The party now moved off toward the shore, above the long white curve of which Mackenzie’s house was visible. The old man himself led the way, and had, by his silence, apparently not quite forgiven his daughter for having been absent from home when his guests arrived.
“Now, Sheila,” said Ingram, “tell me all about yourself; what have you been doing?”
“This morning?” said the girl, walking beside him, with her hand laid on his arm, and with the happiest look on her face.
“This morning, to begin with. Did you catch those fish yourself?”
“Oh, no, there was no time for that. And it was Mairi and I saw a boat coming in, and it was going to Mevaig, but we overtook it, and got some of the fish, and we thought we should be back before you came. However, it is no matter since you are here. And you have been very well! And did you see any differences in Stornoway when you came over?”
Lavender began to think that Styornoway sounded ever so much more pleasant than mere Stornoway.
“We had not a minute to wait in Stornoway. But tell me, Sheila, all about Borva and yourself; that is better than Stornoway. How are your schools getting on? And have you bribed or frightened all the children into giving upGaelic yet? How is John the Piper? and does the Free Church minister still complain of him? And have you caught any more wild ducks and tamed them? And are there any gray geese up at Lochan-Eilean?”
“Oh, that is too many at once,” said Sheila, laughing. “But I am afraid your friend will find Borva very lonely and dull. There is not much there at all, for all the lads are away at the Caithness fishing. And you should have shown him all about Stornoway, and taken him up to the castle and the beautiful gardens.”
“He has seen all sorts of castles, Sheila, and all sorts of gardens in every part of the world. He has seen everything to be seen in the great cities and countries that are only names to you. He has traveled in France, Italy, Russia, Germany, and seen all the big towns that you hear of in history.”
“That is what I should like to do if I were a man,” said Sheila; “and many and many a time I wished I had been a man, that I could go to the fishing and work in the fields, and, then, when I had enough money, go away and see other countries and strange people.”
“But if you were a man I should not have come all the way from London to see you,” said Ingram, patting the hand that lay on his arm.
“But if I were a man,” said the girl, quite frankly, “I should go up to London to see you.”
Mackenzie smiled grimly, and said, “Sheila, it is nonsense you will talk.”
At this moment Sheila turned around and said, “Oh, we have forgotten poor Mairi. Mairi, why did you not leave the fish for Duncan? They are too heavy for you. I will carry them to the house.”
But Lavender sprang forward, and insisted on taking possession of the thick cord with its considerable weight of lythe.
“This is my cousin, Mairi,” said Sheila; and forthwith the young, fair-faced, timid-eyed girl shook hands with the gentlemen, and said, just as if she had been watching Sheila, “And are you ferry well, sir?”
For the rest of the way up to the house Lavender walked by the side of Sheila; and as the string of lythe had formed the introduction to their talk, it ran pretty much upon naturalhistory. In about five minutes she had told him more about sea-birds and fish than ever he knew in his life; and she wound up this information by offering to take him out on the following morning, that he might himself catch some lythe.
“But I am a wretchedly bad fisherman, Miss Mackenzie,” he said. “It is some years since I tried to throw a fly.”
“Oh, there is no need for good fishing when you catch lythe,” she said earnestly. “You will see Mr. Ingram catch them. It is only a big white fly you will need, and a long line, and when the fish takes the fly, down he goes—a great depth. Then when you have got him and he is killed, you must cut the sides, as you see that is done, and string him to a rope and trail him behind the boat all the way home. If you do not do that it is no use at all to eat. But if you like the salmon-fishing my papa will teach you that. There is no one,” she added proudly, “can catch salmon like my papa—not even Duncan—and the gentlemen who come in the autumn to Stornoway, they are quite surprised when my papa goes to fish with them.”
“I suppose he is a good shot, too,” said the young man, amused to notice the proud way in which the girl spoke of her father.
“Oh, he can shoot anything. He will shoot a seal if he comes up but for one moment above the water; and all the birds—he will get you all the birds if you will wish to take any away with you. We have no deer on the island—it is too small for that—but in the Lewis and in Harris there are many, many thousands of deer, and my papa has many invitations when the gentlemen come up in the autumn; and if you look in the game-book of the lodges you will see there is not any one who has shot so many deer as my papa—not any one whatever.”
At length they reached the building of dark and rude stone-work, with its red coping, its spacious porch, and its small enclosure of garden in front. Lavender praised the flowers in this enclosure; he guessed they were Sheila’s particular care; but in truth there was nothing rare or delicate among the plants growing in this exposed situation. There were a few clusters of large yellow pansies, a calceolaria or two, plenty of wallflower, some clove-pinks, and an abundance of sweet-william in all manner of colors. But the chief beauty of the small garden was a magnificent tree-fuchsia whichgrew in front of one of the windows, and was covered with deep rose-red flowers set amid its small and deep-green leaves. For the rest, a bit of honeysuckle was turned up one side of the porch, and at the small wooden gate there were two bushes of sweetbrier that filled the warm air with fragrance.
Just before entering the house the two strangers turned to have a look at the spacious landscape lying all around in the perfect calm of a Summer day. And lo! before them there was but a blinding mass of white that glared upon their eyes, and caused them to see the far sea and the shores and hills as but faint shadows appearing through a silvery haze. A thin fleece of cloud lay across the sun, but the light was nevertheless so intense that the objects near at hand—a disused boat lying bottom upward, an immense anchor of foreign make, and some such things—seemed to be as black as night as they lay on the warm road. But when the eye got beyond the house and the garden, and the rough hillside leading down to Loch Roag, all the world appeared to be a blaze of calm, silent and luminous heat. Suainabhal and its brother mountains were only as clouds in the south. Along the western horizon the portion of the Atlantic that could be seen lay like a silent lake under a white sky. To get any touch of color they had to turn eastward, and there the sunlight faintly fell on the green shores of Borva, on the narrows of Loch Roag, and the loose red sail of a solitary smack that was slowly coming round a headland. They could hear the sound of the long oars. A pale line of shadow lay in the wake of the boat, but otherwise the black hull and the red sail seemed to be coming through a plain of molten silver. When the young men turned to go into the house the hall seemed a cavern of impenetrable darkness, and there was a flush of crimson light dancing before their eyes.
When Ingram had his room pointed out Lavender followed him into it and shut the door.
