AN INTERVIEW.
On the eventful morning on which Major Stuart was to be presented to the
chosen bride of Macleod of Dare, the simple-hearted
soldier--notwithstanding that he had a shade over one eye, made himself
exceedingly smart. He would show the young lady that Macleod's friends
in the North were not barbarians. The major sent back his boots to be
brushed a second time. A more smoothly fitting pair of gloves Bond
Street never saw.
"But you have not the air," said he to Macleod, "of a young fellow going
to see his sweetheart. What is the matter, man?"
Macleod hesitated for a moment.
"Well, I am anxious she should impress you favorably," said he, frankly;
"and it is an awkward position for her--and she will be embarrassed, no
doubt--and I have some pity for her, and almost wish some other way had
been taken--"
"Oh, nonsense?" the major said, cheerfully. "You need not be nervous on
her account. Why, man, the silliest girl in the world could impose on an
old fool like me. Once upon a time, perhaps, I may have considered
myself a connoisseur--well, you know, Macleod, I once had a waist like
the rest of you; but now, bless you, if a tolerably pretty girl only
says a civil word or two to me, I begin to regard her as if I were her
guardian angel--_in loco parentis_, and that kind of thing--and I would
sooner hang myself than scan her dress or say a word about her figure.
Do you think she will be afraid of a critic with one eye? Have courage,
man. I dare bet a sovereign she is quite capable of taking care of
herself. It's her business."
Macleod flushed quickly, and the one eye of the major caught that
sudden confession of shame or resentment.
"What I meant was," he said, instantly, "that nature had taught the
simplest of virgins a certain trick of fence--oh yes, don't you be
afraid. Embarrassment! If there is any one embarrassed, it will not be
me, and it will not be she. Why, she'll begin to wonder whether you are
really one of the Macleods, if you show yourself nervous, apprehensive,
frightened like this."
"And indeed, Stuart," said he, rising as if to shake off some weight of
gloomy feeling, "I scarcely know what is the matter with me. I ought to
be the happiest man in the world; and sometimes this very happiness
seems so great that it is like to suffocate me--I cannot breathe fast
enough; and then, again, I get into such unreasoning fears and
troubles--Well, let us get out into the fresh air."
The major carefully smoothed his hat once more, and took up his cane. He
followed Macleod down stairs--like Sancho Panza waiting on Don Quixote,
as he himself expressed it; and then the two friends slowly sauntered
away northward on this fairly clear and pleasant December morning.
"Your nerves are not in a healthy state, that's the fact, Macleod," said
the major, as they walked along. "The climate of London is too exciting
for you; a good, long, dull winter in Mull will restore your tone. But
in the meantime don't cut my throat, or your own, or anybody else's."
"Am I likely to do that?" Macleod said, laughing.
"There was young Bouverie," the major continued, not heeding the
question--"what a handsome young fellow he was when he joined us at
Gawulpoor!--and he hadn't been in the place a week but he must needs go
regular head over heels about our colonel's sister-in-law. An uncommon
pretty woman she was, too--an Irish girl, and fond of riding; and dash
me if that fellow didn't fairly try to break his neck again and again
just that she should admire his pluck! He was as mad as a hatter about
her. Well, one day two or three of us had been riding for two or three
hours on a blazing hot morning, and we came to one of the irrigation
reservoirs--big wells, you know--and what does he do but offer to bet
twenty pounds he would dive into the well and swim about for ten
minutes, till we hoisted him out at the end of the rope. I forget who
took the bet, for none of us thought he would do it: but I believe he
would have done anything so that the story of his pluck would be
carried to the girl, don't you know. Well, off went his clothes, and in
he jumped into the ice-cold water. Nothing would stop him. But at the
end of the ten minutes, when we hoisted up the rope, there was no
Bouverie there. It appeared that on clinging on to the rope he had
twisted it somehow, and suddenly found himself about to have his neck
broken, so he had to shake himself free and plunge into the water again.
When at last we got him out, he had had a longer bath than he had
bargained for; but there was apparently nothing the matter with him--and
he had won the money, and there would be a talk about him. However, two
days afterward, when he was at dinner, he suddenly felt as though he had
got a blow on the back of his head--so he told us afterward--and fell
back insensible. That was the beginning of it. It took him five or six
years to shake off the effects of that dip--"
"And did she marry him, after all?" Macleod said, eagerly.
