Part 27 (1/2)
”Sir Keith Macleod,” the elder sister said, without thinking.
”Then he has been writing to you?”
”Certainly.”
She marched out of the room. Gertrude White, unconscious of the fierce rage she had aroused, carelessly proceeded with her toilet, trying now one flower and now another in the ripples of her sun-brown hair, but finally discarding these half-withered things for a narrow band of blue velvet.
”Threescore o' n.o.bles rode up the king's ha',”
she was humming thoughtlessly to herself as she stood with her hands uplifted to her head, revealing the beautiful lines of her figure,
”But Bonnie Glenogie's the flower o' them a'; Wi' his milk-white steed and his coal-black e'e: Glenogie, dear mither, Glenogie for me!”
At length she had finished, and was ready to proceed to her immediate work of overhauling domestic affairs. When Keith Macleod was struck by the exceeding neatness and perfection of arrangement in this small house, he was in nowise the victim of any stage-effect. Gertrude White was at all times and in all seasons a precise and accurate house-mistress. Hara.s.sed, as an actress must often be, by other cares; sometimes exhausted with hard work; perhaps tempted now and again by the self-satisfaction of a splendid triumph to let meaner concerns go unheeded; all the same, she allowed nothing to interfere with her domestic duties.
”Gerty,” her father said, impatiently, to her a day or two before they left London for the provinces, ”what is the use of your going down to these stores yourself? Surely you can send Jane or Marie. You really waste far too much time over the veriest trifles: how can it matter what sort of mustard we have?”
”And, indeed, I am glad to have something to convince me that I am a human being and a woman,” she had said, instantly, ”something to be myself in. I believe Providence intended me to be the manager of a Swiss hotel.”
This was one of the first occasions on which she had revealed to her father that she had been thinking a good deal about her lot in life, and was perhaps beginning to doubt whether the struggle to become a great and famous actress was the only thing worth living for. But he paid little attention to it at the time. He had a vague impression that it was scarcely worth discussing about. He was pretty well convinced that his daughter was clever enough to argue herself into any sort of belief about herself, if she should take some fantastic notion into her head.
It was not until that night in Manchester that he began to fear there might be something serious in these expressions of discontent.
On this bright October morning Miss Gertrude White was about to begin her domestic inquiries, and was leaving her room humming cheerfully to herself something about the bonnie Glenogie of the song, when she was again stopped by her sister, who was carrying a bundle.
”I have got the skins,” she said, gloomily. ”Jane took them out.”
”Will you look at them?” the sister said, kindly. ”They are very pretty.
If they were not a present, I would give them to you, to make a jacket of them.”
”_I_ wear them?” said she. ”Not likely!”
Nevertheless she had sufficient womanly curiosity to let her elder sister open the parcel; and then she took up the otter-skins one by one, and looked at them.
”I don't think much of them,” she said.
The other bore this taunt patiently.
”They are only big moles, aren't they? And I thought moleskin was only worn by working-people.”
”I am a working-person too,” Miss Gertrude White said: ”but, in any case, I think a jacket of these skins will look lovely.”
”Oh, do you think so? Well, you can't say much for the smell of them.”
”It is no more disagreeable than the smell of a sealskin jacket.”
She laid down the last of the skins with some air of disdain.
”It will be a nice series of trophies, anyway--showing you know some one who goes about spending his life in killing inoffensive animals.”
”Poor Sir Keith Macleod! What has he done to offend you, Carry?”