OVER THE SEAS.
But no harm at all came of that reckless ride through the storm; and in
a day or two's time Macleod had almost argued himself into the belief
that it was but natural for a young girl to be fascinated by these new
friends. And how could he protest against a fancy-dress ball, when he
himself had gone to one on his brief visit to London? And it was a proof
of her confidence in him that she wished to take his advice about her
costume.
Then he turned to other matters; for, as the slow weeks went by, one
eagerly disposed to look for the signs of the coming spring might
occasionally detect a new freshness in the morning air, or even find a
little bit of the whitlow-grass in flower among the moss of an old wall.
And Major Stuart had come over to Dare once or twice; and had privately
given Lady Macleod and her niece such enthusiastic accounts of Miss
Gertrude White that the references to her forthcoming visit ceased to be
formal and became friendly and matter of course. It was rarely,
however, that Keith Macleod mentioned her name. He did not seem to wish
for any confidant. Perhaps her letters were enough.
But on one occasion Janet Macleod said to him, with a shy smile.
"I think you must be a very patient lover, Keith, to spend all the
winter here. Another young man would have wished to go to London."
"And I would go to London, too!" he said suddenly, and then he stopped.
He was somewhat embarrassed. "Well, I will tell you, Janet. I do not
wish to see her any more as an actress, and she says it is better that I
do not go to London; and--and, you know, she will soon cease to be an
actress."
"But why not now," said Janet Macleod, with some wonder, "if she has
such a great dislike for it?"
"That I do not know," said he, somewhat gloomily.
But he wrote to Gertrude White, and pressed the point once more, with
great respect, it is true, but still with an earnestness of pleading
that showed how near the matter lay to his heart. It was a letter that
would have touched most women; and even Miss Gertrude White was pleased
to see how anxiously interested he was in her.
"But you know, my dear Keith," she wrote back, "when people are going to
take a great plunge into the sea, they are warned to wet their head
first. And don't you think I should accustom myself to the change you
have in store for me by degrees? In any case, my leaving the stage at
the present moment could make no difference to us--you in the Highlands,
I in London. And do you know, sir, that your request is particularly
ill-timed; for, as it happens, I am about to enter into a new dramatic
project of which I should probably never have heard but for you. Does
that astonish you? Well, here is the story. It appears that you told the
Duchess of Wexford that I would give her a performance for the new
training-ship she is getting up; and, being challenged, could I break a
promise made by you? And only fancy what these clever people have
arranged, to flatter their own vanity in the name of charity. They have
taken St. George's Hall, and the distinguished amateurs have chosen the
play; and the play--don't laugh, dear Keith--is 'Romeo and Juliet!' And
I am to play _Juliet_ to the _Romeo_ of the Honorable Captain Brierley,
who is a very good-looking man, but who is so solemn and stiff a Romeo
that I know I shall burst out laughing on the dreaded night. He is as
nervous now at a morning rehearsal as if it were his _debut_ at Drury
Lane; and he never even takes my hand without an air of apology, as if
he were saying, 'Really, Miss White, you must pardon me; I am compelled
by my part to take your hand; otherwise I would die rather than be
guilty of such a liberty.' And when he addresses me in the
balcony-scene, he _will not_ look at me; he makes his protestations of
love to the flies; and when I make my fine speeches to him, he blushes
if his eyes should by chance meet mine, just as if he had been guilty of
some awful indiscretion. I know, dear Keith, you don't like to see me
act, but you might come up for this occasion only. Friar Lawrence is the
funniest thing I have seen for ages. The nurse, however, Lady Bletherin,
is not at all bad. I hear there is to be a grand supper afterwards
somewhere, and I have no doubt I shall be presented to a number of
ladies who will speak for the first time to an actress and be possessed
with a wild fear; only, if they have daughters, I suppose they will keep
the fluttering-hearted young things out of the way, lest I should
suddenly break out into blue flame, and then disappear through the
floor. I am quite convinced that Captain Brierley considers me a bold
person because I look at him when I have to say,
"'O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully!'"