"Oh dear, no! I think he had been invalided home not more than two or
three months when she married Connolly, of the Seventy-first Madras
Infantry. Then she ran away from him with some civilian fellow, and
Connolly blew his brains out. That," said the major, honestly, "is
always a puzzle to me. How a fellow can be such an ass as to blow his
brains out when his wife runs away from him beats my comprehension
altogether. Now what I would do would be this: I would thank goodness I
was rid of such a piece of baggage; I would get all the good-fellows I
know, and give them a rattling fine dinner; and I would drink a bumper
to her health and another bumper to her never coming back."
"And I would send you our Donald, and he would play, 'Cha till mi
tuilich' for you," Macleod said.
"But as for blowing my brains out! Well," the major added, with a
philosophic air, "when a man is mad he cares neither for his own life
nor for anybody else's. Look at those cases you continually see in the
papers: a young man is in love with a young woman; they quarrel, or she
prefers some one else; what does he do but lay hold of her some evening
and cut her throat--to show his great love for her--and then he coolly
gives himself up to the police, and says he is quite content to be
hanged."
"Stuart," said Macleod, laughing, "I don't like this talk about hanging.
You said a minute or two ago that I was mad."
"More or less," observed the major, with absolute gravity; "as the
lawyer said when he mentioned the Fifteen-acres park at Dublin."
"Well, let us get into a hansom," Macleod said. "When I am hanged you
will ask them to write over my tombstone that I never kept anybody
waiting for either luncheon or dinner."
The trim maid-servant who opened the door greeted Macleod with a
pleasant smile; she was a sharp wench, and had discovered that lovers
have lavish hands. She showed the two visitors into the drawing-room;
Macleod silent, and listening intently; the one-eyed major observing
everything, and perhaps curious to know whether the house of an actress
differed from that of anybody else. He very speedily came to the
conclusion that, in his small experience, he had never seen any house of
its size so tastefully decorated and accurately managed as this simple
home.
"But what's this!" he cried, going to the mantelpiece and taking down a
drawing that was somewhat ostentatiously placed there. "Well! If this is
English hospitality! By Jove! an insult to me, and my father, and my
father's clan, that blood alone will wipe out. 'The Astonishment of
Sandy MacAlister Mhor on beholding a Glimpse of Sunlight,' Look!"
He showed the rude drawing to Macleod--a sketch of a wild Highlander,
with his hair on end, his eyes starting out of his head, and his hands
uplifted in bewilderment. This work of art was the production of Miss
Carry, who, on hearing the knock at the door, had whipped into the room,
placed her bit of savage satire over the mantelpiece, and whipped out
again. But her deadly malice so far failed of its purpose that, instead
of inflicting any annoyance, it most effectually broke the embarrassment
of Miss Gertrude's entrance and introduction to the major.
"Carry has no great love for the Highlands," she said, laughing and
slightly blushing at the same time; "but she need not have prepared so
cruel a welcome for you. Won't you sit down, Major Stuart? Papa will be
here directly."
"I think it is uncommonly clever," the major said, fixing his one eye on
the paper as if he would give Miss White distinctly to understand that
he had not come to stare at her--"Perhaps she will like us better when
she knows more about us."
"Do you think," said Miss White, demurely, "that it is possible for any
one born in the South to learn to like the bagpipes?"
"No," said Macleod, quickly--and it was not usual for him to break in in
this eager way about a usual matter of talk--"that is all a question of
association. If you had been brought up to associate the sound of the
pipes with every memorable thing--with the sadness of a funeral, and the
welcome of friends come to see you, and the pride of going away to
war--then you would understand why 'Lord Lovat's Lament,' or the
'Farewell to Gibraltar,' or the 'Heights of Alma'--why these bring the
tears to a Highlander's eyes. The pibrochs preserve our legends for us,"
he went on to say, in rather an excited fashion, for he was obviously
nervous, and perhaps a trifle paler than usual. "They remind us of what
our families have done in all parts of the world, and there is not one
you do not associate with some friend or relative who is gone away, or
with some great merrymaking, or with the death of one who was dear to
you. You never saw that--the boat taking the coffin across the loch, and
the friends of the dead sitting with bowed heads, and the piper at the
bow playing the slow Lament to the time of the oars. If you had seen
that, you would know what the 'Cumhadh na Cloinne' is to a Highlander.