“By Jove, Ingram,” he said, with a singular light of enthusiasm on his handsome face, “what a beautiful voice that girl has! I have never heard anything so soft and musical in all my life, and then when she smiles what perfect teeth she has! And then, you know, there is an appearance, a style, a grace about her figure—but, I say, do you seriously mean to tell me you are not in love with her?”
“Of course I am not,” said the other, impatiently, as he was busily engaged with his portmanteau.
“Then let me give you a word of information,” said the young man, with an air of profound shrewdness; “she is in love with you.”
Ingram rose with some little touch of vexation on his face; “Look here, Lavender, I am going to talk to you seriously. I wish you wouldn’t fancy that every one is in that condition of simmering love-making you delight in. You never were in love, I believe—I doubt whether you ever will be—but you are always fancying yourself in love, and writing very pretty verses about it and painting very pretty heads. I like the verses and the paintings well enough, however they are come by; but don’t mislead yourself into believing that you know anything whatever of a real or serious passion by having engaged in all sorts of imaginative and semi-poetical dreams. It is a much more serious thing than that, mind you, when it comes to a man. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t attribute any of that sort of sentimental make-believe to either Sheila Mackenzie or myself. We are not romantic folks. We have no imaginative gifts whatever, but we are very glad, you know, to be attentive and grateful to those who have. The fact is, I don’t think it quite fair—”
“Let us suppose I am lectured enough,” said the other, somewhat stiffly. “I suppose I am as good a judge of the character of women as most other men, although I am no great student, and have no hard and dried rules of philosophy at my fingers’ ends. Perhaps, however, one may learn more by mixing with other people and going out into the world, than by sitting in a room with a dozen of books, and persuading one’s self that men and women are to be studied in that fashion.”
“Go away, you stupid boy, and unpack your portmanteau, and don’t quarrel with me,” said Ingram, putting out on the table some things he had brought for Sheila; “and if you are friendly with Sheila and treat her like a human being, instead of trying to put a lot of romance and sentiment about her, she will teach you more than you could learn in a hundred drawing-rooms in a thousand years.”
HEnever took that advice. He had already transformed Sheila into a heroine during the half hour of their stroll from the beach and around the house. Not that he fell in love with her at first sight, or anything even approaching to that. He merely made her the central figure of a little speculative romance, as he had made many another woman before. Of course, in these little fanciful dramas, written along the sky-line, as it were, of his life, he invariably pictured himself as the fitting companion of the fair creatures he saw there. Who but himself could understand the sentiment of her eyes, and teach her little love-ways, and express unbounded admiration of her? More than one practical young woman, indeed, in certain circles of London society, had been informed by her friends that Mr. Lavender was dreadfully in love with her; and had been much surprised, after this confirmation of her suspicions, that he sought no means of bringing the affair to a reasonable and sensible issue. He did not even amuse himself by flirting with her, as men would willingly do who could not be charged with any serious purpose whatever.
His devotion was more mysterious and remote. A rumor would get about that Mr. Lavender had finished another of those charming heads in pastel, which, at a distance, reminded one of Greuze, and that Lady So-and-so, who had bought it forthwith, had declared that it was the image of this young lady, who was partly puzzled and partly vexed by the incomprehensible conduct of her reputed admirer. It was the fashion, in these social circles, to buy those heads of Lavender when he chose to paint them. He had achieved a great reputation by them. The good people liked to have genius in their own set whom they had discovered, and who was only to be appreciated by persons of exceptional taste and penetration. Lavender, the uninitiated were assured, was a most brilliant and cultivated young man. He had composed some charming songs, he had written, from time to time, some quite delightful little poems, over which fair eyes had grown full and liquid. Who had not heard ofthe face that he painted for a certain young lady whom every one expected him to marry?
The young man escaped a great deal of the ordinary consequences of this petting, but not all. He was at bottom really true-hearted, frank and generous—generous even to an extreme—but he had a habit of producing striking impressions which dogged and perverted his every action and speech. He disliked losing a few shillings at billiards, but he did not mind losing a few pounds; the latter was good for a story. Had he possessed any money to invest in shares, he would have been irritated by small rises or small falls; but he would have been vain of a big rise, and he would have regarded a big fall with equanimity, as placing him in a dramatic light. The exaggerations produced by this habit of his fostered strange delusions in the minds of people who did not know him very well: and sometimes the practical results, in the way of expected charities or what not, amazed him. He could not understand why people should have made such mistakes, and resented them as an injustice.
And as they sat at dinner on this still, brilliant evening in Summer, it was Sheila’s turn to be clothed in the garments of romance. Her father, with his great gray beard and heavy brow, became the King of Thule, living in this solitary house overlooking the sea, and having memories of a dead sweetheart. His daughter, the princess, had the glamor of a thousand legends dwelling in her beautiful eyes; and when she walked by the shores of the Atlantic, that were now getting yellow under the sunset, what strange and unutterable thoughts must appear in the wonder of her face! He remembered no more how he had pulled to pieces Ingram’s praises of Sheila. What had become of the “ordinary young lady, who would be a little interesting, if a little stupid, before marriage, and after marriage sink into the dull, domestic hind?” There could be no doubt that Sheila often sat silent for a considerable time, with her eyes fixed on her father’s face when he spoke, or turning to look at some other speaker. Had Lavender now been asked if this silence had not a trifle of dullness in it, he would have replied by asking if there were dullness in the stillness and the silence of the sea. He grew to regard her calm and thoughtful look as a sort of spell; and if you had asked him what Sheila was like, he would have answered by saying that there was moonlight in her face.
The room, too, in which this mystic princess sat, was strange and wonderful. There were no doors visible, for the four walls were throughout covered by paper of foreign manufacture, representing spacious Tyrolese landscapes and incidents of the chase. When Lavender had first entered this chamber his eye had been shocked by these coarse and prominent pictures—by the green rivers, the blue lakes and the snow-peaks that rose above certain ruddy chalets. Here a chamois was stumbling down a ravine, and there an operatic peasant some eight or ten inches in actual length, was pointing a gun. The large figures, the coarse colors, the impossible scenes—all this looked, at first sight, to be in the worst possible taste, and Lavender was convinced that Sheila had nothing to do with the introduction of this abominable decoration. But somehow, when he turned to the line of ocean that was visible from the window, to the lonely shores of the island and the monotony of colors showing in the still picture without, he began to fancy that there might be a craving up in these latitudes for some presentation, however rude and glaring, of the richer and more variegated life of the South. The figures and mountains on the walls became less prominent. He saw no incongruity in a whole chalet giving way and allowing Duncan, who waited at table, to bring from this aperture to the kitchen a steaming dish of salmon, while he spoke some words in Gaelic to the servants at the other end of the tube. He even forgot to be surprised at the appearance of little Mairi, with whom he had shaken hands a little while before, coming round the table with potatoes. He did not, as a rule, shake hands with servant-maids, but was not this fair-haired, wistful-eyed girl some relative, friend or companion of Sheila’s, and had he not already begun to lose all perception of the incongruous or the absurd in the strange pervading charm with which Sheila’s presence filled the place?
