The Disentanglers Part 54

'Yes, everywhere there is always a telegraph post in the foreground.'

'Well, Mr. Macrae had them when he was here first, but he has had them all cut down, bless him, since he got the new dodge. He was explaining it all to Blake and me, and Blake only scoffed, would not understand, showed he was bored.'

'I think it delightful! What did Mr. Blake say?'

'Oh, his usual stuff. Science is an expensive and inadequate subst.i.tute for poetry and the poetic gifts of the natural man, who is still extant in Ireland. _He_ can flash his thoughts, and any trifles of news he may pick up, across oceans and continents, with no machinery at all. What is done in Khartoum is known the same day in Cairo.'

'What did Mr. Macrae say?'

'He asked why the Cairo people did not make fortunes on the Stock Exchange.'

'And Mr. Blake?'

'He looked a great deal, but he said nothing. Then, as I said, he showed that he was bored when Macrae exhibited to us the machine and tried to teach us how it worked, and the philosophy of it. Blake did not understand it, nor do I, really, but of course I displayed an intelligent interest. He didn't display any. He said that the telegraph thing only brought us nearer to all that a child of nature--'

'_He_ a child of nature, with his belladonna!'

'To all that a child of nature wanted to forget. The machine emitted a serpent of tape, news of Surrey _v_. Yorkshire, and something about Kaffirs, and Macrae was enormously pleased, for such are the simple joys of the millionaire, really a child of nature. Some of them keep automatic hydraulic organs and beastly machines that sing. Now Macrae is not a man of that sort, and he has only one motor up here, and only uses _that_ for practical purposes to bring luggage and supplies, but the wireless thing is the apple of his eye. And Blake sneered.'

'He is usually very civil indeed, almost grovelling, to the father,' said Lady Bude. 'But I tell you for your benefit, Mr. Merton, that he has no chance with the daughter. I know it for certain. He only amuses her.

Now here, you are clever.'

Merton bowed.

'Clever, or you would not have diverted me from my question with all that science. You are not ill looking.'

'Spare my blushes,' said Merton; adding, 'Lady Bude, if you must be answered, _you_ are clever enough to have found me out.'

'That needed less acuteness than you suppose,' said the lady.

'I am very sorry to hear it,' said Merton. 'You know how utterly hopeless it is.'

'There I don't agree with you,' said Lady Bude.

Merton blushed. 'If you are right,' he said, 'then I have no business to be here. What am I in the eyes of a man like Mr. Macrae? An adventurer, that is what he would think me. I did think that I had done nothing, said nothing, looked nothing, but having the chance--well, I could not keep away from her. It is not honourable. I must go. . . . I love her.'

Merton turned away and gazed at the sunset without seeing it.

Lady Bude put forth her hand and laid it on his. 'Has this gone on long?' she asked.

'Rather an old story,' said Merton. 'I am a fool. That is the chief reason why I was praying for rain. She fishes, very keen on it. I would have been on the loch or the river with her. Blake does not fish, and hates getting wet.'

'You might have more of her company, if you would not torment the poet so. The green-eyed monster, jealousy, is on your back.'

Merton groaned. 'I bar the fellow, anyhow,' he said. 'But, in any case, now that I know _you_ have found me out, I must be going. If only she were as poor as I am!'

'You can't go to-morrow, to-morrow is Sunday,' said Lady Bude. 'Oh, I am sorry for you. Can't we think of something? Cannot you find an opening?

Do something great! Get her upset on the loch, and save her from drowning! Mr. Macrae dotes on her; he would be grateful.'

'Yes, I might take the pin out of the bottom of the boat,' said Merton.

'It is an idea! But she swims at least as well as I do. Besides--hardly sportsmanlike.'

Lady Bude tried to comfort him; it is the mission of young matrons. He must not be in such a hurry to go away. As to Mr. Blake, she could entirely rea.s.sure him. It was a beautiful evening, the lady was fair and friendly; Nature, fragrant of heather and of the sea, was hushed in a golden repose. The two talked long, and the glow of sunset was fading; the eyes of Lady Bude were a little moist, and Merton was feeling rather consoled when they rose and walked back towards Skrae Castle. It had been an ancient seat of the Macraes, a clan in relatively modern times, say 1745, rather wild, impoverished, and dirty; but Mr. Macrae, the great Canadian millionaire, had bought the old place, with many thousands of acres 'where victual never grew.'

Though a landlord in the Highlands he was beloved, for he was the friend of crofters, as rent was no object to him, and he did not particularly care for sport. He accepted the argument, dear to the Celt, that salmon are ground game, and free to all, while the natives were allowed to use ancient flint-locked fusils on his black c.o.c.ks. Mr. Macrae was a thoroughly generous man, and a tall, clean-shaved, graceful personage.

His public gifts were large. He had just given 500,000_l_. to Oxford to endow chairs and students of Psychical Research, while the rest of the million was bestowed on Cambridge, to supply teaching in Elementary Logic. His way of life was comfortable, but simple, except where the comforts of science and modern improvements were concerned. There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner of our ancestors.

On a knowe which commanded the castle, in a manner that would have pained Sir Dugald Dalgetty, Mr. Macrae had erected, not a 'sconce,' but an observatory, with a telescope that 'licked the Lick thing,' as he said.

