Part 28 (1/2)

”You are very ungrateful, then. Half the effect of a modern comedy is lost because the people appear in rooms which resemble nothing at all that people ever lived in. Here is a man who gives you _carte blanche_ to put a modern drawing-room on the stage; and your part would gain infinitely from having real surroundings. I consider it a very flattering offer.”

”And perhaps it is, pappy,” said she, ”but I think I do enough if I get through my own share of the work. And it is very silly of him to want me to introduce a song into this part, too. He knows I can't sing--”

”Gerty!” her sister said.

”Oh, you know as well as I. I can get through a song well enough in a room; but I have not enough voice for a theatre; and although he says it is only to make the drawing-room scene more realistic--and that I need not sing to the front--that is all nonsense. I know what it is meant for--to catch the gallery. Now I refuse to sing for the gallery.”

This was decided enough.

”What was the song you put into your last part, Gerty?” her sister asked. ”I saw something in the papers about it.”

”It was a Scotch one, Carry; I don't think you know it.”

”I wonder it was not a Highland one,” her sister said, rather spitefully.

”Oh, I have a whole collection of Highland ones now, would you like to hear one? Would you, pappy?”

She went and fetched the book, and opened the piano.

”It is an old air that belonged to Scarba,” she said, and then she sang, simply and pathetically enough, the somewhat stiff and c.u.mbrous English translation of the Gaelic words. It was the song of the exiled Mary Macleod, who, sitting on the sh.o.r.es of ”sea-worn Mull,” looks abroad on the lonely islands of Scarba, and Islay, and Jura, and laments that she is far away from her own home.

”How do you like it, pappy?” she said, when she had finished. ”It is a pity I do not know the Gaelic. They say that when the chief heard these verses repeated, he let the old woman go back to her own home.”

One of the two listeners, at all events, did not seem to be particularly struck by the pathos of Mary Macleod's lament. She walked up to the piano.

”Where did you get that book, Gerty?” she said, in a firm voice.

”Where?” said the other, innocently. ”In Manchester, I think it was, I bought it.”

But before she had made the explanation, Miss Carry, convinced that this, too, had come from her enemy, had seized the book and turned to the t.i.tle-page. Neither on t.i.tle-page nor on fly-leaf, however, was there any inscription.

”Did you think it had come with the otter-skins, Carry?” the elder sister said, laughing; and the younger one retired, baffled and chagrined, but none the less resolved that before Gertrude White completely gave herself up to this blind infatuation for a savage country and for one of its worthless inhabitants, she would have to run the gauntlet of many a sharp word of warning and reproach.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN LONDON AGAIN.

On through the sleeping counties rushed the train--pa.s.sing woods, streams, fertile valleys, and cl.u.s.tering villages, all palely shrouded in the faint morning mist that had a sort of suffused and hidden sunlight in it; the world had not yet awoke. But Macleod knew that, ere he reached London people would be abroad; and he almost shrank from meeting the look of those thousands of eager faces. Would not some of them guess his errand? Would he not be sure to run against a friend of hers--an acquaintance of his own? It was with a strange sense of fear that he stepped out and on to the platform at Euston Station; he glanced up and down; if she were suddenly to confront his eyes! A day or two ago it seemed as if innumerable leagues of ocean lay between him and her, so that the heart grew sick with thinking of the distance; now that he was in the same town with her, he felt so close to her that he could almost hear her breathe.

Major Stuart has enjoyed a sound night's rest, and was now possessed of quite enough good spirits and loquacity for two. He scarcely observed the silence of his companion. Together they rattled away through this busy, eager, immense throng, until they got down to the comparative quiet of Bury Street; and here they were fortunate enough to find not only that Macleod's old rooms were unoccupied, but that his companion could have the corresponding chambers on the floor above. They changed their attire; had breakfast; and then proceeded to discuss their plans for the day. Major Stuart observed that he was in no hurry to investigate the last modifications of the drying-machines. It would be necessary to write and appoint an interview before going down into Ess.e.x. He had several calls to make in London; if Macleod did not see him before, they should meet at seven for dinner. Macleod saw him depart without any great regret.

When he himself went outside it was already noon, but the sun had not yet broken through the mist, and London seemed cold, and lifeless, and deserted. He did not know of any one of his former friends being left in the great and lonely city. He walked along Piccadilly, and saw how many of the houses were shut up. The beautiful foliage of the Green Park had vanished; and here and there a red leaf hung on a withered branch. And yet, lonely as he felt in walking through this crowd of strangers, he was nevertheless possessed with a nervous and excited fear that at any moment he might have to quail before the inquiring glance of a certain pair of calm, large eyes. Was this, then, really Keith Macleod who was haunted by these fantastic troubles? Had he so little courage that he dared not go boldly up to her house and hold out his hand to her? As he walked along this thoroughfare, he was looking far ahead; and when any tall and slender figure appeared that might by any possibility be taken for hers, he watched it with a nervous interest that had something of dread in it. So much for the high courage born of love!

It was with some sense of relief that he entered Hyde Park, for here there were fewer people. And as he walked on, the day brightened. A warmer light began to suffuse the pale mist lying over the black-green ma.s.ses of rhododendrons, the leafless trees, the damp gra.s.splots, the empty chairs; and as he was regarding a group of people on horseback who, almost at the summit of the red hill, seemed about to disappear into the mist, behold! a sudden break in the sky; a silvery gleam shot athwart from the south, so that these distant figures grew almost black; and presently the frail suns.h.i.+ne of November was streaming all over the red ride and the raw green of the gra.s.s. His spirits rose somewhat. When he reached the Serpentine, the sunlight was s.h.i.+ning on the rippling blue water; and there were pert young ladies of ten or twelve feeding the ducks; and away on the other side there was actually an island amidst the blue ripples; and the island, if it was not as grand as Staffa nor as green as Ulva, was nevertheless an island, and it was pleasant enough to look at, with its bushes, and boats, and white swans. And then he bethought him of his first walks by the side of this little lake--when Oscar was the only creature in London he had to concern himself with--when each new day was only a brighter holiday than its predecessor--when he was of opinion that London was the happiest and most beautiful place in the world; and of that bright morning, too, when he walked through the empty streets at dawn, and came to the peacefully flowing river.

These idle meditations were suddenly interrupted. Away along the bank of the lake his keen eye could make out a figure, which, even at that distance, seemed so much to resemble one he knew, that his heart began to beat quick. Then the dress--all of black, with a white hat and white gloves; was not that of the simplicity that had always so great an attraction for her? And he knew that she was singularly fond of Kensington Gardens; and might she not be going thither for a stroll before going back to the Piccadilly Theater? He hastened his steps. He soon began to gain on the stranger; and the nearer he got the more it seemed to him that he recognized the graceful walk and carriage of this slender woman. She pa.s.sed under the archway of the bridge. When she had emerged from the shadow, she paused for a moment or two to look at the ducks on the lake; and this arch of shadow seemed to frame a beautiful sunlit picture--the single figure against a background of green bushes.

And if this were indeed she, how splendid the world would all become in a moment! In his eagerness of antic.i.p.ation he forgot his fear. What would she say? Was he to hear her laugh once more, and take her hand?

Alas! When he got close enough to make sure, he found that his beautiful figure belonged to a somewhat pretty, middle-aged lady, who had brought a bag of sc.r.a.ps with her to feed the ducks. The world grew empty again.