He suddenly found Mackenzie’s deep-set eyes fixed upon him, and became aware that the old man had been mysteriously announcing to Ingram that there were more political movements abroad than people fancied. Sheila sat still and listened to her father as he expounded these things, and showed that, although at a distance, he could perceive the signs of the times. Was it not incumbent, moreover, on a man who had to look after a number of poor people and simple folks, that he should be on the alert?
“It iss not bekass you will live in London you will know everything,” said the King of Borva, with a certain significance in his tone. “There iss many things a man does not see at his feet that another man will see who is a good way off. The International, now—”
He glanced furtively at Lavender.
“—I hef been told there will be agents going out every day to all parts of this country and other countries, and they will hef plenty of money to live like gentlemen, and get among the poor people, and fill their minds with foolish nonsense about a revolution. Oh yes, I hear about it all, and there iss many members of Parliament in it; and it is every day they will get farther and farther, all working hard, though no one sees them who does not understand to be on the watch.”
Here again the young man received a quiet, scrutinizing glance; and it began to dawn upon him, to his infinite astonishment, that Mackenzie half suspected him of being an emissary of the International. In the case of any other man he would have laughed and paid no heed, but how could he permit Sheila’s father to regard him with any such suspicion?
“Don’t you think, sir,” he said boldly, “that those Internationalists are a lot of incorrigible idiots?”
As if a shrewd observer of men and motives were to be deceived by such a protest! Mackenzie regarded him with increased suspicion, although he endeavored to conceal the fact that he was watching the young man from time to time. Lavender saw all the favor he had won during the day disappearing, and moodily wondered when he should have a chance of explanation.
After dinner they went outside and sat down on a bench in the garden, and the men lit their cigars. It was a cool and pleasant evening. The sun had gone down in the red fire behind the Atlantic, and there was still left a rich glow of crimson in the West, while overhead, in the pale yellow of the sky, some filmy clouds of rose-color lay motionless. How calm was the sea out there, and the whiter stretch of water coming into Loch Roag! The cool air of the twilight was scented with sweetbrier. The wash of the ripples along the coast could be heard in the stillness. It was a time for lovers to sit by the sea, careless of the future or the past.
But why would this old man keep prating of his political prophecies? Lavender asked of himself. Sheila had spoken scarcely a word all the evening; and of what interest could it be to her to listen to theories of revolution and the dangers besetting our hot-headed youth? She merely stood by the side of her father, with her hand on his shoulder. He noticed, however, that she paid particular attention whenever Ingram spoke; and he wondered whether she perceived that Ingram was partly humoring the old man, at the same time that he was pleasing himself with a series of monologues, interrupted only by his cigar.
“That is true enough, Mr. Mackenzie,” Ingram would say, laying back with his two hands clasped around his knee, as usual; “you’ve got to be careful of the opinions that are spread abroad, even in Borva, where not much danger is to be expected. But I don’t suppose our young men are more destructive in their notions than young men always have been. You know every fellow starts in life by knocking down all the beliefs he finds before him, and then spends the rest of his life in setting them up again. It is only after some years he gets to know that all the wisdom of the world lies in the old commonplaces he once despised. He finds that the old familiar ways are the best, and he sinks into being a commonplace person, with much satisfaction to himself. My friend Lavender, now, is continually charging me with being commonplace. I admit the charge. I have drifted back into all the old ways and beliefs—about religion and marriage, and patriotism, and what not—that ten years ago I should have treated with ridicule.”
“Suppose the process continues?” suggested Lavender, with some evidence of pique.
“Suppose it does,” continues Ingram carelessly. “Ten years hence I may be proud to become a vestryman, and have the most anxious care about the administration of the rates. I shall be looking after the drainage of houses and the treatment of paupers, and the management of Sunday-schools—but all this is an invasion of your province, Sheila,” he suddenly added, looking up to her.
The girl laughed and said, “Then I have been commonplace from the beginning?”
Ingram was about to make all manner of protests and apologies, when Mackenzie said, “Sheila, it wass time yougo in-doors, if you have nothing about your head. Go in and sing a song to us, and we will listen to you; and not a sad song, but a good merry song. These teffles of the fishermen, it iss always drownings they will sing about from the morning till the night.”
Was Sheila about to sing in this clear, strange twilight, while they sat there and watched the yellow moon come up behind the Southern hills? Lavender had heard so much of her singing of these fishermen’s ballads that he could think of nothing more to add to the enchantment of this wonderful night. But he was disappointed. The girl put her hand on her father’s head, and reminded him that she had had her big greyhound, Bras, imprisoned all the afternoon, that she had to go down to Borvapost, with a message for some people who were leaving by the boat in the morning, and would the gentleman therefore excuse her not singing to them for this one evening?
“But you cannot go away down to Borvapost by yourself, Sheila,” said Ingram. “It will be dark before you return.”
“It will not be darker than this all the night through,” said the girl.
“But I hope you will let us go with you,” said Lavender, rather anxiously; and she assented with a gracious smile, and went to fetch the great deerhound that was her constant companion.
And lo! he found himself walking with a princess in the wonderland through that magic twilight that prevails in Northern latitudes. Mackenzie and Ingram had gone on in front. The large deerhound, after regarding him attentively, had gone to his mistress’ side, and remained closely there. Lavender could scarcely believe his ears that the girl was talking to him lightly and frankly, as though she had known him for years, and was telling him of all her troubles with the folks at the Borvapost, and of those poor people whom she was now going to see. No sooner did he understand that they were emigrants, and that they were going to Glasgow before leaving finally for America, than in quite an honest and enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail the sad fate of such poor wretches as have to forsake their native land, and to accuse the aristocracy of the country of every act of selfishness, and to charge the Government of shameful indifference. But Sheila brought him up suddenly. In the gentlestfashion she told him that she knew of these poor people, and how emigration affected them, and so forth, until he was ready to curse the hour in which he had blundered into taking a side on a question about which he cared nothing and knew less.