And if you have a friend come to see you, what is it first tells you of
his coming? When you can hear nothing for the waves, you can hear the
pipes! And if you were going into a battle, what would put madness into
your head but to hear the march that you know your brothers and uncles
and cousins last heard when they marched on with a cheer to take death
as it happened to come to them? You might as well wonder at the
Highlanders loving the heather. That is not a very handsome flower."
Miss White was sitting quite calm and collected. A covert glance or two
had convinced the major that she was entirely mistress of the situation.
If there was any one nervous, embarrassed, excited, through this
interview, it was not Miss Gertrude White.
"The other morning," she said, complacently, and she pulled down her
dainty white cuffs another sixteenth of an inch, "I was going along
Buckingham Palace Road, and I met a detachment--is a detachment right,
Major Stuart?--of a Highland regiment. At least I supposed it was part
of a Highland regiment, because they had eight pipers playing at their
head; and I noticed that the cab horses were far more frightened than
they would have been at twice the noise coming from an ordinary band. I
was wondering whether they might think it the roar of some strange
animal--you know how a camel frightens a horse. But I envied the officer
who was riding in front of the soldiers. He was a very handsome man; and
I thought how proud he must feel to be at the head of those fine,
stalwart fellows. In fact, I felt for a moment that I should like to
have command of a regiment myself."
"Faith," said the major, gallantly, "I would exchange into that
regiment, if I had to serve as a drummer-boy."
Embarrassed by this broad compliment? Not a bit of it. She laughed
lightly, and then rose to introduce the two visitors to her father, who
had just entered the room.
It was not to be expected that Mr. White, knowing the errand of his
guests, should give them an inordinately effusive welcome; but he was
gravely polite. He prided himself on being a man of common-sense, and he
knew it was no use fighting against the inevitable. If his daughter
would leave the stage, she would; and there was some small compensation
in the fact that by her doing so she would become Lady Macleod. He would
have less money to spend on trinkets two hundred years old; but he would
gain something--a very little no doubt--from the reflected lustre of her
social position.
"We were talking about officers, papa," she said, brightly, "and I was
about to confess that I have always had a great liking for soldiers. I
know if I had been a man I should have been a soldier. But do you know,
Sir Keith, you were once very rude to me about your friend Lieutenant
Ogilvie?"
Macleod started.
"I hope not," said he gravely.
"Oh yes, you were. Don't you remember the Caledonian Ball? I only
remarked that Lieutenant Ogilvie, who seemed to me a bonnie boy, did not
look as if he were a very formidable warrior; and you answered with some
dark saying--what was it?--that nobody could tell what sword was in a
scabbard until it was drawn?"
"Oh," said he, laughing somewhat nervously, "you forget: I was talking
to the Duchess of Devonshire."
"And I am sure her Grace was much obliged to you for frightening her
so," Miss White said, with a dainty smile.
Major Stuart was greatly pleased by the appearance and charming manner
of this young lady. If Macleod, who was confessedly a handsome young
fellow, had searched all over England, he could not have chosen a fitter
mate. But he was also distinctly of opinion--judging by his one eye
only--that nobody needed to be alarmed about this young lady's exceeding
sensitiveness and embarrassment before strangers. He thought she would
on all occasions be fairly capable of holding her own. And he was quite
convinced, too, that the beautiful clear eyes, under the long lashes,
pretty accurately divined what was going forward. But what did this
impression of the honest soldier's amount to? Only, in other words, that
Miss Gertrude White, although a pretty woman, was not a fool.
Luncheon was announced, and they went into the other room, accompanied
by Miss Carry, who had suffered herself, to be introduced to Major
Stuart with a certain proud sedateness. And now the major played the
part of the accepted lover's friend to perfection. He sat next Miss
White herself; and no matter what the talk was about, he managed to
bring it round to something that redounded to Macleod's advantage.
Macleod could do this, and Macleod could do that; it was all Macleod,
and Macleod, and Macleod.