Macleod crushed this letter together, and thrust it into his pocket. He
strode out of the room, and called for Hamish.
"Send Donald down to the quay," said he, "and tell them to get the boat
ready. And he will take down my gun too."
Old Hamish, noticing the expression of his master's eyes, went off
quickly enough, and soon got hold of Donald, the piper-lad.
"Donald," said he, in the Gaelic, "you will run down to the quay as fast
as your legs can carry you, and you will tell them to get the boat
ready, and not to lose any time in getting the boat ready, and to have
the seat dry, and let there be no talking when Sir Keith gets on board.
And here is the gun too, and the bag; and you will tell them to have no
talking among themselves this day."
When Macleod got down to the small stone pier, the two men were in the
boat. Johnny Wickes was standing at the door of the storehouse.
"Would you like to go for a sail, Johnny?" Macleod said abruptly, but
there was no longer that dangerous light in his eyes.
"Oh yes, sir," said the boy, eagerly; for he had long ago lost his dread
of the sea.
"Get in, then, and get up to the bow."
So Johnny Wickes vent cautiously down the few slippery stone steps, half
tumbled into the bottom of the great open boat, and then scrambled up to
the bow.
"Where will you be for going, sir?" said one of the men when Macleod had
jumped into the stern and taken the tiller.
"Anywhere--right out!" he answered, carelessly.
But it was all very well to say "right out!" when there was a stiff
breeze blowing right in. Scarcely had the boat put her nose out beyond
the pier, and while as yet there was but little way on her, when a big
sea caught her, springing high over her bows and coming rattling down on
her with a noise as of pistol-shots. The chief victim of this deluge was
the luckless Johnny Wickes, who tumbled down into the bottom of the
boat, vehemently blowing the salt-water out of his mouth, and rubbing
his knuckles into his eyes. Macleod burst out laughing.
"What's the good of you as a lookout?" he cried. "Didn't you see the
water coming?"
"Yes, sir," said Johnny, ruefully laughing, too. But he would not be
beaten. He scrambled up again to his post, and clung there, despite the
fierce wind and the clouds of spray.
"Keep her close up, sir," said the man who had the sheet of the huge
lugsail in both his hands, as he cast a glance out at the darkening sea.
But this great boat, rude and rough and dirty as she appeared, was a
splendid specimen of her class; and they know how to build such boats up
about that part of the world. No matter with how staggering a plunge she
went down into the yawning green gulf, the white foam hissing away from
her sides; before the next wave, high, awful, threatening, had come down
on her with a crash as of mountains falling, she had glided buoyantly
upward, and the heavy blow only made her bows spring the higher, as
though she would shake herself free, like a bird, from the wet. But it
was a wild day to be out. So heavy and black was the sky in the west
that the surface of the sea out to the horizon seemed to be a moving
mass of white foam, with only streaks of green and purple in it. The
various islands changed every minute as the wild clouds whirled past.
Already the great cliffs about Dare had grown distant and faint as seen
through the spray; and here were the rocks of Colonsay, black as jet as
they reappeared through the successive deluges of white foam; and far
over there, a still gloomier mass against the gloomy sky told where the
huge Atlantic breakers were rolling in their awful thunder into the
Staffa caves.
"I would keep her away a bit," said the sailor next Macleod. He did not
like the look of the heavy breakers that were crashing on to the
Colonsay rocks.
Macleod, with his teeth set hard against the wind, was not thinking of
the Colonsay rocks more than was necessary to give them a respectful
berth.
"Were you ever in a theatre, Duncan?" he said, or rather bawled, to the
brown-visaged and black-haired young fellow who had now got the sheet of
the lugsail under his foot as well as in the firm grip of his hands.
"Oh yes, Sir Keith," said he, as he shook the salt-water away from his
short beard. "It was at Greenock. I will be at the theatre, and more
than three times or two times."
"How would you like to have a parcel of actors and actresses with us
now?" he said, with a laugh.