“But some other time,” continued Sheila, “I will tell you what we do here, and I will show you a great many letters I have from friends of mine who have gone to Greenock and to New York and Canada. Oh, yes, it is very bad for the old people; they never get reconciled to the change—never; but it is very good for the young people, and they are glad of it, and are much better off than they were here. You will see how proud they are of the better clothes they have, and of good food, and of money to put in the bank; and how could they get that in the Highlands, where the land is so poor that a small piece is no use, and they have not money to rent the large sheep farms? It is very bad to have people go away—it is very hard on many of them—but what can they do? The piece of ground that was very good for the one family, that is expected to keep the daughters when they marry, and the sons when they marry, and then there are five or six families to live on it. And hard work—that will not do much with very bad land and the bad weather we have here. The people get downhearted when they have their crops spoiled by the long rain, and they cannot get their peats dried; and very often the fishing turns out bad, and they have no money at all to carry on the farm. But now you will see Borvapost.”
Lavender had to confess that this wonderful princess would persist in talking in a very matter-of-fact way. All the afternoon, while he was weaving a luminous web of imagination around her, she was continually cutting it asunder, and stepping forth as an authority on the growing of some wretched plants or the means by which rain was to be excluded from window-sills. And now, in this strange twilight, when she ought to have been singing of the cruelties of the sea or listening to half-forgotten legends of mermaids, she was engaged with the petty fortunes of men and girls who were pleased to find themselves prospering in the Glasgow police force or educating themselves in a milliner’s shop in Edinburgh. She did not appear conscious that she was a princess. Indeed, she seemed to have no consciousness of herself at all, and was altogether occupied in giving him informationabout practical subjects in which he professed a profound interest he certainly did not feel.
But even Sheila, when they had reached the loftiest part of their route, and could see beneath them the island and the water surrounding it, was struck by the exceeding beauty of the twilight, and as for her companion, he remembered it many a time thereafter as if it were a dream of the sea. Before them lay the Atlantic—a pale line of blue, still, silent and remote. Overhead, the sky was of a clear, pale gold, with heavy masses of violet cloud stretched across from North to South, and thickening as they got near to the horizon. Down at their feet, near the shore, a dusky line of huts and houses was scarcely visible, and over these lay a pale blue film of peat-smoke that did not move in the still air. Then they saw the bay into which the White Water runs, and they could trace the yellow glimmer of the river stretching into the island through a level valley of bog and morass. Far away, toward the East, lay the bulk of the island—dark green undulations of moorland and pasture; and there, in the darkness, the gable of one white house had caught the clear light of the sky, and was gleaming Westward like a star. But all this was as nothing to the glory that began to shine in the Southeast, where the sky was of a pale violet over the peaks of Melasabhal and Suainabhal. There, into the beautiful dome, rose the golden crescent of the moon, warm in color, as though it still retained the last rays of the sunset. A line of quivering gold fell across Loch Roag, and touched the black hull and spars of the boat in which Sheila had been sailing in the morning. That bay down there, with its white sands and massive rocks, its still expanse of water and its background of mountain peaks palely colored by the yellow moonlight, seemed really a home for a magic princess who was shut off from all the world. But here, in front of them, was another sort of sea and another sort of life—a small fishing village, hidden under a cloud of pale peat-smoke, and fronting the great waters of the Atlantic itself, which lay under a gloom of violet clouds.
“Now,” said Sheila, with a smile, “we have not always weather as good as this in the island. Will you not sit on the bench over there with Mr. Ingram, and wait until my papa and I come up from the village again?”
“May not I go down with you?”
“No. The dogs would learn you were a stranger, and there would be a great deal of noise, and there will be many of the poor people asleep.”
So Sheila had her way; and she and her father went down the hillside into the gloom of the village, while Lavender went to join his friend Ingram, who was sitting on the wooden bench silently smoking a clay pipe.
“Well, I have never seen the like of this,” said Lavender, in his impetuous way; “it is worth going a thousand miles to see. Such colors and such clearness! and then the splendid outlines of those mountains, and the grand sweep of this loch! This is the sort of thing that drives me to despair, and might make one vow never to touch a brush again. And Sheila says it will be like this all the night through.”
He was unaware that he had spoken of her in a very familiar way, but Ingram noticed it.
“Ingram,” he said, suddenly, “that is the first girl I have ever seen whom I should like to marry.”
“Stuff!”
“But it is true. I have never seen any one like her—so handsome, so gentle, and yet so very frank in setting you right. And then she is so sensible, you know, and not too proud to have much interest in all sorts of common affairs—”
There was a smile in Ingram’s face, and his companion stopped in some vexation: “You are not a very sympathetic confidant.”
“Because I know the story of old. You have told it me about twenty women; and it is always the same. I tell you, you don’t know anything at all about Sheila Mackenzie yet; perhaps you never may. I suppose you will make a heroine of her, and will fall in love with her for a fortnight, and then go back to London and get cured by listening to the witticisms of Mrs. Lorraine.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to offend you. Some day, no doubt, you will love a woman for what she is, not for what you fancy her to be; but that is a piece of good fortune that seldom occurs to a youth of your age. To marry in a dream, and wake up six months afterwards—that is the fate of ingenuous twenty-three. But don’t you let Mackenzie hear you talk of marrying Sheila, or he’ll have some of his fishermen throw you into Loch Roag.”
“There, now, thatisone point I can’t understand about her,” said Lavender, eagerly. “How can a girl of her shrewdness and good sense have such a belief in that humbugging old idiot of a father of hers, who fancies me a political emissary, and plays small tricks to look like diplomacy? It is always ‘My papa can do this,’ and ‘My papa can do that,’ and ‘There is no one at all like my papa.’ And she is continually fondling him, and giving little demonstrations of affection, of which he takes no more notice than if he were an Arctic bear.”
Ingram looked up with some surprise in his face. “You don’t mean to say, Lavender,” he said, slowly, “that you are already jealous of the girl’s own father?”
