AT A RAILWAY STATION.
The few days of grace obtained by the accident that happened to Major
Stuart fled too quickly away, and the time came for saying farewell.
With a dismal apprehension Macleod looked forward to this moment. He had
seen her on the stage bid a pathetic good-by to her lover, and there it
was beautiful enough--with her shy coquetries, and her winning ways, and
the timid, reluctant confession of her love. But there was nothing at
all beautiful about this ordeal through which he must pass. It was harsh
and horrible. He trembled even as he thought of it.
The last day of his stay in London arrived; he rose with a sense of some
awful doom hanging over him that he could in nowise shake off. It was a
strange day, too--the world of London vaguely shining through a pale
fog, the sun a globe of red fire. There was hoar-frost on the
window-ledges; at last the winter seemed about to begin.
And then, as ill luck would have it, Miss White had some important
business at the theatre to attend to, so that she could not see him till
the afternoon; and he had to pass the empty morning somehow.
"You look like a man going to be hanged," said the major, about noon.
"Come, shall we stroll down to the river now? We can have a chat with
your friend before lunch, and a look over his boat."
Colonel Ross, being by chance at Erith, had heard of Macleod's being in
town, and had immediately come up in his little steam-yacht, the _Iris_,
which now lay at anchor close to Westminster Bridge, on the Lambeth
side. He had proposed, merely for the oddity of the thing, that Macleod
and his friend the major should lunch on board, and young Ogilvie had
promised to run up from Aldershot.
"Macleod," said the gallant soldier, as the two friends walked leisurely
down towards the Thames, "if you let this monomania get such a hold of
you, do you know how it will end? You will begin to show signs of having
a conscience."
"What do you mean?" said he, absently.
"Your nervous system will break down, and you will begin to have a
conscience. That is a sure sign, in either a man or a nation. Man, don't
I see it all around us now in this way of looking at India and the
colonies! We had no conscience--we were in robust health as a
nation--when we thrashed the French out of Canada, and seized India, and
stole land just wherever we could put our fingers on it all over the
globe; but now it is quite different; we are only educating these
countries up to self-government; it is all in the interest of morality
that we protect them; as soon as they wish to go we will give them our
blessing--in short, we have got a conscience, because the national
health is feeble and nervous. You look out, or you will get into the
same condition. You will begin to ask whether it is right to shoot
pretty little birds in order to eat them; you will become a vegetarian;
and you will take to goloshes."
"Good gracious!" said Macleod, waking up, "what is all this about?"
"Rob Roy," observed the major, oracularly, "was a healthy man. I will
make you a bet he was not much troubled by chilblains."
"Stuart," Macleod cried, "do you want to drive me mad? What on earth are
you talking about?"
"Anything," the major confessed, frankly, "to rouse you out of your
monomania, because I don't want to have my throat cut by a lunatic some
night up at Castle Dare."
"Castle Dare," repeated Macleod, gloomily. "I think I shall scarcely
know the place again; and we have been away about a fortnight!"
No sooner had they got down to the landing-step on the Lambeth side of
the river than they were descried from the deck of the beautiful little
steamer, and a boat was sent ashore for them. Colonel Ross was standing
by the tiny gangway to receive them. They got on board, and passed into
the glass-surrounded saloon. There certainly was something odd in the
notion of being anchored in the middle of the great city--absolutely cut
off from it, and enclosed in a miniature floating world, the very sound
of it hushed and remote. And, indeed, on this strange morning the big
town looked more dream-like than usual as they regarded it from the
windows of this saloon--the buildings opal-like in the pale fog, a dusky
glitter on the high towers of the Houses of Parliament, and some touches
of rose red on the ripples of the yellow water around them.
Right over there was the very spot to which he had idly wandered in the
clear dawn to have a look at the peacefully flowing stream. How long
ago? It seemed to him, looking back, somehow the morning of
life--shining clear and beautiful, before any sombre anxieties and joys
scarcely less painful had come to cloud the fair sky. He thought of
himself at that time with a sort of wonder. He saw himself standing
there, glad to watch the pale and glowing glory of the dawn, careless as
to what the day might bring forth; and he knew that it was another and
an irrecoverable Macleod he was mentally regarding.
Well, when his friend Ogilvie arrived, he endeavored to assume some
greater spirit and cheerfulness, and they had a pleasant enough luncheon
party in the gently moving saloon. Thereafter Colonel Ross was for
getting up steam and taking them for a run somewhere; but at this point
Macleod begged to be excused for running away; and so, having consigned
Major Stuart to the care of his host for the moment, and having bade
good-by to Ogilvie, he went ashore. He made his way up to the cottage in
South Bank. He entered the drawing-room and sat down, alone.
When she came in, she said, with a quick anxiety, "You are not ill?"
