Macleod of Dare Part 46

And here she burst out crying, and sobbed bitterly.

"Oh, nonsense, child!" her father said; "your nervous system must have been shaken last night by that storm. I have seen a strange look upon your face all day. It was certainly a mistake our coming here; you are not fitted for this savage life."

She grew more composed. She sat down for a few minutes; and her father, taking out a small flask which had been filled from a bottle of brandy sent over during the day from Castle Dare, poured out a little of the spirits, added some water, and made her drink the dose as a sleeping draught.

"Ah well, you know, pappy," said she, as she rose to leave, and she bestowed a very pretty smile on him, "it is all in the way of experience, isn't it? and an artist should experience everything. But there is just a little too much about graves and ghosts in these parts for me. And I suppose we shall go to-morrow to see some cave or other where two or three hundred men, women, and children were murdered."

"I hope in going back we shall not be as near our own grave as we were last night," her father observed.

"And Keith Macleod laughs at it," she said, "and says it was unfortunate we got a wetting!"

And so she went to bed; and the sea-air had dealt well with her; and she had no dreams at all of s.h.i.+pwrecks, or of black familiars in moonlit shrines. Why should her sleep be disturbed because that night she had put her foot on the grave of the chief of the Macleods?

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE UMPIRE.

Next morning, with all this wonderful world of sea and islands s.h.i.+ning in the early sunlight, Mr. White and his daughter were down by the sh.o.r.e, walking along the white sands, and chatting idly as they went.

From time to time they looked across the fair summer seas to the distant cliffs of Bourg; and each time they looked a certain small white speck seemed coming nearer. That was the _Umpire_; and Keith Macleod was on board of her. He had started at an unknown hour of the night to bring the yacht over from her anchorage. He would not have his beautiful Fionaghal, who had come as a stranger to these far lands, go back to Dare in a common open boat with stones for ballast.

"This is the loneliest place I have ever seen," Miss Gertrude White was saying on this the third morning after her arrival. "It seems scarcely in the world at all. The sea cuts you off from everything you know; it would have been nothing if we had come by rail."

They walked on in silence, the blue waves beside them curling a crisp white on the smooth sands.

"Pappy," said she, at length, "I suppose if I lived here for six months no one in England would know anything about me? If I were mentioned at all, they would think I was dead. Perhaps some day I might meet some one from England; and I would have to say, 'Don't you know who I am? Did you never hear of one called Gertrude White? I was Gertrude White.'"

"No doubt," said her father, cautiously.

"And when Mr. Lemuel's portrait of me appears in the Academy, people would be saying, 'Who is that?' _Miss Gertrude White, as Juliet?_ Ah, there was an actress of that name. Or was she an amateur? She married somebody in the Highlands. I suppose she is dead now?"

"It is one of the most gratifying instances, Gerty, of the position you have made," her father observed, in his slow and sententious way, "that Mr. Lemuel should be so willing, after having refused to exhibit at the Academy for so many years, to make an exception in the case of your portrait."

"Well, I hope my face will not get burned by the sea-air and the sun,"

she said. "You know he wants two or three more sittings. And do you know, pappy, I have sometimes thought of asking you to tell me honestly--not to encourage me with flattery, you know--whether my face has really that high-strung pitch of expression when I am about to drink the poison in the cell. Do I really look like Mr. Lemuel's portrait of me?"

"It is your very self, Gerty," her father said, with decision. "But then Mr. Lemuel is a man of genius. Who but himself could have caught the very soul of your acting and fixed it on canvas?"

She hesitated for a moment, and then there was a flush of genuine enthusiastic pride mantling on her forehead as she said, frankly,--

"Well, then, I wish I could see myself!"

Mr. White said nothing. He had watched this daughter of his through the long winter months. Occasionally, when he heard her utter sentiments such as these--and when he saw her keenly sensitive to the flattery bestowed upon her by the people a.s.sembled at Mr. Lemuel's little gatherings, he had asked himself whether it was possible she could ever marry Sir Keith Macleod. But he was too wise to risk reawakening her rebellious fits by any encouragement. In any case, he had some experience of this young lady; and what was the use of combatting one of her moods at five o'clock when at six o'clock she would be arguing in the contrary direction, and at seven convinced that the _viv media_ was the straight road? Moreover, if the worst came to the worst, there would be some compensation in the fact of Miss White changing her name for that of Lady Macleod.

Just as quickly she changed her mood on the present occasion. She was looking again far over the darkly blue and ruffled seas toward the white-sailed yacht.

"He must have gone away in the dark to get that boat for us," said she, musingly. "Poor fellow, how very generous and kind he is!

Sometimes--shall I make the confession, pappy?--I wish he had picked out some one who could better have returned his warmth of feeling."

She called it a confession; but it was a question. And her father answered more bluntly than she had quite expected.

"I am not much of an authority on such points," said he, with a dry smile; "but I should have said, Gerty, that you have not been quite so effusive towards Sir Keith Macleod as some young ladies would have been on meeting their sweetheart after a long absence."

The pale face flushed, and she answered, hastily,

"But you know, papa, when you are knocked about from one boat to another, and expecting to be ill one minute and drowned the next, you don't have your temper improved, do you? And then perhaps you have been expecting a little too much romance?--and you find your Highland chieftain handing down loaves, with all the people in the steamer staring at him. But I really mean to make it up to him, papa, if I could only get settled down for a day or two and get into my own ways. Oh dear me!--this sun--it is too awfully dreadful! When I appear before Mr.