He could not answer, for at this moment Sheila, her father and the big greyhound came up the hill. And again it was Lavender’s good fortune to walk with Sheila across the moorland path they had traversed some little time before. And now the moon was still higher in the heavens, and the yellow lane of light that crossed the violet waters of Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. The night air was scented with the Dutch clover growing down by the shore. They could hear the curlew whistling and the plover calling amid that monotonous plash of the waves that murmured all around the coast. When they returned to the house the darker waters of the Atlantic and the purple clouds of the West were shut out of sight, and before them there was only the liquid plain of Loch Roag, with its pathway of yellow fire, and far away on the other side the shoulders and peaks of the Southern mountains, that had grown gray and clear and sharp in the beautiful twilight. And this was Sheila’s home.
EARLYmorning at Borva, fresh, luminous and rare; the mountains in the South grown pale and cloud-like under a sapphire sky; the sea ruffled into a darker blue by a light breeze from the west; and the sunlight lying hot on the red gravel and white shells around Mackenzie’s house. There is an odor of sweetbrier about, hovering in the warm, still air, except at such times as the breeze freshens a bit, and brings around the shoulder of the hill the cold, strange scent of the rocks and the sea beyond.
And on this fresh and pleasant morning Sheila sat in the big garden-seat in front of the house, talking to the stranger to whom she had been introduced the day before. He was no more a stranger, however, to all appearance, for what could be more frank and friendly than their conversation, or more bright and winning than the smile with which she frequently turned to speak or to listen? Of course, this stranger could not be her friend as Mr. Ingram was—that was impossible. But he talked a great deal more than Mr. Ingram, and was apparently more anxious to please and be pleased; and indeed was altogether very winning and courteous and pleasant in his ways. Beyond this vague impression Sheila ventured upon no further comparison between the two men. If her older friend had been down, she would doubtless have preferred talking to him about all that had happened in the island since his last visit; but here was this newer friend thrown, as it were, upon her hospitality, and eager, with a most respectful and yet simple and friendly interest, to be taught all that Ingram already knew. Was he not, too, in mere appearance like one of the princes she had read of in many an ancient ballad—tall and handsome and yellow-haired, fit to have come sailing over the sea, with a dozen merry comrades, to carry off some sea-king’s daughter to behis bride? Sheila began to regret that the young man knew so little about the sea and the Northern islands and those old-time stories; but then he was very anxious to learn.
“You must sayMach-Klyodainstead of Macleod,” she was saying to him, “if you likeStyornowaybetter than Stornoway. It is the Gaelic, that is all.”
“Oh, it is ever so much prettier,” said young Lavender, with a quite genuine enthusiasm in his face, not altogether begotten of the lettery; “and, indeed, I don’t think you can possibly tell how singularly pleasant and quaint it is to an English ear to hear just that little softening of the vowels that the people have here, I suppose you don’t notice that they saygyarden, for garden—”
“They!” As if he had paid attention to the pronunciation of any one except Sheila herself.
“But not quite so hard as I pronounce it. And so with a great many other words, that are softened and sweetened and made almost poetical in their sound by the least bit of inflection. How surprised and pleased English ladies would be to hear you speak! Oh! I beg your pardon—I did not mean to—I—I beg your pardon—”
Sheila seemed a little astonished by her companion’s evident mortification, and said with a smile, “If others speak so in the island, of course I must too; and you say it does not shock you.”
His distress at his own rudeness now found an easy vent. He protested that no people could talk English like the people of Lewis. He gave Sheila to understand that the speech of English folks was as the croaking of ravens compared with the sweet tones of the Northern isles; and this drew him on to speak of his friends in the South, and of London, and the chances of Sheila ever going thither.
“It must be so strange never to have seen London,” he said. “Don’t you ever dream of what it is like? Don’t you ever try to think of a great space, nearly as big as this island, all covered over with large houses, the roads between the houses all made of stone, and great bridges going over the rivers, with railway trains standing? By the way, you have never seen a railway engine?”
He looked at her for a moment in astonishment, as if he had not hitherto realized to himself the absolute ignorance of the remote princess. Sheila, with some little touch of humorappearing in her calm eyes, said: “But I am not quite ignorant of all these things. I have seen pictures of them, and my papa has described them so often that I will feel as if I had seen them all; and I do not think that I should be surprised, except, perhaps, by the noise of the big towns. It was many a time my papa told me of that; but he says I cannot understand it, nor the great distance of land you travel over to get to London. That is what I do not wish to see. I was often thinking of it, and that to pass so many places that you do not know would make you very sad.”
“That can be easily avoided,” he said, lightly. “When you go to London you must go from Glasgow or Edinburgh in a night train, and fall fast asleep, and in the morning you will find yourself in London, without having seen anything.”
“Just as if one had gone across a great distance of sea, and come to another island you will never see before,” said Sheila, with the gray-blue eyes under the black eyelashes grown strange and distant.
“But you must not think of it as a melancholy thing,” he said, almost anxiously. “You will find yourself among all sorts of gaities and amusements; you will have cheerful people around you, and plenty of things to see; you will drive in beautiful parks, and go to theatres, and meet people in large and brilliant rooms, filled with flowers, and silver, and light. And all through the winter, that must be so cold and dark up here, you will find an abundance of warmth and light, and plenty of flowers, and every sort of pleasant thing. You will hear no more of those songs of drowned people; and you will be afraid no longer of storms, or listen to the waves at night; and by-and-by, when you have got quite accustomed to London, and got a great many friends, you might be disposed to stay there altogether; and you would grow to think of this island as a desolate and melancholy place, and never seek to come back.”
The girl rose suddenly and turned to a fuchsia tree, pretending to pick some of its flowers. Tears had sprung to her eyes unbidden, and it was in rather an uncertain voice that she said, still managing to conceal her face: “I like to hear you talk of those places, but—but I will never leave Borva.”
What possible interest could he have in combating this decision so anxiously, almost so imploringly? He renewed his complaints against the melancholy of the sea and the drearinessof the Northern winters. He described again and again the brilliant lights and colors of town life in the South. As a mere matter of experience and education she ought to go to London; and had not her papa as good as intimated his intention of taking her?
In the midst of these representations a step was heard in the hall, and then the girl looked around with a bright light on her face.
“Well, Sheila,” said Ingram, according to his custom, and both the girl’s hands were in his the next minute, “you are down early. What have you been about? Have you been telling Mr. Lavender about the Black Horse of Loch Suainabhal?”
