, "do you know how I would go to the wedding? I would take two or three of the young lads with me. We would make a fine party for the wedding. Oh yes, a fine party! And if the English church is a fine church, can we not take off our caps as well as any one? But when the pretty madam came in, I would say to myself, "Oh yes, my fine madam, you forgot it was a Macleod you had to deal with, and not a child, and you did not think you would have a visit from two or three of the Mull lads!""

"And what then?" Macleod said, with a smile, though this picture of his sweetheart coming into the church as the bride of another man had paled his cheek.

"And before she had brought that shame on the house of Dare," said Hamish, excitedly, "do you not think that I would seize her--that I would seize her with my own hands? And when the young lads and I had thrust her down into the cabin of the yacht--oh yes, when we had thrust her down and put the hatch over, do you think the proud madam would be quite so proud?"

Macleod laughed a loud laugh.

"Why, Hamish, you want to become a famous person! You would carry off a popular actress, and have all the country ringing with the exploit! And would you have a piper, too, to drown her screams--just as Macdonald of Armadale did when he came with his men to South Uist and carried off Flora Macdonald"s mother?"

"And was there ever a better marriage than that--as I have heard many a man of Skye say?" Hamish exclaimed, eagerly. "Oh yes, it is good for a woman to know that a man"s will is stronger than a woman"s will! And when we have the fine English madam caged up in the cabin, and we are coming away to the North again, she will not have so many fine airs, I think. And if the will cannot be broken, it is the neck that can be broken; and better that than that Sir Keith Macleod should have a shame put on him."

"Hamish, Hamish, how will you dare to go into the church at Salen next Sunday?" Macleod said; but he was now regarding the old man with a strange curiosity.

"Men were made before churches were thought of," Hamish said, curtly; and then Macleod laughed, and rode on.

The laugh soon died away from his face. Here was the stone bridge on which she used to lean to drop pebbles into the whirling clear water.

Was there not some impression even yet of her soft warm arm on the velvet moss? And what had the voice of the streamlet told him in the days long ago--that the summer-time was made for happy lovers; that she was coming; that he should take her hand and show her the beautiful islands and the sunlit seas before the darkening skies of the winter came over them. And here was the summer sea; and moist, warm odors were in the larch-wood; and out there Ulva was shining green, and there was sunlight on the islands and on the rocks of Erisgeir. But she--where was she? Perhaps standing before a mirror; with a dress all of white; and trying how orange-blossoms would best lie in her soft brown hair. Her arms are uplifted to her head; she smiles: could not one suddenly seize her now by the waist and bear her off, with the smile changed to a blanched look of fear? The wild pirates have got her; the Rose-leaf is crushed in the cruel Northern hands; at last--at last--what is in the scabbard has been drawn, and declared, and she screams in her terror!

Then he fell to brooding again over Hamish"s mad scheme. The fine English church of Hamish"s imagination was no doubt a little stone building that a handful of sailors could carry at a rush. And of course the yacht must needs be close by; for there was no land in Hamish"s mind that was out of sight of the salt-water. And what consideration would this old man have for delicate fancies and studies in moral science? The fine madam had been chosen to be the bride of Macleod of Dare; that was enough. If her will would not bend, it would have to be broken; that was the good old way. Was there ever a happier wife than the Lady of Armadale, who had been carried screaming downstairs in the night-time, and placed in her lover"s boat, with the pipes playing a wild pibroch all the time?

Macleod was in the library that night when Hamish came to him with some papers. And just as the old man was about to leave, Macleod said to him,--