“My Dear Aunt Lavender—I suppose when you read this you will think I am in a bad temper because of what you said to me. It is not so. But I am leaving London, and I wish to hand over to you, before I go, the charge of my house, and to ask you take possession of everything in it that does not belong to Sheila. These things are yours, as you know, and I have to thank you very much for the loan of them. I have to thank you for the far too liberal allowance you have made me for many years back. Will you think I have gone mad if I ask you to stop that now? The fact is, I am going to have a try at earning something, for the fun of the thing; and to make the experiment satisfactory, I start to-morrow morning for a district in the West Highlands, where the most ingenious fellow I know couldn’t get a penny loaf on credit. You have been very good to me, Aunt Lavender: I wish I had made better use of your kindness. So good-bye just now, and if ever I come back to London again, I shall call on you and thank you in person.“I am your affectionate nephew,“Frank Lavender.”
“My Dear Aunt Lavender—I suppose when you read this you will think I am in a bad temper because of what you said to me. It is not so. But I am leaving London, and I wish to hand over to you, before I go, the charge of my house, and to ask you take possession of everything in it that does not belong to Sheila. These things are yours, as you know, and I have to thank you very much for the loan of them. I have to thank you for the far too liberal allowance you have made me for many years back. Will you think I have gone mad if I ask you to stop that now? The fact is, I am going to have a try at earning something, for the fun of the thing; and to make the experiment satisfactory, I start to-morrow morning for a district in the West Highlands, where the most ingenious fellow I know couldn’t get a penny loaf on credit. You have been very good to me, Aunt Lavender: I wish I had made better use of your kindness. So good-bye just now, and if ever I come back to London again, I shall call on you and thank you in person.
“I am your affectionate nephew,“Frank Lavender.”
So far the letter was almost business-like. There was no reference to the causes which were sending him away from London, and which had already driven him to this extraordinaryresolution about the money he had got from his aunt. But at the end of the letter there was a brief postscript, apparently written at the last moment, the words of which were these: “Be kind to Sheila. Be as kind to her as I have been cruel to her. In going away from her I feel as though I were exiled by man and forsaken by God.”
She came back from the window, the letter in her hand.
“I think you may read it, too, papa,” she said, for she was anxious that her father should know that Lavender had voluntarily surrendered this money before he was deprived of it. Then she went back to the window.
The slow rain fell from the dismal skies on the pavement, and the railings and the now almost leafless trees. The atmosphere was filled with a thin, white mist, and the people going by were hidden under umbrellas. It was a dreary picture enough; and yet Sheila was thinking of how much drearier such a day would be on some lonely coast in the North, with the hills obscured behind the rain, and the sea beating hopelessly on the sand. She thought of some small and damp Highland cottage, with narrow windows, a smell of wet wood about, and the monotonous drip from over the door. And it seemed to her that a stranger there would be very lonely, not knowing the ways or the speech of the simple folk, careless, perhaps, of his own comfort, and only listening to the plashing of the sea and the incessant rain on the bushes and on the pebbles of the beach. Was there any picture of desolation, she thought, like that of a sea under rain, with a slight fog obscuring the air, and with no wind to stir the pulse with the noise of waves? And if Frank Lavender had only gone as far as the Western Highlands, and was living in some house on the coast, how sad and still the Atlantic must have been all this wet forenoon, with the islands of Colonsay and Oronsay lying remote and gray and misty in the far and desolate plain of the sea!
“It will take a great deal of responsibility from me, sir,” Mrs. Patterson said to old Mackenzie, who was absently thinking of all the strange possibilities now opening out before him, “if you will tell me what is to be done. Mrs. Lavender had no relatives in London except her nephew.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mackenzie, waking up—“oh, yes, we will see what is to be done. There will be the boat wanted for the funeral—.” He recalled himself with an impatient gesture.“Bless me!” he said, “what was I saying? You must ask some one else—you must ask Mr. Ingram. Hef you not sent for Mr. Ingram?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I have sent to him; and he will most likely come in the afternoon.”
“Then there are the executors mentioned in the will—that wass something you should know about—and they will tell you what to do. As for me, it is ferry little I will know about such things.”
“Perhaps your daughter, sir,” suggested Mrs. Paterson, “will tell me what she thinks should be done with the rooms. And as for luncheon, sir, if you would wait—”
“Oh, my daughter?” said Mr. Mackenzie, as if struck by a new idea, but determined, all the same, that Sheila should not have this new responsibility thrust on her—“My daughter?—well, you was saying, mem, that my daughter would help you? Oh, yes, but she is a ferry young thing, and you was saying we must hef luncheon! Oh, yes, but we will not give you so much trouble, and we hef luncheon ordered at the other house whatever, and there is the young girl there that we cannot leave all by herself. And you hef a great experience, mem, and whatever you do, that will be right; do not have any fear of that. And I will come around when you want me—oh, yes, I will come around at any time—but my daughter, she is a ferry young thing, and she would be of no use to you whatever—none whatever. And when Mr. Ingram comes you will send him around to the place where my daughter is, for we will want to see him, if he hass the time to come. Where is Shei—where is my daughter?”
Sheila had quietly left the room and stolen into the silent chamber in which the dead woman lay. They found her standing close by the bedside, almost in a trance.
“Sheila,” said her father, taking her hand, “come away now, like a good girl. It is no use your waiting here; and Mairi; what will Mairi be doing?”
She suffered herself to be led away, and they went home and had luncheon; but the girl could not eat for the notion that somewhere or other a pair of eyes were looking at her, and were hideously laughing at her, as if to remind her of the prophecy of that old woman, that her friends would sit down to a comfortable meal and begin to wonder what sort of mourning they would have.
It was not until the evening that Ingram called. He had been greatly surprised to hear from Mrs. Paterson that Mr. Mackenzie had been there, along with his daughter; and he now expected to find the old King of Borva in a towering passion. He found him, on the contrary, as bland and as pleased as decency would admit of, in view of the tragedy that had occurred in the morning; and, indeed, as Mackenzie had never seen Mrs. Lavender, there was less reason why he should wear the outward semblance of grief. Sheila’s father asked her to go out of the room for a little while; and when she and Mairi had gone, he said, cheerfully, “Well, Mr. Ingram, and it is a rich man you are at last.”
“Mrs. Paterson said she had told you,” Ingram said, with a shrug. “You never expected to find me rich, did you?”
“Never,” said Mackenzie, frankly. “But it is a ferry good thing—oh, yes, it is a ferry good thing—to hef money and be independent of people. And you will make a good use of it, I know.”
“You don’t seem disposed, sir, to regret that Lavender has been robbed of what should have belonged to him?”
“Oh, not at all,” said Mackenzie, gravely and cautiously, for he did not want his plans to be displayed prematurely. “But I hef no quarrel with him; so you will not think I am glad to hef the money taken away for that. Oh, no; I hef seen a great many men and women, and it was no strange thing that these two young ones, living all by themselves in London, should hef a quarrel. But it will come all right again if we do not make too much about it. If they like one another they will soon come together again, tek my word for it, Mr. Ingram; and I hef seen a great many men and women. And as for the money—well, as for the money, I hef plenty for my Sheila, and she will not starve when I die—no, nor before that, either; and as for the poor old woman that has died, I am ferry glad she left her money to one that will make a good use of it, and will not throw it away whatever.”