“No; Mr. Lavender has been telling me of London.”
“And I have been trying to induce Miss Mackenzie to pay us a visit, so that we may show her the difference between a city and an island. But all to no purpose. Miss Mackenzie seems to like hard winters, and darkness, and cold; and as for that perpetual and melancholy and cruel sea that in the winter time, I should fancy, might drive anybody into a lunatic asylum—”
“Ah, you must not talk badly of the sea,” said the girl, with all her courage and brightness returned to her face: “It is our very good friend. It gives us food, and keeps many people alive. It carries the lads away to other places, and brings them back with money in their pockets—”
“And sometimes it smashes a few of them on the rocks, or swallows up a dozen families, and the next morning it is as smooth and treacherous and fair as if nothing had happened.”
“But that is not the sea at all,” said Sheila; “that is the storms that will wreck the boats; and how can the sea help that? When the sea is left alone the sea is very good to us.”
Ingram laughed aloud and patted the girl’s head fondly; and Lavender, blushing a little, confessed he was beaten, and that he would never again, in Miss Mackenzie’s presence, say anything against the sea.
The King of Borva now appearing, they all went in to breakfast; and Sheila sat opposite the window, so that all the light coming in from the clear sky and the sea was reflected upon her face, and lit up every varying expression that crossed it or that shone up in the beautiful deeps of her eyes.Lavender, his own face in shadow, could look at her from time to time, himself unseen; and as he sat in almost absolute silence, and noticed how she talked with Ingram, and what deference she paid him, and how anxious she was to please him, he began to wonder if he should ever be admitted to a like friendship with her. It was so strange, too, that this handsome, proud-featured, proud-spirited girl should so devote herself to the amusement of a man like Ingram, and, forgetting all the court that should have been paid to a pretty woman, seem determined to persuade him that he was conferring a favor upon her by every word and look. Of course, Lavender admitted to himself, Ingram was a very good sort of a fellow—a very good sort of a fellow, indeed. If any one was in a scrape about money, Ingram would come to the rescue without a moment’s hesitation, although the salary of a clerk in the Board of Trade might have been made the excuse, by any other man, for a very justifiable refusal. He was very clever, too—had read much, and all that kind of thing. But he was not the sort of man you might expect to get on well with women. Unless with very intimate friends he was a trifle silent and reserved. Often he was inclined to be pragmatic and sententious, and had a habit of saying unpleasantly better things when some careless joke was being made.
He was a little dingy in appearance, and a man who had a somewhat cold manner, who was sallow of face, who was obviously getting gray, and who was generally insignificant in appearance, was not the sort of man, one would think, to fascinate an exceptionally handsome girl, who had brains enough to know the fineness of her own face. But here was this princess paying attentions to him, such as must have driven a more impressionable man out of his senses, while Ingram sat quiet and pleased, sometimes making fun of her, and generally talking to her as if she were a child. Sheila had chatted very pleasantly with him, Lavender, in the morning, but it was evident that her relations with Ingram were of a very different kind, such as he could not well understand. For it was scarcely possible that she could be in love with Ingram, and yet, surely the pleasure that dwelt in her expressive face, when she spoke to him or listened to him, was not the result of a mere friendship.
If Lavender had been told at that moment that these two were lovers, and that they were looking forward to an earlymarriage, he would have rejoiced with an enthusiasm of joy. He would have honestly and cordially shaken Ingram by the hand; he would have made plans for introducing the young bride to all the people he knew; and he would have gone straight off, on reaching London, to buy Sheila a diamond necklace, even if he had to borrow the money from Ingram himself.
“And have you got rid of theAirgiod-cearc,[4]Sheila?” said Ingram, suddenly breaking in upon these dreams; “or does every owner of hens still pay his annual shilling to the Lord of Lewis?”
“It is not away yet,” said the girl, “but when Sir James comes in the autumn I will go over to Stornoway and ask him to take away the tax; and I know he will do it, for what is the shilling worth to him, when he has spent thousands and thousands of pounds on the Lewis? But it will be very hard on some of the poor people that only keep one or two hens; and I will tell Sir James of all that—”
“You will do nothing of the kind, Sheila,” said her father, impatiently. “What is theAirgiod-cearcto you, that you will go over to Stornoway only to be laughed at and make a fool of yourself?”
“That is nothing—not anything at all,” said the girl, “if Sir James will only take away the tax.”
“Why, Sheila, they would treat you as another Lady Godiva,” said Ingram, with a good-humored smile.
“But Miss Mackenzie is quite right,” exclaimed Lavender, with a sudden flush of color leaping into his handsome face, and an honest glow of admiration into his eyes. “I think it is a very noble thing for her to do, and nobody, either in Stornoway or anywhere else, would be such a brute as to laugh at her for trying to help those poor people, who have not too many friends and defenders, God knows.”
Ingram looked surprised. Since when had the young gentleman across the table acquired such a singular interest in the poorer classes, of whose very existence he had for the most part seemed unaware? But the enthusiasm in his face seemed quite honest; there could be no doubt of that. As for Sheila, with a beating heart she ventured to send to her companion a brief and timid glance of gratitude, which the young man observed, and never forgot.
“You will not know what it is all about,” said the King of Borva, with a peevish air, as though it were too bad that a person of his authority should have to descend to details about a petty hen-tax. “It is many and many a tax and a due Sir James will take away from his tenants in the Lewis, and he will spend more money a thousand times than ever he will get back; and it was thisAirgiod-cearc, it will stand in the place of a great many things taken away, just to remind the folk that they have not their land all in their own right. It is many things you will have to do in managing the poor people, not to let them get too proud, or forgetful of what they owe to you; and now there is no more tacksmen to be the masters of the small crofters, and the crofters they would think they were landlords themselves if there were no dues for them to pay.”
“I have heard of those middlemen; they were dreadful tyrants and thieves, weren’t they?” said Lavender. Ingram kicked his foot under the table. “I mean, that was the popular impression of them—a vulgar error, I presume,” continued the young man, in the coolest manner. “And so you have got rid of them? Well, I dare say many of them were honest men, and suffered very unjustly in common report.”
Mackenzie answered nothing, but his daughter said quickly: “But you know, Mr. Lavender, they have not gone away merely because they cease to have the letting of the land to the crofters. They have still their old holdings, and so have the crofters, in most cases. Every one now holds direct from the proprietor, that is all.”