Lemuel again, I shall be a mulatto!"

And as they walked along the burning sands, with the waves monotonously breaking, the white-sailed yacht came nearer and more near; and, indeed, the old _Umpire_, broad-beamed and heavy as she was, looked quite stately and swanlike as she came over the blue water. And they saw the gig lowered; and the four oars keeping rhythmical time; and presently they could make out the browned and glad face of Macleod.

"Why did you take so much trouble?" said she to him--and she took his hand in a very kind way as he stepped on sh.o.r.e. "We could very well have gone back in the boat."

"Oh, but I want to take you round by Loch Tua," said he, looking with great grat.i.tude into those friendly eyes. "And it was no trouble at all.

And will you step into the gig now?"

He took her hand and guided her along the rocks until she reached the boat; and he a.s.sisted her father too. Then they pushed off, and it was with a good swing the men sent the boat through the lapping waves. And here was Hamish standing by the gangway to receive them; and he was gravely respectful to the stranger lady, as he a.s.sisted her to get up the small wooden steps; but there was no light of welcome in the keen gray eyes. He quickly turned away from her to give his orders; for Hamish was on this occasion skipper, and had donned a smart suit of blue with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. Perhaps he would have been prouder of his b.u.t.tons, and of himself, and of the yacht he had sailed for so many years, if it had been any other than Gertrude White who had now stepped on board.

But, on the other hand, Miss White was quite charmed with this shapely vessel and all its contents. If the frugal ways and commonplace duties and conversation of Castle Dare had somewhat disappointed her, and had seemed to her not quite in accordance with the heroic traditions of the clans, here, at least, was something which she could recognize as befitting her notion of the name and position of Sir Keith Macleod.

Surely it must be with a certain masterful sense of possession that he would stand on those white decks, independent of all the world besides, with those sinewy, sun-browned, handsome fellows ready to go anywhere with him at his bidding? It is true that Macleod, in showing her over the yacht, seemed to know far too much about tinned meats; and he exhibited with some pride a cunning device for the stowage of soda-water; and he even went the length of explaining to her the capacities of the linen-chest; but then she could not fail to see that, in his eagerness to interest and amuse her, he was as garrulous as a schoolboy showing to his companion a new toy. Miss White sat down in the saloon; and Macleod, who had but little experience in attending on ladies, and knew of but one thing that it was proper to recommend, said,--

"And will you have a cup of tea now, Gertrude? Johnny will get it to you in a moment."

"No, thank you," said she, with a smile, for she knew not how often he had offered her a cup of tea since her arrival in the Highlands. "But do you know, Keith, your yacht has a terrible bachelor look about it? All the comforts of it are in this saloon and in those two nice little state-rooms. Your lady's cabin looks very empty; it is too elegant and fine, as if you were afraid to leave a book or a match-box in it. Now, if you were to turn this into a lady's yacht; you would have to remove that pipe-rack, and the guns and rifles and bags."

"Oh," said he, anxiously, "I hope you do not smell any tobacco?"

"Not at all," said she. "It was only a fancy. Of course you are not likely to turn your yacht into a lady's yacht."

He started and looked at her. But she had spoken quite thoughtlessly, and had now turned to her father.

When they went on deck again they found that the _Umpire_, beating up in the face of a light northerly breeze, had run out for a long tack almost to the Dutchman's Cap; and from a certain distance they could see the grim sh.o.r.es of this desolate island, with its faint tinge of green gra.s.s over the brown of its plateau of rock. And then Hamish called out, "Ready, about!" and presently they were slowly leaving behind that lonely Dutchman and making away for the distant entrance to Loch Tua.

The breeze was slight; they made but little way; far on the blue waters they watched the white gulls sitting buoyant; and the sun was hot on their hands. What did they talk about in this summer idleness? Many a time he had dreamed of his thus sailing over the clear seas with the fair Fionaghal from the South, until at times his heart, grown sick with yearning, was ready to despair of the impossible. And yet here she was sitting on a deck-stool near him--the wide-apart, long-lashed eyes occasionally regarding him--a neglected book open on her lap--the small gloved hands toying with the cover. Yet there was no word of love spoken. There was only a friendly conversation, and the idle pa.s.sing of a summer day. It was something to know that her breathing was near him.

Then the breeze died away altogether, and they were left altogether motionless on the gla.s.sy blue sea. The great sails hung limp, without a single flap or quiver in them; the red ensign clung to the jigger-mast; Hamish, though he stood by the tiller, did not even put his hand on that bold and notable representation in wood of the sea-serpent.

"Come now, Hamish," Macleod said, fearing this monotonous idleness would weary his fair guest, "you will tell us now one of the old stories that you used to tell me when I was a boy."

Hamish had, indeed, told the young Macleod many a mysterious tale of magic and adventure, but he was not disposed to repeat any one of these in broken English in order to please this lady from the South.

"It is no more of the stories I hef now, Sir Keith," said he. "It was a long time since I had the stories."

"Oh, I could construct one myself," said Miss White, lightly. "Don't I know how they all begin? '_There was once a king in Erin, and he had a son and this son it was who would take the world for his pillow. But before he set out on his travels, he took counsel of the falcon, and the hoodie, and the otter. And the falcon said to him, go to the right; and the hoodie said to him, you will be wise now if you go to the left; but the otter said to him, now take my advice_,' etc., etc."

"You have been a diligent student," Macleod said, laughing heartily.

"And, indeed, you might go on with the story and finish it; for who knows now when we shall get back to Dare?"