"'Deed, I would not like it at all," said Duncan, seriously; and he
twisted the sheet of the sail twice round his right wrist, so that his
relieved left hand could convey a bit of wet tobacco to his mouth. "The
women they would chump apout, and then you do not know what will happen
at all."
"A little bit away yet, sir!" cried out the other sailor, who was
looking out to windward, with his head between the gunwale and the sail.
"There is a bad rock off the point."
"Why, it is half a mile north of our course as we are now going!"
Macleod said.
"Oh yes, half a mile!" the man said to himself; "but I do not like half
miles, and half miles, and half miles on a day like this!"
And so they went plunging and staggering and bounding onward, with the
roar of the water all around them, and the foam at her bows, as it
sprung high into the air, showing quite white against the black sky
ahead. The younger lad, Duncan, was clearly of opinion that his master
was running too near the shores of Colonsay; but he would say no more,
for he knew that Macleod had a better knowledge of the currents and
rocks of this wild coast than any man on the mainland of Mull. John
Cameron, forward, kept his head down to the gunwale, his eyes looking
far over that howling waste of sea; Duncan, his younger brother, had his
gaze fixed mostly on the brown breadth of the sail, hammered at by the
gusts of wind; while as for the boy at the bow, that enterprising youth
had got a rope's end, and was endeavoring to strike at the crest of each
huge wave as it came ploughing along in its resistless strength.
But at one moment the boat gave a heavier lurch than usual, and the
succeeding wave struck her badly. In the great rush of water that then
ran by her side, Macleod's startled eye seemed to catch a glimpse of
something red, something blazing and burning red in the waste of green,
and almost the same glance showed him there was no boy at the bow!
Instantly, with just one cry to arrest the attention of the men, he had
slipped over the side of the boat just as an otter slips off a rock. The
two men were bewildered but for a second. One sprang to the halyards,
and down came the great lugsail; the other got out one of the great
oars, and the mighty blade of it fell into the bulk of the next wave as
if he would with one sweep tear her head round. Like two mad men the men
pulled; and the wind was with them, and the tide also, but,
nevertheless, when they caught sight, just for a moment, of some object
behind them, that was a terrible way away. Yet there was no time, they
thought, or seemed to think, to hoist the sail again, and the small
dingy attached to the boat would have been swamped in a second; and so
there was nothing for it but the deadly struggle with those immense
blades against the heavy resisting mass of the boat. John Cameron looked
round again; then, with an oath, he pulled his oar across the boat.
"Up with the sail, lad!" he shouted; and again he sprang to the
halyards.
The seconds, few as they were, that were necessary to this operation
seemed ages; but no sooner had the wind got a purchase on the breadth of
the sail, than the boat flew through the water, for she was new running
free.
"He has got him! I can see the two!" shouted the elder Cameron.
And as for the younger? At this mad speed the boat would be close to
Macleod in another second or two; but in that brief space of time the
younger Cameron had flung his clothes off, and stood there stark-naked
in the cutting March wind.
"That is foolishness!" his brother cried in the Gaelic. "You will have
to take an oar!"
"I will not take an oar!" the other cried, with both hands ready to let
go the halyards. "And if it is foolishness, this is the foolishness of
it; I will not let you or any man say that Sir Keith Macleod was in the
water, and Duncan Cameron went home with a dry skin!"
And Duncan Cameron was as good as his word; for as the boat went
plunging forward to the neighborhood in which they occasionally saw the
head of Macleod appear on the side of a wave and then disappear again as
soon as the wave broke, and as soon as the lugsail had been rattled
down, he sprung clear from the side of the boat. For a second or two,
John Cameron, left by himself in the boat, could not see any one of the
three; but at last he saw the black head of his brother, and then some
few yards beyond, just as a wave happened to roll by, he saw his master
and the boy. The boat had almost enough way on her to carry her the
length; he had but to pull at the huge oar to bring her head round a
bit. And he pulled, madly and blindly, until he was startled by a cry
close by. He sprang to the side of the boat. There was his brother
drifting by, holding the boy with one arm. John Cameron rushed to the
stern to fling a rope, but Duncan Cameron had been drifting by with a
purpose; for as soon as he got clear of the bigger boat, he struck for
the rope of the dingy, and got hold of that, and was safe. And here was
the master, too, clinging to the side of the dingy so as to recover his
breath, but not attempting to board the cockleshell in these plunging
waters. There were tears running down John Cameron's rugged face as he
drew the three up and over the side of the big boat.
