Part 46 (1/2)
And here she burst out crying, and sobbed bitterly.
”Oh, nonsense, child!” her father said; ”your nervous system must have been shaken last night by that storm. I have seen a strange look upon your face all day. It was certainly a mistake our coming here; you are not fitted for this savage life.”
She grew more composed. She sat down for a few minutes; and her father, taking out a small flask which had been filled from a bottle of brandy sent over during the day from Castle Dare, poured out a little of the spirits, added some water, and made her drink the dose as a sleeping draught.
”Ah well, you know, pappy,” said she, as she rose to leave, and she bestowed a very pretty smile on him, ”it is all in the way of experience, isn't it? and an artist should experience everything. But there is just a little too much about graves and ghosts in these parts for me. And I suppose we shall go to-morrow to see some cave or other where two or three hundred men, women, and children were murdered.”
”I hope in going back we shall not be as near our own grave as we were last night,” her father observed.
”And Keith Macleod laughs at it,” she said, ”and says it was unfortunate we got a wetting!”
And so she went to bed; and the sea-air had dealt well with her; and she had no dreams at all of s.h.i.+pwrecks, or of black familiars in moonlit shrines. Why should her sleep be disturbed because that night she had put her foot on the grave of the chief of the Macleods?
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
THE UMPIRE.
Next morning, with all this wonderful world of sea and islands s.h.i.+ning in the early sunlight, Mr. White and his daughter were down by the sh.o.r.e, walking along the white sands, and chatting idly as they went.
From time to time they looked across the fair summer seas to the distant cliffs of Bourg; and each time they looked a certain small white speck seemed coming nearer. That was the _Umpire_; and Keith Macleod was on board of her. He had started at an unknown hour of the night to bring the yacht over from her anchorage. He would not have his beautiful Fionaghal, who had come as a stranger to these far lands, go back to Dare in a common open boat with stones for ballast.
”This is the loneliest place I have ever seen,” Miss Gertrude White was saying on this the third morning after her arrival. ”It seems scarcely in the world at all. The sea cuts you off from everything you know; it would have been nothing if we had come by rail.”
They walked on in silence, the blue waves beside them curling a crisp white on the smooth sands.
”Pappy,” said she, at length, ”I suppose if I lived here for six months no one in England would know anything about me? If I were mentioned at all, they would think I was dead. Perhaps some day I might meet some one from England; and I would have to say, 'Don't you know who I am? Did you never hear of one called Gertrude White? I was Gertrude White.'”
”No doubt,” said her father, cautiously.
”And when Mr. Lemuel's portrait of me appears in the Academy, people would be saying, 'Who is that?' _Miss Gertrude White, as Juliet?_ Ah, there was an actress of that name. Or was she an amateur? She married somebody in the Highlands. I suppose she is dead now?”
”It is one of the most gratifying instances, Gerty, of the position you have made,” her father observed, in his slow and sententious way, ”that Mr. Lemuel should be so willing, after having refused to exhibit at the Academy for so many years, to make an exception in the case of your portrait.”
”Well, I hope my face will not get burned by the sea-air and the sun,”
she said. ”You know he wants two or three more sittings. And do you know, pappy, I have sometimes thought of asking you to tell me honestly--not to encourage me with flattery, you know--whether my face has really that high-strung pitch of expression when I am about to drink the poison in the cell. Do I really look like Mr. Lemuel's portrait of me?”
”It is your very self, Gerty,” her father said, with decision. ”But then Mr. Lemuel is a man of genius. Who but himself could have caught the very soul of your acting and fixed it on canvas?”
She hesitated for a moment, and then there was a flush of genuine enthusiastic pride mantling on her forehead as she said, frankly,--
”Well, then, I wish I could see myself!”
Mr. White said nothing. He had watched this daughter of his through the long winter months. Occasionally, when he heard her utter sentiments such as these--and when he saw her keenly sensitive to the flattery bestowed upon her by the people a.s.sembled at Mr. Lemuel's little gatherings, he had asked himself whether it was possible she could ever marry Sir Keith Macleod. But he was too wise to risk reawakening her rebellious fits by any encouragement. In any case, he had some experience of this young lady; and what was the use of combatting one of her moods at five o'clock when at six o'clock she would be arguing in the contrary direction, and at seven convinced that the _viv media_ was the straight road? Moreover, if the worst came to the worst, there would be some compensation in the fact of Miss White changing her name for that of Lady Macleod.
Just as quickly she changed her mood on the present occasion. She was looking again far over the darkly blue and ruffled seas toward the white-sailed yacht.
”He must have gone away in the dark to get that boat for us,” said she, musingly. ”Poor fellow, how very generous and kind he is!
Sometimes--shall I make the confession, pappy?--I wish he had picked out some one who could better have returned his warmth of feeling.”
She called it a confession; but it was a question. And her father answered more bluntly than she had quite expected.