"No, no," he said rising, and his face was haggard somewhat; "but--but
it is not pleasant to come to say good-by--"
"You must not take it so seriously as that," she said, with a friendly
smile.
"My going away is like going into a grave," he said, slowly. "It is
dark."
And then he took her two hands in his, and regarded her with such an
intensity of look that she almost drew back, afraid.
"Sometimes," he said, watching her eyes, "I think I shall never see you
again."
"Oh, Keith," said she, drawing her hands away, and speaking half
playfully, "you really frighten me! And even if you were never to see me
again, wouldn't it be a very good thing for you? You would have got rid
of a bad bargain."
"It would not be a very good thing for me," he said, still regarding
her.
"Oh, well, don't speak of it," said she, lightly; "let us speak of all
that is to be done in the long time that must pass before we meet--"
"But why '_must?_'" said he, eagerly--"why '_must?_' If you knew how I
looked forward to the blackness of this winter away up there--so far
away from you that I shall forget the sound of your voice--oh! you
cannot know what it is to me?"
He had sat down again, his eyes, with a sort of pained and hunted look
in them, bent on the floor.
"But there is a '_must_,' you know," she said, cheerfully, "and we ought
to be sensible folk and recognize it. You know I ought to have a
probationary period, as it were--like a nun, you know, just to see if
she is fit to--"
Here Miss White paused, with a little embarrassment; but presently she
charged the difficulty, and said, with a slight laugh,--
"To take the veil, in fact. You must give me time to become accustomed
to a whole heap of things: if we were to do anything suddenly now, we
might blunder into some great mistake, perhaps irretrievable. I must
train myself by degrees for another kind of life altogether; and I am
going to surprise you, Keith--I am indeed. If papa takes me to the
Highlands next year, you won't recognize me at all. I am going to read
up all about the Highlands, and learn the tartans, and the names of
fishes and birds; and I will walk in the rain and try to think nothing
about it; and perhaps I may learn a little Gaelic: indeed, Keith, when
you see me in the Highlands, you will find me a thorough
Highland-woman."
"You will never become a Highland-woman," he said, with a grave
kindness. "Is it needful? I would rather see you as you are than playing
a part."
Her eyes expressed some quick wonder, for he had almost quoted her
father's words to her.
"You would rather see me as I am?" she said, demurely. "But what am I? I
don't know myself."
"You are a beautiful and gentle-hearted Englishwoman," he said, with
honest admiration--"a daughter of the South. Why should you wish to be
anything else? When you come to us, I will show you a true
Highland-woman--that is, my cousin Janet."
"Now you have spoiled all my ambition," she said, somewhat petulantly.
"I had intended spending all the winter in training myself to forget the
habits and feelings of an actress, and I was going to educate myself for
another kind of life; and now I find that when I go to the Highlands you
will compare me with your cousin Janet!"
"That is impossible," said he, absently, for he was thinking of the time
when the summer seas would be blue again, and the winds soft, and the
sky clear; and then he saw the white boat of the _Umpire_ going merrily
out to the great steamer to bring the beautiful stranger from the South
to Castle Dare!
"Ah, well, I am not going to quarrel with you on this our last day
together," she said, and she gently placed her soft white hand on the
clinched fist that rested on the table. "I see you are in great
trouble--I wish I could lessen it. And yet how could I wish that you
could think of me less, even during the long winter evenings, when it
will be so much more lonely for you than for me? But you must leave me
my hobby all the same; and you must think of me always as preparing
myself and looking forward; for at least you know you will expect me to
be able to sing a Highland ballad to your friends."
"Yes, yes," he said, hastily, "if it is all true--if it is all
possible--what you speak of. Sometimes I think it is madness of me to
fling away my only chance; to have everything I care for in the world
near me, and to go away and perhaps never return. Sometimes I know in my
heart that I shall never see you again--never after this day."
"Ah, now," said she, brightly--for she feared this black demon getting
possession of him again--"I will kill that superstition right off. You
_shall_ see me after to-day; for as sure as my name is Gertrude White, I
will go up to the railway station to-morrow morning and see you off.
There!"
"You will?" he said, with a flush of joy on his face.
"But I don't want any one else to see me," she said, looking down.
"Oh, I will manage that," he said, eagerly. "I will get Major Stuart
into the carriage ten minutes before the train starts."
"Colonel Ross?"
"He goes back to Erith to-night."
"And I will bring to the station," said she, with some shy color in her
face, "a little present--if you should speak of me to your mother, you
might give her this from me; it belonged to my mother."
Could anything have been more delicately devised than this tender and
timid message?
"You have a woman's heart," he said.