“Oh, but you know, Mr. Mackenzie, you are congratulating me without cause. I will tell you how the matter stands. The money does not belong to me at all; Mrs. Lavender never intended it should. It was meant to go to Sheila—”
“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mr. Mackenzie with a wave of his hand. “I wass hearing all that from the woman atthe house. But how will you know what Mrs. Lavender intended? You hef only that woman’s story for it. And here is the will and you hef the money, and—and—” Mackenzie hesitated for a moment, and then said with a sudden vehemence, “—and, by Kott, you shall keep it!”
Ingram was a trifle startled. “But look here, sir,” he said, in a tone of expostulation, “you make a mistake. I myself know Mrs. Lavender’s intentions. I don’t go by any story of Mrs. Paterson’s. Mrs. Lavender made over the money to me with the express injunctions to place it at the disposal of Sheila whenever I should see fit. Oh, there’s no mistake about it, so you need not protest, sir. If the money belonged to me, I should be delighted to keep it. No man in the country more desires to be rich than I; so don’t fancy I am flinging away a fortune out of generosity. If any rich and kind-hearted old lady will send me five thousand or ten thousand pounds, you will see how I shall stick to it. But the simple truth is, this money is not mine at all. It was never intended to be mine. It belongs to Sheila.”
Ingram talked in a very matter-of-fact way; the old man feared what he said was true.
“Ay, it is a ferry good story,” said Mackenzie, cautiously, “and maybe it is all true. And you wass saying you would like to hef money?”
“I most decidedly should like to have money.”
“Well, then,” said the old man, watching his friend’s face, “there is no one to say that the story is true, and who will believe it? And if Sheila wass to come to you and say she did not believe it, and she would not have the money from you, you would have to keep it, eh?”
Ingram’s sallow face blushed crimson.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, stiffly. “Do you propose to pervert the girl’s mind and make me a party to a fraud?”
“Oh, there is no use getting into an anger,” said Mackenzie, suavely, “when common sense will do as well whatever. And there wass no perversion and there wass no fraud talked about. It wass just this, Mr. Ingram, that if the old lady’s will leaves you her property, who will you be getting to believe that she did not mean to give it to you?”
“I’ll tell you now whom she meant to give it to,” said Ingram, still somewhat hotly.
“Oh, yes—oh, yes, that iss ferry well. But who will believe it?”
“Good Heavens, sir! who will believe I could be such a fool as to fling away this property if it belonged to me?”
“They will think you a fool to do it now—yes, that is sure enough,” said Mackenzie.
“I don’t care what they think. And it seems rather odd, Mr. Mackenzie, that you should be trying to deprive your own daughter of what belongs to her.”
“Oh, my daughter is ferry well off whatever; she does not want any one’s money,” said Mackenzie. And then a new notion struck him; “Will you tell me this, Mr. Ingram? If Mrs. Lavender left you her property in this way, what for did she want to change her will, eh?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I refused to take the responsibility. She was anxious to have this money given to Sheila, so that Lavender should not touch it; and I don’t think it was a wise intention, for there is not a prouder man in the world than Lavender, and I know that Sheila would not consent to hold a penny that did not equally belong to him. However, that was her notion, and I was the first victim of it. I protested against it and I suppose that set her to inquiring whether the money could not be absolutely bequeathed to Sheila direct. I don’t know anything about it myself; but that’s how the matter stands, as far as I am concerned.”
“But you will think it over, Mr. Ingram,” said Mackenzie, quietly—“you will think it over, and be in no hurry. It is not every man that has a lot of money given to him. And it is no wrong to my Sheila at all, for she will have quite plenty; and she would be ferry sorry to take the money away from you, that is sure enough; and you will not be hasty, Mr. Ingram, but be cautious and reasonable, and you will see the money will do you far more good than it would do Sheila.”
Ingram began to think that he had tied a millstone around his neck.
ONEevening in the olden time Lavender and Sheila and Ingram and old Mackenzie were all sitting high up on therocks near Borvapost, chatting to each other, and watching the red light pale on the bosom of the Atlantic as the sun sank behind the edge of the world. Ingram was smoking a wooden pipe. Lavender sat with Sheila’s hand in his. The old King of Borva was discoursing of the fishing populations around the Western coasts, and their various ways and habits.
“I wish I could have seen Tarbert,” Lavender was saying, “but the Iona just passed the mouth of the little harbor as she comes up Loch Fine. I know two or three men who go there every year to paint the fishing-life of the place. It is an odd little place, isn’t it?”
“Tarbert?” said Mr. Mackenzie—“you was wanting to know about Tarbert? Ah, well, it is a better place now, but a year or two ago it was ferry like hell. Oh, yes, it was, Sheila, so you need not say anything. And this wass the way of it, Mr. Lavender, that the trawling was not made legal then, and the men they were just like devils, with the swearing and the drinking and the fighting that went on; and if you went into the harbor in the open day, you would find them drunk and fighting, and some of them with blood on their faces, for it wass a ferry wild time. It wass many a one will say that the Tarbert-men would run down the police boat some dark night. And what was the use of catching the trawlers now and again, and taking their boats and their nets to be sold at Greenock, when they went themselves over to Greenock to the auction and brought them back? Oh, it was a great deal of money they made then: I hef heard of a crew of eight men getting thirty pounds each man in the course of one night, and that not seldom, mirover.”
“But why didn’t the government put it down?” Lavender asked.
“Well, you see,” Mackenzie answered with the air of a man well acquainted with the difficulties of ruling—“you see it wass not quite sure that the trawling did much harm to the fishing. And the Jackal—that was the government steamer—she was not much good in getting the better of the Tarbert-men, who are ferry good with their boats in the rowing, and are very cunning whatever. You know, the buying boats went out to sea, and took the herring there, and then the trawlers they would sink their nets and come home in the morning as if they had not caught one fish, although the boatwould be white with the scales of the herring. And what is more, sir, the government knew ferry well that if trawling was put down, then there would be a ferry good many murders; for the Tarbert-men, when they came home to drink whisky, and wash the whisky down with porter, they were ready to fight anybody.”
“It must be a delightful place to live in,” Lavender said.
“Oh, but it is ferry different now,” Mackenzie continued—“ferry different. The men they are nearly all Good Templars now, and there is no drinking whatever, and there is reading-rooms and such things, and the place is ferry quiet and respectable.”
“I hear,” Ingram remarked, “that good people attribute the change to moral suasion, and that wicked people put it down to want of money.”
“Papa, this boy will have to be put to bed,” Sheila said.
“Well,” Mackenzie answered, “there is not so much money in the place as there wass in the old times. The shopkeepers do not make so much money as before, when the men were wild and drunk in the daytime, and had plenty to spend when the police-boat did not catch them. But the fishermen, they are ferry much better without the money; and I can say for them, Mr. Lavender, that there is no better fishermen on the coast. They are very fine, tall men, and they are ferry well dressed in their blue clothes, and they are manly fellows, whether they are drunk or whether they are sober. Now look at this, sir, that in the worst of weather they will neffer tek whisky with them when they go out to the sea at night, for they think it is cowardly. And they are ferry fine fellows, and gentlemanly in their ways, and they are ferry good-natured to strangers.”
“I have heard that of them on all hands,” Lavender said, “and some day I hope to put their civility and good-fellowship to the proof.”
