Macleod of Dare

by William Black

And this young man spoke in a passion, too; Keith Macleod was his friend. But Macleod himself seemed, with some powerful effort of will, to have got the better of his sudden and fierce hate; he sat down again; he spoke in a low voice, but there was a dark look in his eyes.

"No," said he, slowly, "she has not told me all about it. Well, she did tell me about a poor creature—a woman-man—a thing of affectation, with his paint-box and his velvet coat, and his furniture. Ogilvie, have you got any brandy?"

Ogilvie rang, and got some brandy, some water, a tumbler, and a wineglass placed on the table. Macleod, with a hand that trembled violently, filled the tumbler half full of brandy.

"And she could not deny the story to Mrs. Ross?" said he, with a strange and hard smile on his face. "It was her modesty. Ah, you don't know, Ogilvie, what an exalted soul she has. She is full of idealisms. She could not explain all that to Mrs. Ross. I know. And when she found herself too weak to carry out her aspirations, she sought help. Is that it? She would gain assurance and courage from the woman-man?"

He pushed the tumbler away; his hand was still trembling violently.

"I will not touch that Ogilvie," said he, "for I have not much mastery over myself. I am going away now—I am going back now to the Highlands—oh! you do not know what I have become since I met that woman—a coward and a liar! They wouldn't have you sit down at the mess-table, Ogilvie, if you were that, would they? I dare not stay in London now. I must run away now—like a hare that is hunted. It would not be good for her or for me that I should stay any longer in London."

He rose and held out his hand; there was a curious glazed look on his eyes. Ogilvie pressed him back into the chair again.

"You are not going out in this condition, Macleod?—you don't know what you are doing! Come now, let us be reasonable; let us talk over the thing like men. And I must say, first of all, that I am heartily glad of it, for your sake. It will be a hard twist at first; but, bless you! lots of fellows have had to fight through the same thing, and they come up smiling after it, and you would scarcely know the difference. Don't imagine I am surprised—oh no. I never did believe in that young woman; I thought she was a deuced sight too clever; and when she used to go about humbugging this one and the other with her innocent airs, I said to myself, 'Oh, it's all very well: but you know what you are about.' Of course there was no use talking to you. I believe at one time Mrs. Ross was considering the point whether she ought not to give you a hint—seeing that you had met Miss White first at her house—that the young lady was rather clever at flirtation, and that you ought to keep a sharp lookout. But then you would only have blazed up in anger. It was no use talking to you. And then, after all, I said that if you were so bent on marrying her, the chances were that you would have no difficulty, for I thought the bribe of her being called Lady Macleod would be enough for any actress. As for this man Lemuel, no doubt he is a very great man, as people say; but I don't know much about these things myself; and—and—I think it is very plucky of Mrs. Ross to cut off two of her lions at one stroke. It shows she must have taken an uncommon liking for you. So you must cheer up, Macleod. If woman take a fancy to you like that, you'll easily get a better wife than Miss White would have made. Mind you, I don't go back from anything I ever said of her. She is a handsome woman, and no mistake; and I will say that she is the best waltzer that I ever met with in the whole course of my life—without exception. But she's the sort of woman who, if I married her, would want some looking after—I mean, that is my impression. The fact is, Macleod, away there in Mull you have been brought up too much on books and your own imagination. You were ready to believe any pretty woman, with soft English ways, an angel. Well, you have had a twister; but you'll come through it; and you will get to believe, after all, that women are very good creatures just as men are very good creatures, when you get the right sort. Come now, Macleod, pull yourself together; Perhaps I have just as hard an opinion of her conduct towards you as you have yourself. But you know what Tommy Moore, or some fellow like that says—'Though she be not fair to me, what the devil care I how fair she be?' And if I were you, I would have a drop of brandy—but not half a tumblerful."

But neither Lieutenant Ogilvie's pert common-sense, nor his apt and accurate quotation, nor the proffered brandy, seemed to alter much the mood of this haggard-faced man. He rose.

"I think I am going now," said he, in a low voice. "You won't take it unkindly, Ogilvie, that I don't stop to talk with you: it is a strange story you have told me—I want time to think over it. Good-by!"