“So that there is no difference between the former tacksman and his serf, except the relative size of their farms?”
“Well, the crofters have no leases, but the tacksmen have,” said the girl, somewhat timidly; and then she added: “But you have not decided yet, Mr. Ingram, what you will do to-day. It is too clear for the salmon fishing. Will you go over to Meavig and show Mr. Lavender the Bay of Uig and the seven hunters?”
“Surely we must show him Borvapost first, Sheila,” said Ingram. “He saw nothing of it last night in the dark, and I think if you offered to take Mr. Lavender around in your boat, and show him what a clever sailor you are, he would prefer that to walking over the hill.”
“I can take you all around in the boat, certainly,” said the girl, with a quick blush of pleasure; and forthwith a message was sent to Duncan that cushions should be taken down to the Maighdean-mhara, the little vessel of which Sheila was both skipper and pilot.
How beautiful was the fair sea-picture that lay around them as the Maighdean-mhara stood out to the mouth of Loch Roag on this bright Summer morning! Sheila sat in the stern of the small boat, her hand on the tiller. Lufrath lay at her feet, his nose between the long and shaggy paws. Duncan, grave and watchful as to the wind and the points of the coast, sat amidships, with the sheets of the mainsail held fast, and superintended the seamanship of his young mistress with a respectful but most evident pride. And as Ingram had gone off with Mackenzie to walk over the White Water before going down to Borvapost, Frank Lavender was Sheila’s sole companion out in this wonderland of rock and sea and blue sky.
He did not talk much to her, and she was so well occupied with the boat that he could regard with impunity the shifting lights and graces of her face and all the wonder and winning depths of her eyes. The sea was blue around them; the sky overhead had not a speck of cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the green stretches of pasture and the far and spectral mountains trembled in a haze of sunlight. Then there was all the delight of the fresh and cool wind, the hissing of the water along the boat, and the joyous rapidity with which the small vessel, lying over a little, ran through the crisply curling waters, and brought into view the newer wonders of the opening sea.
Was it not all a dream, that he should be sitting by the side of this sea-princess, who was attended only by her deerhound and the tall keeper? And if a dream, why should it not go on forever? To live forever in this magic land—to have the princess herself carry him in this little boat into the quiet bays of the islands, or out at night, in the moonlight, on the open sea—to forget forever the godless South and its social phantasmagoria, and live in this beautiful and distant solitude, with the solemn secrets of the hills and the moving deep forever present to the imagination, might not that be a nobler life? And some day or other he would take this island-princess up to London, and he would bid the women thathe knew—the scheming mothers and the doll-like daughters—stand aside from before this perfect work of God. She would carry with her the mystery of the sea in the deeps of her eyes, and the music of the far hills would be heard in her voice, and all the sweetness and purity and brightness of the clear Summer skies would be mirrored in her innocent soul. She would appear in London as some wild-plumaged bird hailing from distant climes, and before she had lived there long enough to grow sad, and have the weight of the city cloud the brightness of her eyes, she would be spirited away again into this strange sea-kingdom, where there seemed to be perpetual sunshine and the light music of the waves.
Poor Sheila! She little knew what was expected of her, or the sort of drama into which she was being thrown as a central figure. She little knew that she, a simple Highland girl, was being transformed into a wonderful creature of romance, who was to put to shame the gentle dames and maidens of London society, and do many other extraordinary things. But what would have appeared the most extraordinary of all these speculations, if she had only known of them, was the assumption that she would marry Frank Lavender.Thatthe young man had quite naturally taken for granted; but, perhaps, only as a basis for his imaginative scenes. In order to do these fine things she would have to be married to somebody, and why not to himself? Think of the pride he would have in leading this beautiful girl, with her quaint manners and fashion of speech, into a London drawing-room! Would not every one wish to know her? Would not everyone listen to her singing of those Gaelic songs? for, of course, she must sing well. Would not all his artist friends be anxious to paint her? and she would go to the Academy to convince the loungers there how utterly the canvas had failed to catch the light and dignity and sweetness of her face.
When Sheila spoke he started.
“Did you not see it?”
“What?”
“The seal; it rose for a moment just over there,” said the girl, with a great interest visible in her eyes.
The beautiful dreams he had been dreaming were considerably shattered by this interruption. How could a fairy princess be so interested in some common animal showingits head out of the sea? It also occurred to him, just at this moment, that if Sheila and Mairi went out in this boat by themselves, they must be in the habit of hoisting up the mainsail; and was such rude and coarse work befitting the character of a princess?
“He looks very like a black man in the water, when his head comes up,” said Sheila—“when the water is smooth, so that you will see him look at you. But I have not told you yet about the Black Horse that Alister-nan-Each saw at Loch Suainabhal one night. Loch Suainabhal, that is inland and fresh water—so it was not a seal; but Alister was going along the shore, and he saw it lying up by the road, and he looked at it for a long time. It was quite black, and he thought it was a boat; but when he came near, he saw it begin to move, and then it went down across the shore, and splashed into the loch. And it had a head bigger than a horse, and quite black, and it made a noise as it went down the shore to the loch.”
“Don’t you think Alister must have been taking a little whisky, Miss Mackenzie?”
“No, not that, for he came to me just after he will see the beast.”
“And do you really believe he saw such an animal?” said Lavender, with a smile.
“I do not know,” said the girl, gravely. “Perhaps it was only a fright, and he imagined he saw it; but I do not know it is impossible there can be such an animal at Loch Suainabhal. But that is nothing; it is of no consequence. But I have seen stranger things than the Black Horse, that many people will not believe.”
“May I ask what they are?” he said, gently.
“Some other time, perhaps, I will tell you; but there is much explanation about it, and, you see, we are going in to Borvapost.”
Was this, then, the capital of the small empire over which the princess ruled? He saw before him but a long row of small huts or hovels, resembling beehives, which stood above the curve of a white bay, and at one portion of the bay was a small creek, near which a number of large boats, bottom upward, lay on the beach. What odd little dwellings those were! The walls, a few feet high, were built of rude blocks of stone or slices of turf, and from those low supports rose arounded roof of straw, which was thatched over by a further layer of turf. There were few windows, and no chimneys at all—not even a hole in the roof. And what was meant by the two men, who, standing on one of the turf walls, were busily engaged in digging into the rich brown and black thatch and heaving it into a cart? Sheila had to explain to him that while she was doing everything in her power to get the people to suffer the introduction of windows, it was hopeless to think of chimneys; for by carefully guarding against the egress of the peat smoke, it slowly saturated the thatch of the roof, which at certain periods of the year was then taken off to dress the fields, and a new roof of straw put on.