That was merely the idle conversation of a summer evening; no one paid any further attention to it, nor did even Lavender himself think again of his vaguely-expressed hope of some day visiting Tarbert. Let us now shift the scene of this narrative to Tarbert itself.
When you pass from the broad and blue waters of Loch Fyne into the narrow and rocky channel leading into Tarbert harbor, you find before you an almost circular bay,around which stretches an irregular line of white houses. There is an abundance of fishing-craft in the harbor, lying in careless and picturesque groups, with their brown hulls and spars sending a ruddy reflection down on the lapping water, which is green under the shadow of each boat. Along the shores stand the tall poles on which the fishermen dry their nets, and above these, on the summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins of an old castle, with the daylight shining through the empty windows.
Beyond the houses, again, lie successive lines of hills, at this moment lit up by shafts of sunlight that lend a glowing warmth and richness to the fine colors of a late Autumn. The hills are red and brown with rusted bracken and heather, and here and there the smooth waters of the bay catch a tinge of other and varied hues. In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost under the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins stand, an artist has put a rough-and ready easel, and is apparently busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond. Some indication of the rich colors of the craft—their ruddy sails, brown nets and bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls—already appears on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills in their soft Autumnal tints, and of the bold blue and white sky moving overhead. Perhaps the old man who is smoking in the stern of one of the boats has been placed there on purpose. A boy seated on some nets occasionally casts an anxious glance toward the painter, as if to inquire when his penance will be over.
A small open boat, with a heap of stones for ballast, and with no great elegance in shape of rigging, comes slowly in from the mouth of the harbor, and is gently run alongside the boat in which the man is painting. A fresh-colored young fellow, with voluminous and curly brown hair, who has dressed himself as a yachtsman, calls out, “Lavender, do you know the White Rose, a big schooner yacht?—about eighty tons, I should think.”
“Yes,” Lavender said, without turning around or taking his eyes off the canvas.
“Whose is she?”
“Lord Newstead’s.”
“Well, either he or his skipper hailed me just now, and wanted to know whether you were here. I said you were.The fellow asked me if I was going into the harbor. I said I was. So he gave me a message for you—that they would hang about outside for half an hour or so, if you would go out with them, and take a run up to Ardishaig.”
“I can’t, Johnny.”
“I’d take you out, you know.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“But look here, Lavender,” said the young man, seizing hold of Lavender’s boat, and causing the easel to shake dangerously; “he asked me to luncheon, too.”
“Why don’t you go, then?” was the only reply, uttered rather absently.
“I can’t go without you.”
“Well, I don’t mean to go.”
The younger man looked vexed for a moment, and then said, in a tone of expostulation, “You know it is very absurd of you going on like this, Lavender. No fellow can paint decently if he gets out of bed in the middle of the night, and waits for daylight to rush up to his easel. How many hours have you been at work already to-day? If you don’t give your eyes a rest, they will get color-blind to a dead certainty. Do you think you will paint the whole place off the face of the earth, now that the other fellows have gone?”
“I can’t be bothered talking with you, Johnny. You’ll make me throw something at you. Go away.”
“I think it’s rather mean, you know,” continued the persistent Johnny, “for a fellow like you, who doesn’t need it, to come and fill the market all at once, while we unfortunate devils can scarcely get a crust. And there are two heron just around the point, and I have my breech-loader and a dozen cartridges here.”
“Go away, Johnny.” That was all the answer he got.
“I’ll go out and tell Lord Newstead that you are a cantankerous brute. I suppose he’ll have the decency to offer me luncheon, and I dare say I could get him a shot at these heron. You are a fool not to come, Lavender;” and so saying, the young man pushed out again, and he was heard to go away talking to himself about obstinate idiots and greed and the certainty of getting a shot at the heron.
When he had quite gone, Lavender who had scarcely raised his eyes from his work, suddenly put down his palette and brushes—he almost dropped them, indeed—and quicklypat up both his hands to his head, pressing them on the side of his temples. The old fisherman in the boat beyond noticed this strange movement, and forthwith caught a rope, hauled the boat across a stretch of water, and then came scrambling over bowsprit, lowered sails and nets, to where Lavender had just sat down.
“Wass there anything the matter, sir?” he said, with much evidence of concern.
“My head is a little bad, Donald,” Lavender said, still pressing his hands to his temples, as if to get rid of some strange feeling. “I wish you would pull in to the shore and get me some whisky.”
“Oh, ay,” said the old man, hastily scrambling into the little black boat lying beside the smack; “and it is no wonder to me that this will come to you, sir, for I hef never seen any of the gentlemen so long at the pentin as you—from the morning till the night; and it is no wonder to me that this will come to you. But I will get you the whushky; it is a grand thing, the whushky.”
The old fisherman was not long in getting ashore and running up to the cottage where Lavender lived, and getting a bottle of whisky and a glass. Then he got down to the boat again, and was surprised that he could nowhere see Mr. Lavender on board the smack. Perhaps he had lain down on the nets in the bottom of the boat.
When Donald got out to the smack he found the young man lying insensible, his face white and his teeth clenched. With something of a cry the old fisherman jumped into the boat, knelt down, and proceeded in a rough-and-ready fashion to force some whisky into Lavender’s mouth. “Oh, ay, oh, yes, it is a grand thing, the whushky,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, yes, sir, you must hef some more; it is no matter if you will choke. It is ferry good whushky and will do you no harm whatever; and oh, yes, sir, that is ferry well, and you are all right again, and you will sit quite quiet now, and you will hef a little more whushky.”
The young man looked around him. “Have you been ashore, Donald? Oh, yes—I suppose so. Did I tumble? Well, I’m all right, now; it was the glare of the sea that made me giddy. Take a dram for yourself, Donald.”
“There is but the one glass, sir,” said Donald, who had picked up something of the notions of gentlefolks, “but I willjust tek the bottle;” and so, to avoid drinking out of the same glass (which was rather a small one), he was good enough to take a pull, and a strong pull, at the black bottle. Then he heaved a sigh, and wiped the top of the bottle with his sleeve. “Yes, as I was saying, sir, there was none of the gentlemen I hef effer seen in Tarbert will keep at the pentin so long ass you; and many of them will be stronger ass you, and will be more accustomed to it whatever. But when a man is making money—” and Donald shook his head: he knew it was useless to argue.
“But I am not making money, Donald,” Lavender said, still looking a trifle pale. “I doubt whether I have made as much as you have since I came to Tarbert.”
“Oh, yes,” said Donald contentedly, “all the gentlemen will say that. They never hef any money. But wass you ever with them when they could not get a dram because they had no money to pay for it?”
Donald’s test of impecuniosity could not be gainsaid. Lavender laughed, and bade him get back into the other boat.
“ ‘Deed I will not,” said Donald, sturdily.
Lavender stared at him.
“Oh, no; you wass doing quite enough the day already, or you would not hef tumbled into the boat whatever. And supposing that you was to hef tumbled into the water, you would have been trooned as sure as you wass alive.”
“And a good job, too, Donald,” said the younger man idly looking at the lapping green water.
Donald shook his head gravely: “You would not say that if you had friends of yours that was trooned, and if you had seen them when they went down in the water.”
“They say it is an easy death, Donald.”