And then in the same low voice she began to explain that she would like
him to go to the theatre that evening, and that perhaps he would go
alone; and would he do her the favor to be in a particular box? She took
a piece of paper from her purse, and shyly handed it to him. How could
he refuse?--though he flushed slightly. It was a favor she asked. "I
will know where you are," she said.
And so he was not to bid good-by to her on this occasion, after all. But
he bade good-by to Mr. White, and to Miss Carry, who was quite civil to
him now that he was going away; and then he went out into the cold and
gray December afternoon. They were lighting the lamps. But gaslight
throws no cheerfulness on a grave.
He went to the theatre later on; and the talisman she had given him
took him into a box almost level with the stage, and so near to it that
the glare of the foot-lights bewildered his eyes, until he retired into
the corner. And once more he saw the puppets come and go, with the one
live woman among them whose every tone of voice made his heart leap. And
then this drawing-room scene, in which she comes in alone, and talking
to herself? She sits down to the piano carelessly. Some one enters
unperceived, and stands silent there, to listen to the singing. And this
air that she sings, waywardly, like a light-hearted schoolgirl:--
"Hi-ri-libhin o, Brae MacIntyre,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Costly thy wooing!
Thou'st slain the maid.
Hug-o-rin-o, 'Tis thy undoing!
Hi-ri-libhin o, Friends of my love,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Do not upbraid him;
He was leal
Hug-o-rin-o, Chance betrayed him."
Macleod's breathing came quick and hard. She had not sung the ballad of
the brave MacIntyre when formerly he had seen the piece. Did she merely
wish him to know, by this arch rendering of the gloomy song, that she
was pursuing her Highland studies? And then the last verse she sang in
the Gaelic! He was so near that he could hear this adjuration to the
unhappy lover to seek his boat and fly, steering wide of Jura and
avoiding Mull:--
"Hi-ri-libhin o, Buin Bàta,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Fag an dàthaich,
Seachain Mule,
Hug-o-ri-no; Sna taodh Jura!"
Was she laughing, then, at her pronunciation of the Gaelic when she
carelessly rose from the piano, and, in doing so, directed one glance to
him that made him quail? The foolish piece went on. She was more bright,
vivacious, coquettish than ever: how could she have such spirits in view
of the long separation that lay on his heart like lead? Then, at the end
of the piece, there was a tapping at the door, and an envelope was
handed in to him. It only contained a card, with the message
"Good-night?" scrawled in pencil. It was the last time he ever was in
any theatre.
Then that next morning--cold and raw and damp, with a blustering
northwest wind that seemed to bring an angry summons from the far seas.
At the station his hand was trembling like the hand of a drunken man;
his eyes wild and troubled: his face haggard. And as the moment arrived
for the train to start, he became more and more excited.
"Come and take your place, Macleod," the major said. "There is no use
worrying about leaving. We have eaten our cake. The frolic is at an end.
All we can do is to sing, 'Then fare you well, my Mary Blane,' and put
up with whatever is ahead. If I could only have a drop of real, genuine
Talisker to steady my nerves--"
But here the major, who had been incidentally leaning out of the window,
caught sight of a figure, and instantly he withdrew his head. Macleod
disappeared.
That great, gaunt room--with the hollow footfalls of strangers, and the
cries outside. His face was quite white when he took her hand.
"I am very late," she said, with a smile.
He could not speak at all. He fixed his eyes on hers with a strange
intensity, as if he would read her very soul; and what could any one
find there but a great gentleness and sincerity, and the frank
confidence of one who had nothing to conceal?
"Gertrude," said he at last, "whatever happens to us two, you will never
forget that I loved you?"
"I think I may be sure of that," she said, looking down.
They rang a bell outside.
"Good-by, then."
He tightly grasped the hand he held; once more he gazed into those clear
and confiding eyes--with an almost piteously anxious look: then he
kissed her and hurried away. But she was bold enough to follow. Her eyes
were very moist. Her heart was beating fast. If Glenogie had there and
then challenged her, and said, "_Come, then, sweetheart; will you fly
with me? And the proud mother will meet you. And the gentle cousin will
attend on you. And Castle Dare will welcome the young bride!_"--what
would she have said? The moment was over. She only saw the train go
gently away from the station; and she saw the piteous eyes fixed on
hers; and while he was in sight she waved her handkerchief. When the
train had disappeared she turned away with a sigh.
"Poor fellow," she was thinking to herself, "he is very much in
earnest--far more in earnest than even poor Howson. It would break my
heart if I were to bring him any trouble."
By the time she had got to the end of the platform, her thoughts had
taken a more cheerful turn.
"Dear me," she was saying to herself, "I quite forgot to ask him whether
my Gaelic was good!"
When she had got into the street outside, the day was brightening.
"I wonder," she was asking herself, "whether Carry would come and look
at that exhibition of water-colors; and what would the cab fare be?"