By this time they had run the Maighdean-mhara—the “Sea Maiden” into a creek, and were climbing up the steep beach of shingle that had been worn smooth by the unquiet waters of the Atlantic.
“And will you want to speak to me, Ailasa?” said Sheila, turning to a small girl who had approached her somewhat diffidently.
She was a pretty little thing, with a round, fair face, tanned by the sun, brown hair and soft, dark eyes. She was bare-headed, bare-footed and bare-armed, but she was otherwise smartly dressed, and she held in her hand an enormous flounder, apparently about half as heavy as herself.
“Will ye hef the fesh, Miss Sheila,” said the small Ailasa, holding out the flounder, but looking down all the same.
“Did you catch it yourself, Ailasa?”
“Yes, it wass Donald and me; we wass out in a boat, and Donald had a line.”
“And it is a present for me?” said Sheila, patting the small head and its wild and soft hair. “Thank you, Ailasa. But you must ask Donald to carry it up to the house and give it to Mairi. I cannot take it with me just now, you know.”
There was a small boy cowering behind one of the upturned boats, and by his furtive peepings showing that he was in league with his sister. Ailasa, not thinking that she was discovering his whereabouts, turned quite naturally in that direction, until she was suddenly stopped by Lavender, who called to her and put his hand in his pocket. But he was too late. Sheila had stepped in, and with a quick look, which was all the protest that was needed, shut her hand over the half crown he had in his fingers.
“Never mind, Ailasa,” she said. “Go away and get Donald, and bid him carry the fish up to Mairi.”
Lavender put up the half-crown in his pocket in a somewhat dazed fashion; what he chiefly knew was that Sheila had for a moment held his hand in hers, and that her eyes had met his.
Well, that little incident of Ailasa and the flounder was rather pleasant to him. It did not shock the romantic associations he had begun to weave around his fair companion. But when they had gone up to the cottages—Mackenzie and Ingram not yet having arrived—and when Sheila proceeded to tell him about the circumstances of the fishermen’s lives, and to explain how such and such things were done in the fields and pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender was a little disappointed. Sheila took him into some of the cottages, or rather hovels, and he vaguely knew in the darkness that she sat down by the low glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask the women about all sorts of improvements in the walls and windows and gardens, and what not. Surely it was not for a princess to go advising people about particular sorts of soap, or offering to pay for a pane of glass if the husband of the woman would make the necessary aperture in the stone-wall. The picture of Sheila appearing as a sea-princess in a London drawing-room was all very beautiful in its way, but here she was discussing as to the quality given to broth by the addition of a certain vegetable which she offered to send down from her own garden, if the cottager in question would try to grow it.
“I wonder, Miss Mackenzie,” he said, at length, when they got outside, his eyes dazed with the light and smarting with the peat-smoke, “I wonder you can trouble yourself with such little matters, that those people should find out for themselves.”
The girl looked up with some surprise: “That is the work I have to do. My papa cannot do everything in the island.”
“But what is the necessity for your bothering yourself about such things? Surely they ought to be able to look after their own gardens and houses. It is no degradation—certainly not; for anything you interested yourself in would become worthy of attention by the very fact—but, after all, it seems such a pity you should give up your time to these commonplace details.”
“But some one must do it,” said the girl, quite innocently, “and my papa has no time. And they will be very good in doing what I ask them—everyone in the island.”
Was this a willful affectation? he said to himself. Or was she really incapable of understanding that there was anything incongruous in a young lady of her position, education and refinement busying herself with the curing of fish and the cost of lime? He had himself marked the incongruity long ago, when Ingram had been telling him of the remote and beautiful maiden whose only notions of the world had been derived from literature—who was more familiar with the magic land in which Endymion wandered than with any other—and that at the same time she was about as good as her father at planning a wooden bridge over a stream. When Lavender had got outside again—when he found himself walking with her along the white beach in front of the blue Atlantic—she was again the princess of his dreams. He looked at her face, and he saw in her eyes that she must be familiar with all the romantic nooks and glades of English poetry. The plashing of the waves down there and the music of her voice recalled the sad legends of the fishermen he hoped to hear her sing. But ever and anon there occurred a jarring recollection—whether arising from a contradiction between his notion of Sheila and the actual Sheila, or whether from some incongruity in itself, he did not stop to consider. He only knew that a beautiful maiden who had lived by the sea all her life, and who had followed the wanderings of Endymion in the enchanted forest, need not have been so particular about a method of boiling potatoes, or have shown so much interest in a pattern for children’s frocks.
Mackenzie and Ingram met them. There was the usual “Well, Sheila?” followed by a thousand questions about the very things she had been inquiring into. That was one of the odd points about Ingram that puzzled and sometimes vexed Lavender; for if you are walking home at night it is inconvenient to be accompanied by a friend who would stop to ask about the circumstances of some old crone hobbling along the pavement, or who could, on his own door-step, stop to have a chat with a garrulous policeman. Ingram was about as odd as Sheila herself in the attention he paid to those wretched cotters and their doings. He could not advise on the important subject of broth, but he would havetasted it by way of discovery, even if it had been presented to him in a tea-cup. He had already been prowling around the place with Mackenzie. He had inspected the apparatus in the creek for hauling up the boats. He had visited the curing houses. He had examined the heaps of fish drying on the beach. He had drunk whisky with John the Piper and shaken hands with Alister-nan-Each. And now he had come to tell Sheila that the piper was bringing down luncheon from Mackenzie’s house, and that after they had eaten and drunk on the white beach they would put out the Maighdean-mhara once more to sea, and sail over to Mevaig, that the stranger might see the wondrous sands of the Bay of Uig.
But it was not in consonance with the dignity of a king that his guests should eat from off the pebbles, like so many fishermen, and when Mairi and another girl brought down the baskets, luncheon was placed in the stern of the small vessel, while Duncan got up the sails and put out from the stone quay. As for John the Piper, was he insulted for having been sent on a menial errand? They had scarcely got away from the shore when the sounds of the pipes were wafted to them from the hillside above, and it was the “Lament of Mackrimmon” that followed them out to sea: