Macleod of Dare, William Black [always you kirsty moseley .txt] 📗

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 glass 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 wass 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 wass 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 wass coming up from Loch-na-Keal this afternoon, and who was it she will meet but our Donald, and he wass 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 circumstances: 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 XXXIII.


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 shore. 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 passes 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 nobler--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