"And if you was drowned, Sir Keith, it was not me would have carried the
story to Castle Dare. I would just as soon have been drowned too."
"Have you any whiskey, John?" Macleod said, pushing the hair out of his
eyes, and trying to get his mustache out of his mouth.
In ordinary circumstances John Cameron would have told a lie; but on
this occasion he hurriedly bade the still undressed Duncan to take the
tiller, and he went forward to a locker at the bows, which was usually
kept for bait, and from thence he got a black bottle which was half
full.
"Now, Johnny Wickes," Macleod said to the boy, who was quite blinded
and bewildered, but otherwise apparently not much the worse, "swallow a
mouthful of this, you young rascal; and if I catch you imitating a
dolphin again, it is a rope's end you'll have, and not good Highland
whiskey."
Johnny Wickes did not understand; but he swallowed the whiskey, and then
he began to look about him a bit.
"Will I put my clothes round him, Sir Keith?" Duncan Cameron said.
"And go home that way to Dare?" Macleod said, with a loud laugh. "Get on
your clothes, Duncan, lad, and get up the sail again; and we will see if
there is a dram left for us in the bottle. John Cameron, confound you!
where are you putting her head to?"
John Cameron, who had again taken the tiller, seemed as one demented. He
was talking to himself rapidly in Gaelic, and his brows were frowning;
and he did not seem to notice that he was putting the head of the boat,
which had now some little way on her by reason of the wind and tide,
though she had no sail up, a good deal too near the southernmost point
of Colonsay.
Roused from this angry reverie, he shifted her course a bit; and then,
when his brother had got his clothes on, he helped to hoist the sail,
and again they flew onward and shoreward, along with the waves that
seemed to be racing them; but all the same he kept grumbling and
growling to himself in Gaelic. Meanwhile Macleod had got a huge
tarpaulin overcoat and wrapped Johnny Wickes in it, and put him in the
bottom of the boat.
"You will soon be warm enough in that, Master Wickes," said he; "the
chances are you will come out boiled red, like a lobster. And I would
strongly advise you, if we can slip into the house and get dry clothes
on, not to say a word of your escapade to Hamish."
"Ay, Sir Keith," said John Cameron, eagerly, in his native tongue, "that
is what I will be saying to myself. If the story is told--and Hamish
will hear that you will nearly drown yourself--what is it he will not do
to that boy? It is for killing him he will be."
"Not as bad as that, John," Macleod said, good-naturedly. "Come, there
is a glass for each of us; and you may give me the tiller now."
"I will take no whiskey, Sir Keith, with thanks to you," said John
Cameron; "I was not in the water."
"There is plenty for all, man!"
"I was not in the water."
"I tell you there is plenty for all of us!"
"There is the more for you, Sir Keith," said he, stubbornly.
And then, as great good luck would have it, it was found, when they got
ashore, that Hamish had gone away as far as Salen on business of some
sort or other; and the story told by the two Camerons was that Johnny
Wickes, whose clothes were sent into the kitchen to be dried, and who
was himself put to bed, had fallen into the water down by the quay; and
nothing at all was said about Keith Macleod having had to leap into the
sea off the coast of Colonsay. Macleod got into Castle Dare by a back
way, and changed his clothes in his own room. Then he went away upstairs
to the small chamber in which Johnny Wickes lay in bed.
"You have had the soup, then? You look pretty comfortable."
"Yes, sir," said the boy, whose face was now flushed red with the
reaction after the cold. "I beg your pardon, sir."
