A LAST HOPE.
Those sleepless nights of passionate yearning and despair--those days of
sullen gloom, broken only by wild cravings for revenge that went through
his brain like spasms of fire--these were killing this man. His face
grew haggard and gray; his eyes morose and hopeless; he shunned people
as if he feared their scrutiny; he brooded over the past in a silence he
did not wish to have broken by any human voice. This was no longer
Macleod of Dare. It was the wreck of a man--drifting no one knew
whither.
And in those dark and morbid reveries there was no longer any
bewilderment. He saw clearly how he had been tricked and played with. He
understood now the coldness she had shown on coming to Dare; her desire
to get away again; her impatience with his appeals; her anxiety that
communication between them should be solely by letter. "Yes, yes," he
would say to himself--and sometimes he would laugh aloud in the solitude
of the hills, "she was prudent. She was a woman of the world, as Stuart
used to say. She would not quite throw me off--she would not be quite
frank with me--until she had made sure of the other. And in her trouble
of doubt, when she was trying to be better than herself, and anxious to
have guidance, _that_ was the guide she turned to--the woman-man, the
dabbler in paint-boxes, the critic of carpets and wall-papers!"
Sometimes he grew to hate her. She had destroyed the world for him. She
had destroyed his faith in the honesty and honor of womanhood. She had
played with him as with a toy--a fancy of the brain--and thrown him
aside when something new was presented to her. And when a man is stung
by a white adder, does he not turn and stamp with his heel? Is he not
bound to crush the creature out of existence, to keep God's earth and
the free sunlight sweet and pure?
But then--but then--the beauty of her! In dreams he heard her low, sweet
laugh again; he saw the beautiful brown hair; he surrendered to the
irresistible witchery of the clear and lovely eyes. What would not a man
give for one last, wild kiss of the laughing and half-parted lips? His
life? And if that life happened to be a mere broken and useless thing--a
hateful thing--would he not gladly and proudly fling it away? One long,
lingering, despairing kiss, and then a deep draught of Death's black
wine!
One day he was riding down to the fishing-station, when he met John
MacIntyre, the postman, who handed him a letter, and passed on.
Macleod opened this letter with some trepidation, for it was from
London; but it was in Norman Ogilvie's handwriting.
"DEAR MACLEOD,--I thought you might like to hear the latest news.
I cut the enclosed from a sort of half-sporting, half-theatrical
paper our fellows get; no doubt the paragraph is true enough. And
I wish it was well over and done with, and she married out of
hand; for I know until that is so you will be torturing yourself
with all sorts of projects and fancies. Good-by old fellow. I
suppose when you offered me the gun, you thought your life had
collapsed altogether, and that you would have no further use for
anything. But no doubt, after the first shock, you have thought
better of that. How are the birds? I hear rather bad accounts
from Ross, but then he is always complaining about something.
"Yours sincerely, NORMAN OGILVIE."
And then he unfolded the newspaper cutting which Ogilvie had enclosed.
The paragraph of gossip announced that the Piccadilly Theatre would
shortly be closed for repairs; but that the projected provincial tour of
the company had been abandoned. On the re-opening of the theatre, a
play, which was now in preparation, written by Mr. Gregory Lemuel, would
be produced. "It is understood," continued the newsman, "that Miss
Gertrude White, the young and gifted actress who has been the chief
attraction at the Piccadilly Theatre for two years back, is shortly to
be married to Mr. L. Lemuel, the well-known artist; but the public have
no reason to fear the withdrawal from the stage of so popular a
favorite, for she has consented to take the chief role in the new play,
which is said to be of a tragic nature."
Macleod put the letter and its enclosure into his pocket, and rode on.
The hand that held the bridle shook somewhat; that was all.
He met Hamish.
"Oh, Hamish!" he cried, quite gayly. "Hamish, will you go to the
wedding?"
"What wedding, sir?" said the old man; but well he knew. If there was
any one blind to what had been going on, that was not Hamish; and again
and again he had in his heart cursed the English traitress who had
destroyed his master's peace.
"Why, do you not remember the English lady that was here not so long
ago? And she is going to be married. And would you like to go to the
wedding, Hamish!"
He scarcely seemed to know what he was saying in this wild way; there
was a strange look in his eyes, though apparently he was very merry. And
this was the first word he had uttered about Gertrude White to any
living being at Dare ever since his last return from the South.
Now what was Hamish's answer to this gay invitation? The Gaelic tongue
is almost devoid of those meaningless expletives which, in other
languages, express mere annoyance of temper; when a Highlander swears,
he usually swears in English. But the Gaelic curse is a much more solemn
and deliberate affair.
"_May her soul dwell in the lowermost hall of perdition!_"--that was the
answer that Hamish made; and there was a blaze of anger in the keen eyes
and in the proud and handsome face.
"Oh, yes," continued the old man, in his native tongue, and he spoke
rapidly and passionately, "I am only a serving-man, and perhaps a
serving-man ought not to speak; but perhaps sometimes he will speak. And
have I not seen it all, Sir Keith?--and no more of the pink letters
coming; and you going about a changed man, as if there was nothing more
in life for you? And now you ask me if I will go to the wedding? And
what do I say to you, Sir Keith? I say this to you--that the woman is
not now living who will put that shame on Macleod of Dare!"
Macleod regarded the old man's angry vehemence almost indifferently; he
had grown to pay little heed to anything around him.--
"Oh yes, it is a fine thing for the English lady," said Hamish, with the
same proud fierceness, "to come here and amuse herself. But she does not
know the Mull men yet. Do you think, Sir Keith, that any one of your
forefathers would have had this shame put upon him? I think not. I think
he would have said, 'Come, lads, here is a proud madam that does not
know that a man's will is stronger than a woman's will; and we will
teach her a lesson. And before she has learned that lesson, she will
discover that it is not safe to trifle with a Macleod of Dare.' And you
ask me if I will go to the wedding! I have known you since you were a
child, Sir Keith; and I put the first gun in your hand; and I saw you
catch your first salmon: it is not right to laugh at an old man."
"Laughing at you Hamish? I gave you an invitation to a wedding!"
"And if I was going to that wedding," said Hamish, with a return of that
fierce light to the gray eyes, "do you know how I would go to the
wedding? I would take two or three of the young lads with me. We would
make a fine party for the wedding. Oh yes, a fine party! And if the
English church is a fine church, can we not take off our caps as well as
any one? But when the pretty madam came in, I would say to myself, 'Oh
yes, my fine madam, you forgot it was a Macleod you had to deal with,
and not a child, and you did not think you would have a visit from two
or three of the Mull lads!'"
"And what then?" Macleod said, with a smile, though this picture of his
sweetheart coming into the church as the bride of another man had paled
his cheek.
"And before she had brought that shame on the house of Dare," said
Hamish, excitedly, "do you not think that I would seize her--that I
would seize her with my own hands? And when the young lads and I had
thrust her down into the cabin of the yacht--oh yes, when we had thrust
her down and put the hatch over, do you think the proud madam would be
quite so proud?"
Macleod laughed a loud laugh.
"Why, Hamish, you want to become a famous person! You would carry off a
popular actress, and have all the country ringing with the exploit! And
would you have a piper, too, to drown her screams--just as Macdonald of
Armadale did when he came with his men to South Uist and carried off
Flora Macdonald's mother?"
"And was there ever a better marriage than that--as I have heard many a
man of Skye say?" Hamish exclaimed, eagerly. "Oh yes, it is good for a
woman to know that a man's will is stronger than a woman's will! And
when we have the fine English madam caged up in the cabin, and we are
coming away to the North again, she will not have so many fine airs, I
think. And if the will cannot be broken, it is the neck that can be
broken; and better that than that Sir Keith Macleod should have a shame
put on him."
"Hamish, Hamish, how will you dare to go into the church at Salen next
Sunday?" Macleod said; but he was now regarding the old man with a
strange curiosity.
"Men were made before churches were thought of," Hamish said, curtly;
and then Macleod laughed, and rode on.
The laugh soon died away from his face. Here was the stone bridge on
which she used to lean to drop pebbles into the whirling clear water.
Was there not some impression even yet of her soft warm arm on the
velvet moss? And what had the voice of the streamlet told him in the
days long ago--that the summer-time was made for happy lovers; that she
was coming; that he should take her hand and show her the beautiful
islands and the sunlit seas before the darkening skies of the winter
came over them. And here was the summer sea; and moist, warm odors were
in the larch-wood; and out there Ulva was shining green, and there was
sunlight on the islands and on the rocks of Erisgeir. But she--where was
she? Perhaps standing before a mirror; with a dress all of white; and
trying how orange-blossoms would best lie in her soft brown hair. Her
arms are uplifted to her head; she smiles: could not one suddenly seize
her now by the waist and bear her off, with the smile changed to a
blanched look of fear? The wild pirates have got her; the Rose-leaf is
crushed in the cruel Northern hands; at last--at last--what is in the
scabbard has been drawn, and declared, and she screams in her terror!
Then he fell to brooding again over Hamish's mad scheme. The fine
English church of Hamish's imagination was no doubt a little stone
building that a handful of sailors could carry at a rush. And of course
the yacht must needs be close by; for there was no land in Hamish's mind
that was out of sight of the salt-water. And what consideration would
this old man have for delicate fancies and studies in moral science? The
fine madam had been chosen to be the bride of Macleod of Dare; that was
enough. If her will would not bend, it would have to be broken; that was
the good old way. Was there ever a happier wife than the Lady of
Armadale, who had been carried screaming downstairs in the night-time,
and placed in her lover's boat, with the pipes playing a wild pibroch
all the time?
Macleod was in the library that night when Hamish came to him with some
papers. And just as the old man was about to leave, Macleod said to
him,--
"Well, that was a pretty story you told me this morning, Hamish, about
the carrying off the young English lady. And have you thought any more
about it?"
"I have thought enough about it," Hamish said, in his native tongue.
"Then perhaps you could tell me, when you start on this fine expedition,
how you are going to have the yacht taken to London? The lads of Mull
are very clever, Hamish, I know; but do you think that any one of them
can steer the _Umpire_ all the way from Loch-na-Keal to the river
Thames?"
"Is it the river Thames?" said Hamish, with great contempt. "And is that
all--the river Thames? Do you know this, Sir Keith, that my cousin Colin
Laing, that has a whiskey-shop now in Greenock, has been all over the
world, and at China and other places; and he was the mate of many a big
vessel; and do you think he could not take the _Umpire_ from
Loch-na-Keal to London? And I would only have to send a line to him and
say, 'Colin, it is Sir Keith Macleod himself that will want you to do
this;' and then he will leave twenty or thirty shops, ay, fifty and a
hundred shops, and think no more of them at all. Oh yes, it is very true
what you say Sir Keith. There is no one knows better than I the
soundings in Loch Scridain and Loch Tua; and you have said yourself that
there is not a bank or a rock about the islands that I do not know; but
I have not been to London--no, I have not been to London. But is there
any great trouble in getting to London? No, none at all, when we have
Colin Laing on board."
Macleod was apparently making a gay joke of the matter; but there was an
anxious, intense look in his eyes all the same--even when he was
staring absently at the table before him.
"Oh yes, Hamish," he said, laughing in a constrained manner, "that would
be a fine story to tell. And you would become very famous--just as if
you were working for fame in a theatre; and all the people would be
talking about you. And when you got to London, how would you get through
the London streets?"
"It is my cousin who would show me the way: has he not been to London
more times than I have been to Stornoway?"
"But the streets of London--they would cover all the ground between here
and Loch Scridain; and how would you carry the young lady through them?"
"We would carry her," said Hamish, curtly.
"With the bagpipes to drown her screams?"
"I would drown her screams myself," said Hamish, with a sudden
savageness; and he added something that Macleod did not hear.
"Do you know that I am a magistrate, Hamish?"
"I know it, Sir Keith."
"And when you come to me with this proposal, do you know what I should
do?"
"I know what the old Macleods of Dare would have done," said Hamish,
proudly, "before they let this shame come on them. And you, Sir
Keith--you are a Macleod, too; ay, and the bravest lad that ever was
born in Castle Dare! And you will not suffer this thing any longer, Sir
Keith; for it is a sore heart I have from the morning till the night;
and it is only a serving-man that I am; but sometimes when I will see
you going about--and nothing now cared for, but a great trouble on your
face--oh, then I say to myself, 'Hamish, you are an old man, and you
have not long to live; but before you die you will teach the fine
English madam what it is to bring a shame on Sir Keith Macleod!'"
"Ah, well, good-night-now, Hamish; I am tired," he said; and the old man
slowly left.
He was tired--if one might judge by the haggard cheeks and the heavy
eyes; but he did not go to sleep. He did not even go to bed. He spent
the livelong night, as he had spent too many lately, in nervously pacing
to and fro within this hushed chamber; or seated with his arms on the
table, and the aching head resting on the clasped hands. And again
those wild visions came to torture him--the product of a sick heart and
a bewildered brain; only now there was a new element introduced. This
mad project of Hamish's at which he would have laughed in a saner mood,
began to intertwist itself with all these passionate longings and these
troubled dreams of what might yet be possible to him on earth; and
wherever he turned it was suggested to him; and whatever was the craving
and desire of the moment, this, and this only, was the way to reach it.
For if one were mad with pain, and determined to crush the white adder
that had stung one, what better way than to seize the hateful thing and
cage it so that it should do no more harm among the sons of men? Or if
one were mad because of the love of a beautiful white Princess--and she
far away, and dressed in bridal robes: what better way than to take her
hand and say, "Quick, quick, to the shore! For the summer seas are
waiting for you, and there is a home for the bride far away in the
North?" Or if it was only one wild, despairing effort--one last means of
trying--to bring her heart back again? Or if there was but the one
fierce, captured kiss of those lips no longer laughing at all? Men had
ventured more for far less reward, surely? And what remained to him in
life but this? There was at least the splendid joy of daring and action!
The hours passed; and sometimes he fell into a troubled sleep as he sat
with his head bent on his hands; but then it was only to see those
beautiful pictures of her, that made his heart ache all the more. And
sometimes he saw her all in sailor-like white and blue, as she was
stepping down from the steamer; and sometimes he saw the merry Duchess
coming forward through the ball-room, with her saucy eyes and her
laughing and parted lips; and sometimes he saw her before a mirror; and
again she smiled--but his heart would fain have cried aloud in its
anguish. Then again he would start up, and look at the window. Was he
impatient for the day?
The lamp still burned in the hushed chamber. With trembling fingers he
took out the letter Ogilvie had written to him, and held the slip of
printed paper before his bewildered gaze. "The young and gifted
actress." She is "shortly to be married." And the new piece that all the
world will come to see, as soon as she is returned from her wedding
tour, is "of a tragic nature."
* * * * *
Hamish! Hamish! do you hear these things? Do you know what they mean?
Oh, we will have to look sharp if we are to be there in time. Come
along, you brave lads! it is not the first time that a Macleod has
carried off a bride. And will she cry, do you think--for we have no
pipes to drown her screams? Ah, but we will manage it another way than
that, Hamish! You have no cunning, you old man! There will be no scream
when the white adder is seized and caged.
* * * * *
But surely no white adder? Oh, sweetheart, you gave me a red rose! And
do you remember the night in the garden, with the moonlight around us,
and the favor you wore next your heart was the badge of the Macleods?
You were not afraid of the Macleods then; you had no fear of the rude
Northern people; you said they would not crush a pale Rose-leaf. And
now--now--see! I have rescued you; and those people will persuade you no
longer: I have taken you away--you are free! And will you come up on
deck now, and look around on the summer sea? And shall we put in to some
port, and telegraph that the runaway bride is happy enough, and that
they will hear of her next from Castle Dare? Look around, sweetheart:
surely you know the old boat. And here is Christina to wait on you; and
Hamish--Hamish will curse you no more--he will be your friend now. Oh,
you will make the mother's heart glad at last! she has not smiled for
many a day.
* * * * *
Or is it the proud madam that is below, Hamish; and she will not speak;
and she sits alone in all her finery? And what are we to do with her
now, then, to break her will? Do you think she will speak when she is in
the midst of the silence of the Northern seas? Or will they be after us,
Hamish? Oh, that would be a fine chase, indeed! and we would lead them a
fine dance through the Western Isles; and I think you would try their
knowledge of the channels and the banks. And the painter-fellow, Hamish,
the woman-man, the dabbler--would he be in the boat behind us? or would
he be down below, in bed in the cabin, with a nurse to attend him? Come
along, then!--but beware of the over-falls of Tiree, you southern men!
Or is it a race for Barra Head; and who will be at Vatersay first! There
is good fishing-ground on the Sgriobh bhan; Hamish; they may as well
stop to fish as seek to catch us among our Western Isles! See, the dark
is coming down; are these the Monach lights in the north?--Hamish,
Hamish, we are on the rocks!--and there is no one to help her! Oh,
sweetheart! sweetheart!--
* * * * *
The brief fit of struggling sleep is over; he rises and goes to the
window; and now, if he is impatient for the new day, behold! the new day
is here. Oh, see how the wan light of the morning meets the wan face! It
is the face of a man who has been close to Death; it is the face of a
man who is desperate. And if, after the terrible battle of the night,
with its uncontrollable yearning and its unbearable pain, the fierce and
bitter resolve is taken?--if there remains but this one last despairing
venture for all that made life worth having? How wildly the drowning man
clutches at this or that, so only that he may breathe for yet a moment
more? He knows not what miracle may save him; he knows not where there
is any land; but only to live--only to breath for another moment--that
is his cry. And then, mayhap, amidst the wild whirl of waves, if he were
suddenly to catch sight of the shore; and think that he was getting near
to that; and see awaiting him there a white Princess, with a smile on
her lips and a red rose in her outstretched hand. Would he not make one
last convulsive effort before the black waters dragged him down?