Indeed it was his foible 'to see the Americans and go one better,' and he spoke without tolerance of the late boss American millionaire, the celebrated J. P. van Huytens, recently deceased.

Duke Humphrey greater wealth computes, And sticks, they say, at nothing,

sings the poet. Mr. Macrae computed greater wealth than Mr. van Huytens, though avoiding ostentation; he did not

Wear a pair of golden boots, And silver underclothing.

The late J. P. van Huytens he regarded with moral scorn. This rival millionaire had made his wealth by the process (apparently peaceful and horticultural) of 'watering stocks,' and by the seemingly misplaced generosity of overcapitalising enterprises, and 'grabbing side shows.'

The nature of these and other financial misdemeanours Merton did not understand. But he learned from Mr. Macrae that thereby J. P. van Huytens had scooped in the widow, the orphan, the clergyman, and the colonel. The two men had met in the most exclusive circles of American society; with the young van Huytenses the daughter of the millionaire had even been on friendly terms, but Mr. Macrae retired to Europe, and put a stop to all that. To do so, indeed, was one of his motives for returning to the home of his ancestors, the remote and inaccessible Castle Skrae.

_The Sportsman's Guide to Scotland_ says, as to Loch Skrae: 'Railway to Lairg, then walk or hire forty-five miles.' The young van Huytenses were not invited to walk or hire.

Van Huytens had been ostentatious, Mr. Macrae was the reverse. His costume was of the simplest, his favourite drink (of which he took little) was what humorists call 'the light wine of the country,' drowned in Apollinaris water. His establishment was refined, but not gaudy or luxurious, and the chief sign of wealth at Skrae was the great observatory with the laboratory, and the surmounting 'pole with box on top,' as Merton described the apparatus for the new kind of telegraphy.

In the bas.e.m.e.nt of the observatory was lodged the hugest balloon known to history, and a skilled expert was busied with novel experiments in aerial navigation. Happily he could swim, and his repeated descents into Loch Skrae did not daunt his soaring genius.

Above the bas.e.m.e.nt of the observatory were rooms for bachelors, a smoking- room, a billiard-room, and a scientific library. The wireless telegraphy machine (looking like two boxes, one on the top of the other, to the eye of ignorance) was installed in the smoking-room, and a wire to Mr.

Macrae's own rooms informed him, by ringing a bell (it also rang in the smoking-room), when the machine began to spread itself out in tape conveying the latest news. The machine communicated with another in the establishment of its vendors, Messrs. Gianesi, Giambresi & Co., in Oxford Street. Thus the millionaire, though residing nearly fifty miles from the nearest station at Lairg, was as well and promptly informed as if he dwelt in Fleet Street, and he could issue, without a moment's procrastination, his commands to sell and buy, and to do such other things as pertain to the nature of millionaires. When we add that a steam yacht of great size and comfort, doing an incredible number of knots an hour on the turbine system, lay at anchor in the sea loch, we have indicated the main peculiarities of Mr. Macrae's rural establishment. Wealth, though Merton thought so poorly of it, had supplied these potentialities of enjoyment; but, alas! disease had 'decimated' the grouse on the moors (of course to decimate now means almost to extirpate), and the crofters had increased the pleasures of stalking by making the stags excessively shy, thus adding to the arduous enjoyment of the true sportsman.

To Castle Skrae, being such as we have described, Lady Bude and Merton returned from their sentimental prowl. They found Miss Macrae, in a very short skirt of the Macrae tartan, trying to teach Mr. Blake to play ping- pong in the great hall.

We must describe the young lady, though her charms outdo the powers of the vehicle of prose. She was tall, slim, and graceful, light of foot as a deer on the corrie. Her hair was black, save when the sun shone on it and revealed strands of golden brown; it was simply arrayed, and knotted on the whitest and shapeliest neck in Christendom. Her eyebrows were dark, her eyes large and lucid,

The greyest of things blue, The bluest of things grey.

Her complexion was of a clear pallor, like the white rose beloved by her ancestors; her features were all but cla.s.sic, with the charm of romance; but what made her unique was her mouth. It was faintly upturned at the corners, as in archaic Greek art; she had, in the slightest and most gracious degree, what Logan, describing her once, called 'the AEginetan grin.' This gave her an air peculiarly gay and winsome, brilliant, joyous, and alert. In brief, to use Chaucer's phrase,

She was as wincy as a wanton colt, Sweet as a flower, and upright as a bolt.

She was the girl who was teaching the poet the elements of ping-pong. The poet usually missed the ball, for he was averse to and unapt for anything requiring quickness of eye and dexterity of hand. On a seat lay open a volume of the _Poetry of the Celtic Renascence_, which Blake had been reading to Miss Macrae till she used the vulgar phrase 'footle,' and invited him to be educated in ping-pong. Of these circ.u.mstances she cheerfully informed the new-comers, adding that Lord Bude had returned happy, having photographed a wild cat in its lair.

'Did he shoot it?' asked Blake.

'No. He's a sportsman!' said Miss Macrae.

'That is why I supposed he must have shot the cat,' answered Blake.

'What is Gaelic for a wild cat, Blake?' asked Merton unkindly.

Like other modern Celtic poets Mr. Blake was entirely ignorant of the melodious language of his ancestors, though it had often been stated in the literary papers that he was 'going to begin' to take lessons.