“They neffer tried it that said that,” said the old fisherman gloomily. “It wass one day the son of my sister wass coming over from Saltcoats—but I hef no wish to speak of it; and that wass but one among ferry many that I have known.”
“How long is it since you were in the Lewis, did you say?” Lavender asked, changing the subject. Donald was accustomed to have the talk suddenly diverted into this channel. He could not tell why the young English gentleman wanted him continually to be talking about the Lewis.
“Oh, it is many and many a year ago, as I hef said; andyou will know far more about the Lewis than I will. But Stornoway, that is a fine big town; and I hef a cousin there that keeps a shop, and is a very rich man whatever, and many’s the time he will ask me to come and see him. And if the Lord be spared, maybe I will some day.”
“You mean if you be spared, Donald.”
“Oh, ay; it is all wan,” said Donald.
Lavender had brought with him some bread and cheese in a piece of paper for luncheon; and this store of frugal provisions having been opened out, the old fisherman was invited to join in—an invitation he gravely but not eagerly accepted. He took off his blue bonnet and said grace; then he took the bread and cheese in his hand and looked around inquiringly. There was a stone jar of water in the bottom of the boat; that was not what Donald was looking after. Lavender handed him the black bottle he had brought out from the cottage, which was more to his mind. And then, this humble meal dispatched, the old man was persuaded to go back to his post, and Lavender continued his work.
The short afternoon was drawing to a close when young Johnny Eyre came sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and a boy of ten or twelve managing that crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. “Are you at work yet, Lavender?” he said. “I never saw such a beggar. It’s getting quite dark.”
“What sort of luncheon did Newstead give you, Johnny?”
“Oh, something worth going for, I can tell you. You want to live in Tarbert for a month or two to find out the value of decent cooking and good wine. He was awfully surprised when I described this place to him. He wouldn’t believe you were living here in a cottage: I said a garret, for I pitched it hot and strong, mind you. I said you were living in a garret, that you never saw a razor, and lived on oatmeal-porridge and whisky, and that your only amusement was going out at night and risking your neck in this delightful boat of mine. You should have seen him examining this remarkable vessel. And there were two ladies on board, and they were asking after you, too.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t catch their names when I was introduced; but the noble skipper called one of them Polly.”
“Oh, I know.”
“Ain’t you coming ashore, Lavender? You can’t see to work now.”
“All right! I shall put my traps ashore, and then I’ll have a run with you down Loch Fyne if you like, Johnny.”
“Well, I don’t like,” said the handsome lad, frankly, “for it’s looking rather squally about. It seems to me you’re bent on drowning yourself. Before those other fellows went, they came to the conclusion that you had committed a murder.”
“Did they, really?” Lavender said, with little interest.
“And if you go away and live in that wild place you were talking of during the Winter, they will be quite sure of it. Why, man, you’d come back with your hair turned white. You might as well think of living by yourself at the Arctic Pole.”
Neither Johnny Eyre nor any of the men who had just left Tarbert knew anything of Frank Lavender’s recent history, and Lavender himself was not disposed to be communicative. They would know soon enough when they went up to London. In the meantime they were surprised to find that Lavender’s habits were very singularly altered. He had grown miserly. They laughed when he told them he had no money, and he did not seek to persuade them of the fact; but it was clear, at all events, that none of them lived so frugally or worked so anxiously as he. Then, when his work was done in the evening, and when they met alternately at each other’s rooms to dine off mutton and potatoes, with a glass of whisky and a pipe and a game of cards to follow, what was the meaning of those sudden fits of silence that would strike in when the general hilarity was at its pitch? And what was the meaning of the utter recklessness he displayed when they would go out of an evening in their open sailing boats to shoot sea-fowl, or make a voyage along the rocky coast in the dead of night to wait for the dawn to show them the haunts of the seals? The Lavender they had met occasionally in London was a fastidious dilettante, self-possessed, and yet not disagreeable fellow; this man was almost pathetically anxious about his work, oftentimes he was morose and silent, and then again there was no sort of danger or difficulty he was not ready to plunge into when they were sailing about the iron-bound coast. They could not make it out, but the joke among themselves was that he had committed a murder, and therefore he was reckless.
This Johnny Eyre was not much of an artist, but he liked the society of artists; he had a little money of his own, plenty of time, and a love of boating and shooting, and so he had pitched his tent at Tarbert, and was proud to cherish the delusion that he was working hard and earning fame and wealth. As a matter of fact, he never earned anything, but he had very good spirits, and living in Tarbert is cheap.
From the moment that Lavender had come to the place, Johnny Eyre had made him his special companion. He had a great respect for a man who could shoot anything anywhere; and when he and Lavender came back together from a cruise, there was no use saying which had actually done the brilliant deeds the evidence of which was carried ashore. But Lavender, oddly enough, knew little about sailing, and Johnny was pleased to assume the airs of an instructor on this point; his only difficulty being that his pupil had more than the ordinary hardihood of an ignoramus, and was rather inclined to do reckless things even after he had sufficient skill to know that they were dangerous.
Lavender got into the small boat, taking his canvas with him, but leaving his easel in the fishing-smack. He pulled himself and Johnny Eyre ashore; they scrambled up the rocks and into the road, and then they went into the small white cottage in which Lavender lived. The picture was, for greater safety, left in Lavender’s bed-room, which already contained about a dozen canvases with sketches in various stages on them. Then he went out to his friend again.
“I’ve had a long day to-day, Johnny. I wish you’d go out with me; the excitement of a squall would clear one’s brain, I fancy.”
“Oh, I’ll go out if you like,” Eyre said, “but I shall take very good care to run in before the squall comes, if there’s any about. I don’t think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning about half an hour ago down in the South, but nothing has come of it. There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands. You don’t seem to care about shooting guillemots, Lavender?”
“Well, you see, potting a bird that is sitting on the water—” said Lavender, with a shrug.
“Oh, it isn’t as easy as you might imagine. Of course you could kill them if you liked, but everybody ain’t such a swell as you are with a gun; and mind you, it’s uncommonlyawkward to catch the-right moment for firing, when the bird goes bobbing up and down on the waves, disappearing altogether every second. I think it’s very good fun myself. It’s very exciting when you don’t know the moment the bird will dive, and whether you can afford to go any nearer. And as for shooting them on the water, you have to do that, for when do you get a chance of shooting them flying?”
“I don’t see much necessity for shooting them at any time,” said Lavender, as he and Eyre went down to the shore again; “but I am glad to see you get some amusement out of it. Have you got cartridges with you? Is your gun in the boat?”
“Yes. Come along. We’ll have a run out anyhow.”
When they had pulled out again to that cockle-shell craft with its stone ballast and big brown mainsail, the boy was sent ashore and the two companions set out by themselves. By this time, the sun had gone down, and a strange green twilight was shining over the sea. As they got farther out the dusky shores seemed to have a pale mist hanging around them, but there were no clouds on the hills, for a clear sky shone overhead, awaiting the coming of the stars. Strange indeed was the silence out here, broken only by the lapping of the water on the sides of the boat and the calling of birds in the distance. Far away the orange ray of a lighthouse began to quiver in the lambent dusk. The pale green light on the waves did not die out, but the shadows grew darker, so that Eyre, with his gun close at hand, could not make out his groups of guillemots, although he heard them calling all around. They had come out too late, indeed, for any such purpose.
Thither on those beautiful evenings, after his day’s work was over, Lavender was accustomed to come, either by himself or with his present companion. Johnny Eyre did not intrude on his solitude: he was invariably too eager to get a shot, his chief delight being to get to the bow, to let the boat drift for a while silently through the waves, so that she might come unawares on some flock of sea-birds. Lavender, sitting in the stern with the tiller in his hand, was really alone in this world of water and sky, with all the majesty of the night and the stars around him.
And on these occasions he used to sit and dream of thebeautiful time long ago in Loch Roag, when nights such as these used to come over the Atlantic, and find Sheila and himself sailing on the peaceful waters, or seated high up on the rocks listening to the murmur of the tide. Here was the same strange silence, the same solemn and pale light in the sky, the same mystery of the moving plain all around them that seemed somehow to be alive, and yet voiceless and sad. Many a time his heart became so full of recollections that he had almost called aloud “Sheila! Sheila!” and waited for the sea and the sky to answer him with the sound of her voice. In these by-gone days he had pleased himself with the fancy that the girl was somehow the product of all the beautiful aspects of Nature around her. It was the sea that was in her eyes, it was the fair sunlight that shone in her face, the breath of her life was the breath of the moorland winds. He had written verses about this fancy of his; and he had conveyed them secretly to her, sure that she, at least, would find no defects in them. And many a time, far away from Loch Roag and from Sheila, lines of this conceit would wander through his brain, set to the saddest of all music, the music of irreparable loss. What did they say to him, now that he recalled them like some half-forgotten voice out of the strange past?
For she and the clouds and the breezes were one,And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sunTo charm and bewilder all men with the graceThey combined and conferred on her wonderful face.
For she and the clouds and the breezes were one,And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sunTo charm and bewilder all men with the graceThey combined and conferred on her wonderful face.
For she and the clouds and the breezes were one,And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sunTo charm and bewilder all men with the graceThey combined and conferred on her wonderful face.
The sea lapped around the boat, the green light on the waves grew somehow less intense, in the silence the first of the stars came out, and somehow the time in which he had seen Sheila in these rare and magical colors seemed to become more and more remote:
An angel in passing looked downward and smiled,And carried to heaven the fame of the child;And then what the waves and the sky and the sunAnd the tremulous breath of the hills had begunRequired but one touch. To finish the whole,God loved her and gave her a beautiful soul.
An angel in passing looked downward and smiled,And carried to heaven the fame of the child;And then what the waves and the sky and the sunAnd the tremulous breath of the hills had begunRequired but one touch. To finish the whole,God loved her and gave her a beautiful soul.
An angel in passing looked downward and smiled,And carried to heaven the fame of the child;And then what the waves and the sky and the sunAnd the tremulous breath of the hills had begunRequired but one touch. To finish the whole,God loved her and gave her a beautiful soul.
And what had he done with this rare treasure intrusted to him? His companions, jesting among themselves, had said that he had committed a murder; in his own heart there was something at this moment of a murderer’s remorse.
Johnny Eyre uttered a short cry. Lavender looked ahead,and saw that some black object was disappearing among the waves.
“What a fright I got!” Eyre said, with a laugh. “I never saw the fellow come near, and he came up just below the bowsprit. He came keeling over as quiet as a mouse. I say, Lavender, I think we might as well cut it now; my eyes are quite bewildered with the light on the water. I couldn’t make out a kraken if it was coming across our bows.”
“Don’t be in a hurry, Johnny. We’ll put her out a bit, and then let her drift back. I want to tell you a story.”
“Oh, all right,” he said; and so they put her head around and soon she was lying over before the breeze, and slowly drawing away from those outlines of the coast which showed them where Tarbert harbor cut into the land. And then once more they let her drift, and young Eyre took a nip of whisky and settled himself so as to hear Lavender’s story, whatever it might be.
“You knew I was married?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why my wife did not come here?”
“Why should I wonder? Plenty of fellows have to spend half the year apart from their wives; the only thing in your case I couldn’t understand was the necessity for your doing it. For you know that’s all nonsense about your want of funds.”
“It isn’t nonsense, Johnny. But now, if you like, I will tell you why my wife has never come here.”
Then he told the story, out there under the stars, with no thought of interruption, for there was a world of moving water around them. It was the first time he had let any one into his confidence, and perhaps the darkness aided his revelations; but at any rate he went over all the old time, until it seemed to his companion that he was talking to himself, so aimless and desultory were his pathetic reminiscences. He called her Sheila, though Eyre had never heard her name. He spoke of her father as though Eyre must have known him. And yet this rambling series of confessions and self-reproaches and tender memories did form a certain sort of narrative, so that the young fellow sitting quietly in the boat there got a pretty fair notion of what had happened.
“You are an unlucky fellow,” he said to Lavender. “Inever heard anything like that. But you know you must have exaggerated a good deal about it. I should like to hear her story. I am sure you could not have treated her like that.”
“God knows how I did, but the truth is just as I have told you; and although I was blind enough at the time, I can read the whole story now in letters of fire. I hope you will never have such a thing constantly before your eyes, Johnny.”
The lad was silent for some time, and then he said, rather timidly, “Do you think, Lavender, she knows how sorry you are?”
“If she did, what good would that do?” said the other.
“Women are awfully forgiving, you know,” Johnny said, in a hesitating fashion. “I—I don’t think it is quite fair not to give her a chance—a chance of—of being generous, you know. You know, I think the better a woman is, the more inclined she is to be charitable to other folks who mayn’t be quite up to the mark, you know; and you see, it ain’t every one who can claim to be always doing the right thing; and the next best thing to that is to be sorry for what you’ve done and try to do better. It’s rather cheeky, you know, my advising you, or trying to make you pluck up your spirits; but I’ll tell you what it is, Lavender, if I knew her well enough, I’d go straight to her to-morrow, and I’d put in a good word for you, and tell her some things she doesn’t know; and you’d see if she wouldn’t write you a letter, or even come and see you.”
“That is all nonsense, Johnny, though its very good of you to think of it. The mischief I have done isn’t to be put aside by the mere writing of a letter.”
“But it seems to me,” Johnny said, with some warmth, “that you are as unfair to her as to yourself in not giving her a chance. You don’t know how willing she may be to overlook everything that is past.”
“If she were, I am not fit to go near her. I couldn’t have the cheek to try, Johnny.”
“But what more can you be than sorry for what is past,” said the younger fellow, persistently. “And you don’t know how pleased it makes a good woman to give her the chance of forgiving anybody. And if we were all to set up for being archangels, and if there was to be no sort of getting back for us after we had made a slip, where should we be? And inplace of going to her and making it all right, you start away for the Sound of Islay; and, by Jove! won’t you find out what spending a winter under these Jura mountains means! I have tried it and I know.”
A flash of lightning, somewhere down among the Arran hills, interrupted the speaker, and drew the attention of the two young men to the fact that in the East and Southeast the stars were no longer visible, while something of a brisk breeze had sprung up.
“This breeze will take us back splendidly,” Johnny said, getting ready again for the run to Tarbert.
He had scarcely spoken when Lavender called attention to a fishing-smack that was apparently making for the harbor. With all sails set she was sweeping by them like some black phantom across the dark plain of the sea. They could not make out the figures on board of her, but as she passed some one called out to them.
“What did he say?” Lavender asked.
“I don’t know,” his companion said; “but it was some sort of warning, I suppose. By Jove, Lavender, what is that?”
Behind them there was a strange hissing noise that the wind brought along to them, but nothing could be seen.
“Rain, isn’t it?” Lavender said.
“There never was rain like that,” his companion said. “That is a squall, and it will be here presently. We must haul down the sails. For God’s sake, look sharp, Lavender!”
There was certainly no time to lose, for the noise behind them was increasing and deepening into a roar, and the heavens had grown black overhead, so that the spars and ropes of the crank little boat could scarcely be made out. They had just got the sails down when the first gust of the squall struck the boat as with a blow of iron, and sent her staggering forward into the trough of the sea. Then all around them came the fury of the storm, and the cause of the sound they heard was apparent in the foaming water that was torn and scattered abroad by the gale. Up from the black Southeast came the fierce hurricane, sweeping everything before it, and hurling this creaking and straining boat about as if it were a cork. They could see little of the sea around them, but they could hear the awful noise of it, andthey knew they were being swept along on those hurrying waves toward a coast which was invisible in the blackness of the night.
“Johnny, we’ll never make the harbor. I can’t see a light,” Lavender cried. “Hadn’t we better try to keep her up the loch?”
“Wemustmake the harbor,” his companion said; “she can’t stand this much longer.”
Blinding torrents of rain were now being driven down by the force of the wind, so that all around them nothing was visible but a wild boiling and seething of clouds and waves. Eyre was up at the bow trying to catch some glimpse of the outlines of the coast, or to make out some light that would show them where the entrance to Tarbert harbor lay. If only some lurid shaft of lightning would pierce the gloom! for they knew that they were being driven headlong on an iron-bound coast; and, amid all the noise of the wind and the sea, they listened with a fear that had no words for the first roar of the waves along the rocks.
Suddenly Lavender heard a shrill scream, almost like the cry a hare gives when it finds the dog’s fangs in its neck; and at the same moment, amid all the darkness of the night, a still blacker object seemed to start out of the gloom right ahead of them. The boy had no time to shout any warning beyond that cry of despair, for with a wild crash the boat struck on the rocks, rose and struck again, and was then dashed over by a heavy sea, both of its occupants being thrown into the fierce swirls of foam that were dashing in and through the rocky channels. Strangely enough, they were thrown together; and Lavender, clinging to the sea-weed, instinctively laid hold of his companion just as the latter appeared to be slipping into the gulf beneath.
“Johnny,” he cried, “hold on!—hold on to me—or we shall both go in a minute.”
But the lad had no life left in him, and lay like a log there, while each wave that struck and rolled hissing and gurgling through the channels between the rocks seemed to drag at him and seek to suck him down into the darkness. With one despairing effort, Lavender struggled to get him farther up on the slippery sea-weed, and succeeded. But his success had lost him his own vantage ground, and he knew that he was going down into the whirling waters beneath, close bythe broken boat that was still being dashed about by the waves.
UNEXPECTEDcircumstances had detained Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter in London long after everybody else had left, but at length they were ready to start for their projected trip into Switzerland. On the day before their departure Ingram dined with them—on his own invitation. He had got into the habit of letting them know when it would suit him to devote an evening to their instruction; and it was difficult indeed to say which of the two ladies submitted the more readily and meekly to the dictatorial enunciation of his opinions. Mrs. Kavanagh, it is true, sometimes dissented in so far as a smile indicated dissent, but her daughter scarcely reserved to herself so much liberty. Mr. Ingram had taken her in hand, and expected of her the obedience and respect due his superior age.
And yet, somehow or other, he occasionally found himself indirectly soliciting the advice of this gentle, clear-eyed and clear-headed young person, more especially as regarded the difficulties surrounding Sheila; and sometimes a chance remark of hers, uttered in a timid or careless or even mocking fashion, would astonish him by the rapid light it threw on these dark troubles. On this evening—the last evening they were spending in London—it was his own affairs which he proposed to mention to Mrs. Lorraine, and he had no more hesitation in doing so than if she had been his oldest friend. He wanted to ask her what he should do about the money Mrs. Lavender had left him; and he intended to be a good deal more frank with Mrs. Lorraine than with any of the others to whom he had spoken about the matter. For he was well aware that Mrs. Lavender had at first resolved that he should have at least a considerable portion of her wealth, or why should she have asked him how he would like to be a rich man?
“I do not think,” said Mrs. Lorraine, quietly, “that there is any use in your asking me what you should do, for I know what you will do, whether it accords with any one’s opinionor no. And yet you would find a great advantage in having money.”
“Oh, I know that,” he said readily, “I should like to be rich beyond anything that ever happened in a drama; and I should take my chance of all the evil influences that money is supposed to exert. Do you know, I think you rich people are very unfairly treated.”
“But we are not rich,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, passing at the time. “Cecilia and I find ourselves very poor sometimes.”
“But I quite agree with Mr. Ingram, mamma,” said Cecilia—as if any one had had the courage to disagree with Mr. Ingram!—“rich people are shamefully ill-treated. If you go to a theatre now you find that all the virtues are on the side of the poor, and if there are a few vices, you get a thousand excuses for them. No one takes account of the temptations of the rich. You have people educated from their infancy to imagine that the whole world was made for them, every wish they have gratified, every day showing them people dependent on them and grateful for favors; and no allowance is made for such a temptation to become haughty, self-willed and overbearing. But of course it stands to reason that the rich never have justice done them in plays and stories, for the people who write are poor.”
“Not all of them.”
“But enough to strike an average of injustice. And it is very hard. For it is the rich who buy books and who take boxes at the theaters, and then they find themselves grossly abused; whereas the humble peasant, who can scarcely read at all, and who never pays more than sixpence for a seat in the gallery, is flattered and coaxed and caressed until one wonders whether the source of virtue is the drinking of sour ale. Mr. Ingram, you do it yourself. You impress mamma and me with the belief that we are miserable sinners if we are not continually doing some act of charity. Well, that is all very pleasant and necessary, in moderation; but you don’t find the poor folks so very anxious to live for other people. They don’t care much what becomes of us. They take your port wine and flannels as if they were conferring a favor on you, but as foryourcondition and prospect in this world and the next, they don’t trouble much about that. Now, mamma, just wait a moment.”
“I will not. You are a bad girl,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, severely. “Here has Mr. Ingram been teaching you and making you better for ever so long back, and you pretend to accept his counsel and reform yourself; and then all at once you break out and throw down the tablets of the law and conduct yourself like a heathen.”
“Because I want him to explain, mamma. I suppose he considers it wicked for us to start for Switzerland to-morrow. The money we shall expend in traveling might have dispatched a cargo of muskets to some missionary station, so that—”
“Cecilia!”
“Oh, no,” Ingram said carelessly, and nursing his knee with both his hands as usual, “traveling is not wicked; it is only unreasonable. A traveler, you know, is a person who has a house in one town, and who goes to live in a house in another town, in order to have the pleasure of paying for both.”
“Mr. Ingram,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, “will you talk seriously for one minute, and tell me whether we are to expect to see you in the Tyrol?”
But Ingram was not in a mood for talking seriously, and he waited to hear Mrs. Lorraine strike in with some calmly audacious invitation. She did not, however, and he turned around from her mother to question her. He was surprised to find that her eyes were fixed on the ground and that something like a tinge of color was in her face. He turned rapidly away again. “Well, Mrs. Kavanagh,” he said, with a fine air of indifference, “the last time we spoke about that I was not in the difficulty I am in at present. How could I go traveling just now, without knowing how to regulate my daily expenses? Am I to travel with six white horses and silver bells, or trudge on foot with a wallet?”
“You know quite well,” said Mrs. Lorraine, warmly, “you know you will not touch that money that Mrs. Lavender has left you.”
“Oh, pardon me,” he said: “I should rejoice to have it if it did not properly belong to some one else. And the difficulty is, that Mr. Mackenzie is obviously very anxious that neither Mr. Lavender nor Sheila should have it. If Sheila gets it, of course she will give it to her husband. Now, if it is not to be given to her, do you think I should regard the money with any particular horror and refuse totouch it? That would be very romantic, perhaps, but I should be sorry, you know, to give my friends the most disquieting doubts about my sanity. Romance goes out of a man’s head when the hair gets gray.”
“Until a man has gray hair,” Mrs. Lorraine said, still with some unnecessary fervor, “he does not know that there are things much more valuable than money. You wouldn’t touch that money just now, and all the thinking and reasoning in the world will never get you to touch it.”
“What am I to do with it?” he said, meekly.
“Give it to Mr. Mackenzie in trust for his daughter,” Mrs. Lorraine said promptly; and then, seeing that her mother had gone to the end of the drawing-room to fetch something or other, she added quickly, “I should be more sorry than I can tell you to find you accepting this money. You do not wish to have it. You do not need it. And if you did take it, it would prove a source of continual embarrassment and regret to you, and no assurances on the part of Mr. Mackenzie would be able to convince you that you had acted rightly by his daughter. Now, if you simply hand over your responsibilities to him, he cannot refuse them, for the sake of his own child, and you are left with the sense of having acted nobly and generously. I hope there are many men who would do what I ask you to do, but I have not met many to whom I could make such an appeal with any hope. But, after all, that is only advice. I have no right to ask you to do anything like that. You asked me for my opinion about it. Well, that is it. But I should not have asked you to act on it.”
“But I will,” he said, in a low voice; and then he went to the other end of the room, for Mrs. Kavanagh was calling him to help her in finding something she had lost.
Before he had left that evening Mrs. Lorraine said to him, “We go by the night mail to Paris to-morrow night, and we shall dine here at five. Would you have the courage to come up and join us in that melancholy ceremony?”
“Oh, yes,” he said; “if I may go down to the station to see you away afterward.”
“I think if we got you so far we should persuade you to go with us,” Mrs. Kavanagh said, with a smile.
He sat silent for a minute. Of course she could not seriously mean such a thing. But, at all events, she would notbe displeased if he crossed their path while they were actually abroad.
“It is getting too late in the year to go to Scotland now,” he said, with some hesitation.
“Oh, most certainly,” Mrs. Lorraine said.
“I don’t know where the man in whose yacht I was to have gone may be now. I might spend half my holiday in trying to catch him.”
“And during that time you would be alone,” Mrs. Lorraine said.
“I suppose the Tyrol is a very nice place,” he suggested.
“Oh, most delightful!” she exclaimed. “You know, we should go around by Switzerland, and go up by Luzerne and Zurich to the end of the Lake of Constance. Bregenz, mamma, isn’t that the place where we hired that good-natured man the year before last?”
“Yes, child.”
“Now, you see, Mr. Ingram, if you had less time than we—if you could not start with us to-morrow—you might come straight down by Schaffhausen and the steamer, and catch us up there, and then mamma would become your guide. I am sure we should have some pleasant days together till you got tired of us, and then you could go off on a walking tour if you pleased. And then, you know, there would be no difficulty about our meeting at Bregenz, for mamma and I have plenty of time, and we should wait there for a few days, so as to make sure.”
“Cecilia,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, “you must not persuade Mr. Ingram against his will. He may have other duties—other friends to see, perhaps.”
“Who proposed it, mamma?” said the daughter, calmly.
“I did, as a mere joke. But of course, if Mr. Ingram thinks of going to the Tyrol, we should be most pleased to see him there.”
“Oh, I have no other friends whom I am bound to see,” Ingram said, with some hesitation, “and I should like to go to the Tyrol. But—the fact is—I am afraid—”
“May I interrupt you?” said Mrs. Lorraine. “You do not like to leave London so long as your friend Sheila is in trouble. Is not that the case? And yet she has her father to look after her. And it is clear you cannot do much for her when you do not even know where Mr. Lavender is. Onthe whole, I think you should consider yourself a little bit now, and not get cheated out of your holidays for the year.”
“Very well,” Ingram said, “I shall be able to tell you to-morrow.”
To be so phlegmatic and matter-of-fact a person, Mr. Ingram was sorely disturbed on going home that evening, nor did he sleep much during the night. For the more that he speculated on all the possibilities that might arise from his meeting these people in the Tyrol, the more pertinaciously did this refrain follow these excursive fancies: “If I go to the Tyrol I shall fall in love with that girl, and ask her to marry me. And if I do so, what position should I hold, with regard to her, as a penniless man with a rich wife?”
He did not look at the question in such a light as the opinion of the world might throw on it. The difficulty was that she herself might afterwards come to think of their mutual relations. True it was that no one could be more gentle and submissive to him than she appeared to be. In matters of opinion and discussion he already ruled with an autocratic authority which he fully perceived himself, and exercised, too, with some sort of notion that it was good for this clear-headed young woman to have to submit to control. But of what avail would this moral authority be as against the consciousness she would have that it was her fortune that was supplying both with the means of living?
He went down to his office in the morning with no plans formed. The forenoon passed, and he had decided on nothing. At mid-day he suddenly bethought him that it would be very pleasant if Sheila would go and see Mrs. Lorraine; and forthwith he did that which would have driven Frank Lavender out of his senses—he telegraphed to Mrs. Lorraine to bring Sheila and her father to dinner at five. He certainly knew that such a request was a trifle cool, but he had discovered that Mrs. Lorraine was not easily shocked by such audacious experiments on her good nature. When he received the telegram in reply he knew it granted what he had asked. The words were merely, “Certainly, by all means, but not later than five.”
Then he hastened down to the house in which Sheila lived, and found that she and her father had just returned from visiting some exhibition. Mr. Mackenzie was not in the room.
“Sheila,” Ingram said, “what would you think of my getting married?”
Sheila looked up with a bright smile and said: “It would please me very much—it would be a great pleasure to me; and I have expected it for some time.”
“You have expected it?” he repeated, with a stare.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Then you fancy you know—” he said, or rather stammered, in great embarrassment, when she interrupted him by saying,
“Oh yes, I think I know. When you came down every evening to tell me all the praises of Mrs. Lorraine, and how clever she was, and kind, I expected you would come some day with another message; and now I am very glad to hear it. You have changed all my opinions about her, and—”
Then she rose and took both his hands, and looked frankly into his face.
“And I do hope most sincerely you will be happy, my dear friend.”
Ingram was fairly taken aback at the consequences of his own imprudence. He had never dreamed for a moment that any one would have suspected such a thing; and he had thrown out the suggestion to Sheila almost as a jest, believing, of course, that it compromised no one. And here, before he had spoken a word to Mrs. Lorraine on the subject, he was being congratulated on his approaching marriage.
“Oh, Sheila,” he said, “this is all a mistake. It was a joke of mine. If I had known you would think of Mrs. Lorraine, I would not have said a word about it.”
“But it is Mrs. Lorraine?” Sheila said.
“Well, but I have never mentioned such a thing to her—never hinted it in the remotest manner. I dare say if I had she might laugh the matter aside as too absurd.”
“She will not do that,” Sheila said. “If you ask her to marry you, she will marry you; I am sure of that from what I have heard, and she would be very foolish if she was not proud and glad to do that. And you—what doubt can you have, after all that you have been saying of late?”
“But you don’t marry a woman merely because you admire her cleverness and kindness,” he said; and then he added suddenly: “Sheila, would you do me a great favor? Mrs. Lorraine and her mother are leaving for the Continentto-night. They dine at five, and I am commissioned to ask you and your papa if you would go up with me and have some dinner with them, you know, before they start. Won’t you do that, Sheila?”
The girl shook her head, without answering. She had not gone to any friend’s house since her husband had left London, and that house, above all others, was calculated to awaken in her bitter recollections.
“Won’t you, Sheila?” he said. “You used to go there. I know they like you very much. I have seen you very well pleased and comfortable there, and I thought you were enjoying yourself.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Sheila; and then she looked up with a strange sort of smile on her lips. “But ‘what made the assembly shine?’ ”
That forced smile did not last long; the girl suddenly burst into tears, and rose and went away to the window. Mackenzie came into the room: he did not see his daughter was crying. “Well, Mr. Ingram, and are you coming with us to the Lewis? We cannot be staying in London, for there will be many things wanting the looking after in Borva, as you will know ferry well. And yet Sheila she will not go back; and Mairi, too, she will be forgetting the ferry sight of her own people; but if you wass coming with us, Mr. Ingram, Sheila she would come too, and it would be ferry good for her whatever.”
“I have brought you another proposal. Will you take Sheila to see the Tyrol, and I will go with you?”
“The Tyrol?” said Mr. Mackenzie. “Ay, it is a ferry long way away, but if Sheila will care to go to the Tyrol—oh, yes, I will go to the Tyrol or anywhere if she will go out of London, for it is not good for a young girl to be always in the one house, and no company and no variety; and I was saying to Sheila what good will she do sitting by the window and thinking over things, and crying sometimes. By Kott, it is a foolish thing for a young girl and I will hef no more of it!”
In other circumstances Ingram would have laughed at this dreadful threat. Despite the frown on the old man’s face, the sudden stamp of his foot, and the vehemence of his words, Ingram knew that if Sheila had turned around and said that she wished to be shut up in a dark room for the restof her life, the old King of Borva would have said: “Ferry well, Sheila,” in the meekest way, and would have been satisfied if only he could share her imprisonment with her.
“But first of all, Mr. Mackenzie, I have another proposal to make to you,” Ingram said, and then he urged upon Sheila’s father to accept Mrs. Lorraine’s invitation.
Mr. Mackenzie was nothing loth. Sheila was living by far too monotonous a life. He went over to the window to her and said, “Sheila, my lass, you was going nowhere else this evening; and it would be ferry convenient to go with Mr. Ingram, and he would see his friends away, and we could go to a theatre then. And it is no new thing for you to go to fine houses and see other people; but it is new to me, and you wass saying what a beautiful house it wass many a time, and I hef wished to see it. And the people are ferry kind, Sheila, to send me an invitation; and if they wass to come to the Lewis, what would you think if you asked them to come to your house and they paid no heed to it? Now, it is after four, Sheila, and if you wass to get ready now—”
“Yes, I will go and get ready, papa,” she said.
Ingram had a vague consciousness that he was taking Sheila up to introduce to her Mrs. Lorraine in a new character. Would Sheila look at the woman she used to fear and dislike in a wholly different fashion, and be prepared to adorn her with all the graces which he had so often described to her? Ingram hoped that Sheila would get to like Mrs. Lorraine, and that by-and-by a better acquaintance between them might lead to a warm and friendly intimacy. Somehow, he felt that if Sheila would betray such a liking—if she would come to him and say honestly that she was rejoiced he meant to marry—all his doubts would be cleared away. Sheila had already said pretty nearly as much as that, but then it followed what she understood to be an announcement of his approaching marriage, and, of course, the girl’s kindly nature at once suggested a few pretty speeches. Sheila now knew that nothing was settled; after looking at Mrs. Lorraine in the light of these new possibilities, would she come to him and counsel him to go on and challenge a decision?
Mr. Mackenzie received with a grave dignity and politeness the more than friendly welcome given him by both Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, and in view of their approaching tour he gave them to understand that he had himself establishedsomewhat familiar relations with foreign countries by reason of his meeting with the ships and sailors hailing from those distant shores. He displayed a profound knowledge of the habits and customs and of the natural products of many remote lands, which were much farther afield than a little bit of inland Germany. He represented the island of Borva, indeed, as a sort of lighthouse from which you could survey pretty nearly all the countries of the world, and broadly hinted that, so far as insular prejudice being the fruit of living in such a place, a general intercourse with diverse peoples tended to widen the understanding and throw light on the various social experiments that had been made by the lawgivers, the philanthropists, the philosophers of the world.
It seemed to Sheila, as she sat and listened, that the pale, calm and clear-eyed young lady opposite her was not quite so self-possessed as usual. She seemed shy and a little self-conscious. Did she suspect that she was being observed, Sheila wondered? and the reason? When dinner was announced she took Sheila’s arm, and allowed Mr. Ingram to follow them, protesting, into the other room, but there was much more of embarrassment and timidity than of an audacious mischief in her look. She was very kind indeed to Sheila, but she had wholly abandoned that air of maternal patronage which she used to assume toward the girl. She seemed to wish to be more friendly and confidential with her, and indeed scarcely spoke a word to Ingram during dinner, so persistently did she talk to Sheila, who sat next her.
Ingram got vexed. “Mrs. Lorraine,” he said, “you seem to forget that this is a solemn occasion. You ask us to a farewell banquet, but instead of observing the proper ceremonies, you pass the time in talking about fancy work and music, and other ordinary, everyday trifles.”
“What are the ceremonies?” she said.
“Well,” he answered, “you need not occupy the time with crochet—”
“Mrs. Lavender and I are very well pleased to talk about trifles.”
“But I am not,” he said bluntly, “and I am not going to be shut out by a conspiracy. Come, let us talk about your journey.”
“Will my lord give his commands as to the point at which we shall start the conversation!”
“You may skip the Channel.”
“I wish I could,” she remarked, with a sigh.
“We shall land you in Paris. How are we to know that you have arrived safely?”
She looked embarrassed for a moment, and then said: “If it is of any consequence for you to know, I shall be writing in any case to Mrs. Lavender about some little private matter.”
Ingram did not receive this promise with any great show of delight. “You see,” he said, somewhat glumly, “if I am to meet you anywhere, I should like to know the various stages of your route, so that I could guard against our missing each other.”
“You have decided to go, then?”
Ingram, not looking at her, but looking at Sheila, said: “Yes;” and Sheila, despite all her efforts, could not help glancing up with a brief smile and blush of pleasure that were quite visible to everybody.