"For tumbling into the water?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, look here, Master Wickes; you chose a good time. If I had had
trousers on, and waterproof leggings over them, do you know where you
would be at the present moment? You would be having an interesting
conversation with a number of lobsters at the bottom of the sea off the
Colonsay shores. And so you thought because I had my kilt on, that I
could fish you out of the water?"
"No, sir," said Johnny Wickes. "I beg your pardon, sir."
"Well, you will remember that it was owing to the Highland kilt that you
were picked out of the water, and that it was Highland whiskey put life
into your blood again; you will remember that well. And if any strange
lady should come here from England and ask you how you like the
Highlands, you will not forget?"
"No, sir."
"And you can have Oscar up here in the room with you, if you like, until
they let you out of bed again; or you can have Donald to play the pipes
to you until dinner-time."
Master Wickes chose the less heroic remedy; but, indeed, the
companionship of Oscar was not needed; for Janet Macleod--who might just
as well have tried to keep her heart from beating as to keep herself
away from any one who was ill or supposed to be ill--herself came up to
this little room, and was very attentive to Master Wickes, not because
he was suffering very much from the effects of his ducking, but because
he was a child, and alone, and a stranger. And to her Johnny Wickes told
the whole story, despite the warnings he had received that, if Hamish
came to learn of the peril in which Macleod had been placed by the
incaution of the English lad, the latter would have had a bad time of it
at Castle Dare. Then Janet hastened away again, and, finding her
cousin's bedroom empty, entered; and there discovered that he had, with
customary recklessness, hung up his wet clothes in his wardrobe. She had
them at once conveyed away to the lower regions, and she went, with
earnest remonstrances, to her cousin, and would have him drink some hot
whiskey and water; and when Hamish arrived, went straight to him too,
and told him the story in such a way that he said,--
"Ay, ay, it wass the poor little lad! And he will mek a good sailor yet.
And it was not much dancher for him when Sir Keith wass in the boat; for
there is no one in the whole of the islands will sweem in the water as
he can sweem; and it is like a fish in the water that he is."
That was about the only incident of note, and little was made of it,
that disturbed the monotony of life at Castle Dare at this time. But by
and by, as the days passed, and as eager eyes looked abroad, signs
showed that the beautiful summer-time was drawing near. The deep blue
came into the skies and the seas again; the yellow mornings broke
earlier. Far into the evening they could still make out the Dutchman's
Cap, and Lunga, and the low-lying Coll and Tiree, amidst the glow at the
horizon after the blood-red sunset had gone down. The white stars of the
saxifrage appeared in the woods; the white daisies were in the grass. As
you walked along the lower slopes of Ben-an-Sloich, the grouse that rose
were in pairs. What a fresh green this was that shimmered over the young
larches! He sent her a basket of the first trout he caught in the loch.
The wonderful glad time came nearer and nearer. And every clear and
beautiful day that shone over the white sands of Iona and the green
shores of Ulva, with the blue seas all breaking joyfully along the
rocks, was but a day thrown away that should have been reserved for her.
And whether she came by the _Dunara_ from Greenock, or by the _Pioneer_
from Oban, would they hang the vessel in white roses in her honor, and
have velvet carpetings on the gangways for the dainty small feet to
tread on? and would the bountiful heavens grant but one shining blue day
for her first glimpse of the far and lonely Castle Dare? Janet, the
kind-hearted, was busy from morning till night; she herself would place
the scant flowers that could be got in the guests' rooms. The steward of
the _Pioneer_ had undertaken to bring any number of things from Oban;
Donald, the piper-lad, had a brand-new suit of tartan, and was
determined that, short of the very cracking of his lungs, the English
lady would have a good salute played for her that day. The _Umpire_, all
smartened up now, had been put in a safe anchorage in Loch-na-Keal; the
men wore their new jerseys; the long gig, painted white, with a band of
gold, was brought along to Dare, so that it might, if the weather were
favorable, go out to bring the Fair Stranger to her Highland home. And
then the heart of her lover cried, "_O winds and seas, if only for one
day, be gentle now! so that her first thoughts of us shall be all of
peace and loveliness, and of a glad welcome, and the delight of clear
summer days!_"