"And if you should ever come to our part of the world, Miss White," said
the major--not letting his glance meet hers--"you will be able to
understand something of the old loyalty and affection and devotion the
people in the Highlands showed to their chiefs; for I don't believe
there is a man, woman, or child about the place who would not rather
have a hand cut off than that Macleod should have a thorn scratch him.
And it is all the more singular, you know, that they are not Macleods.
Mull is the country of the Macleans; and the Macleans and the Macleods
had their fights in former times. There is a cave they will show you
round the point from _Ru na Gaul_ lighthouse that is called
_Uamh-na-Ceann_--that is, the Cavern of the Skulls--where the Macleods
murdered fifty of the Macleans, though Alastair Crotach, the humpbacked
son of Macleod, was himself killed."
"I beg your pardon, Major Stuart," said Miss Carry, with a grand
stateliness in her tone, "but will you allow me to ask if this is true?
It is a passage I saw quoted in a book the other day, and I copied it
out. It says something about the character of the people you are talking
about."
She handed him the bit of paper; and he read these words: _"Trew it is,
that thir Ilandish men ar of nature verie prowd, suspicious, avaricious,
full of decept and evill inventioun each aganis his nychtbour, be what
way soever he may circumvin him. Besydis all this, they ar sa crewall in
taking of revenge that nather have they regard to person, eage, tyme, or
caus; sa ar they generallie all sa far addictit to thair awin ty
rannicall opinions that, in all respects, they exceed in creweltie the
maist barbarous people that ever hes bene sen the begynning of the
warld."_
"Upon my word," said the honest major, "it is a most formidable
indictment. You had better ask Sir Keith about it."
He handed the paper across the table; Macleod read it, and burst out
laughing.
"It is too true, Carry," said he. "We are a dreadful lot of people up
there among the hills. Nothing but murder and rapine from morning till
night."
"I was telling him this morning he would probably be hanged," observed
the major, gravely.
"For what?" Miss White asked.
"Oh," said the major, carelessly, "I did not specify the offence.
Cattle-lifting, probably."
Miss Carry's fierce onslaught was thus laughed away, and they proceeded
to other matters; the major meanwhile not failing to remark that this
luncheon differed considerably from the bread and cheese and glass of
whiskey of a shooting-day in Mull. Then they returned to the
drawing-room, and had tea there, and some further talk. The major had by
this time quite abandoned his critical and observant attitude. He had
succumbed to the enchantress. He was ready to declare that Gertrude
White was the most fascinating woman he had ever met, while, as a matter
of fact, she had been rather timidly making suggestions and asking his
opinion all the time. And when they rose to leave, she said,--
"I am very sorry, Major Stuart, that this unfortunate accident should
have altered your plans; but since you must remain in London, I hope we
shall see you often before you go."
"You are very kind," said he.
"We cannot ask you to dine with us," she said, quite simply and frankly,
"because of my engagements in the evening; but we are always at home at
lunch-time, and Sir Keith knows the way."
"Thank you very much," said the major, as he warmly pressed her hand.
The two friends passed out into the street.
"My dear fellow," said the major, "you have been lucky--don't imagine I
am humbugging you. A really handsome lass, and a thorough woman of the
world, too--trained and fitted at every point; none of your farmyard
beauties. But I say, Macleod--I say," he continued, solemnly, "won't she
find it a trifle dull at Castle Dare?--the change, you know."
"It is not necessary that she should live at Dare," Macleod said.
"Oh, of course, you know your own plans best."
"I have none. All that is in the air as yet. And so you do not think I
have make a mistake."
"I wish I was five-and-twenty, and could make a mistake like that," said
the major, with a sigh.
Meanwhile Miss Carry had confronted her sister.
"So you have been inspected, Gerty. Do you think you passed muster?"
"Go away, and don't be impertinent, you silly girl!" said the other,
good-naturedly.
Carry pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket, and, advancing,
placed it on the table.
"There," said she, "put that in your purse, and don't tell me you have
not been warned, Gertrude White."
The elder sister did as she was bid; but indeed she was not thinking at
that moment of the cruel and revengeful character of the Western
Highlanders, which Miss Carry's quotation set forth in such plain terms.
She was thinking that she had never before seen Glenogie look so
soldier-like and handsome.