THATsame night Sheila dreamed a strange dream, and it seemed to her that an angel of God came to her and stood before her, and looked at her with his shining face and his sad eyes. And he said, “Are you a woman, and yet slow to forgive? Are you a mother, and have you no love for the father of your child?” It seemed to her that she could not answer. She fell on her knees before him, and covered herface with her hands and wept. And when she raised her eyes again the angel was gone, and in his place Ingram was there, stretching out his hand to her and bidding her rise and be comforted. Yet he, too, spoke in the same reproachful tones, and said, “What would become of us all, Sheila, if none of our actions were to be condoned by time and repentance? What would become of us if we could not say, at some particular point of our lives, to the by-gone time, that we had left it, with all its errors and blunders and follies, behind us, and would, with the help of God, start clear on a new sort of life? What would it be if there were no forgetfulness for any of us—no kindly vail to come down and shut out the memory of what we have done—if the staring record were to be kept forever before our eyes? And you are a woman, Sheila; it should be easy for you to forgive and to encourage, and to hope for better things of the man you love? Has he not suffered enough? Have you no word for him?”
The sound of her sobbing in the night-time brought her father to the door. He tapped at the door, and said, “What is the matter, Sheila?”
She awoke with a slight cry, and he went into the room and found her in a strangely troubled state, her hands outstretched to him, her eyes wet and wild. “Papa, I have been very cruel. I am not fit to live any more. There is no woman in the world would have done what I have done.”
“Sheila,” he said, “you hef been dreaming again about all that folly and nonsense. Lie down, like a good lass. You will wake the boy if you do not lie down and go to sleep; and to-morrow we will pay a visit to the yacht that hass come in, and you will ask the gentlemen to look at the Maighdean-mhara.”
“Papa,” she said, “to-morrow I want you to take me to Jura.”
“To Jura, Sheila? You cannot go to Jura. You cannot leave the baby with Mairi, Sheila.”
“I will take him with me,” she said.
“Oh, it is not possible at all, Sheila. But I will go to Jura—oh yes, I will go to Jura. Indeed, I was thinking last night that I would go to Jura.”
“Oh no,youmust not go,” she cried. “You would speak harshly—and he is very proud—and we should never see eachother again. Papa, I know you will do this for me—you will let me go.”
“It is foolish of you, Sheila,” her father said, “to think that I do not know how to arrange such a thing without making a quarrel of it. But you will see all about it in the morning. Just now you will lie down, like a good lass, and go to sleep. So good-night, Sheila, and do not think of it any more till the morning.”
She thought of it all through the night, however. She thought of her sailing away down through the cold wintry seas to search that lonely coast. Would the gray dawn break with snow, or would the kindly heavens lend her some fair sunlight as she set forth on her lonely quest? And all the night through she accused herself of being hard of heart, and blamed herself, indeed, for all that had happened in the by-gone time. Just as the day was coming in she fell asleep, and she dreamed that she went to the angel whom she had seen before, and knelt down at his feet and repeated in some vague way the promises she had made on her marriage morning. With her head bent down she said that she would live and die a true wife if only another chance were given her. The angel answered nothing, but he smiled with his sad eyes and put his hand for a moment on her head, and then disappeared. When she awoke Mairi was in the room silently stealing away the child, and the white daylight was clear in the windows.
She dressed with trembling hands, and yet there was a faint suffused sense of joy in her heart. She wondered if her father would keep to his promise of the night before, or whether it had been made to get her to rest. In any case she knew that he could not refuse her much; and had not he himself said that he had intended going away down to Jura?
“Sheila, you are not looking well this morning,” her father said; “it is foolish for you to lie awake and think of such things. And as for what you were saying about Jura, how can you go to Jura? We hef no boat big enough for that. I could go—oh yes,Icould go—but the boat I would get at Stornoway you would not get in at all, Sheila; and as for the baby—”
“But, then, papa,” she said, “did not the gentleman who was here last night say that they were going back by Jura? And it is a big yacht, and he has only two friends on board. He might take us down.”
“You cannot ask a stranger, Sheila. Besides, the boat is too small a one for this time of the year. I should not like to see you go in her, Sheila.”
“I have no fear,” the girl said.
“No fear!” her father said impatiently. “No, of course you hef no fear; that is the mischief. You will take no care of yourself whatever.”
“When is the young gentleman coming up, this morning?”
“Oh, he will not come up again till I go down. Will you go down to the boat, Sheila, and go on board of her?”
Sheila assented, and some half hour thereafter she stood at the door, clad in her tight-fitting blue serge, with the hat and sea-gull’s wing over her splendid masses of hair. It was an angry-looking morning enough; rags of gray clouds were being hurried past the shoulders of Suainabhal; a heavy surf was beating on the shore.
“There is going to be rain, Sheila,” her father said, smelling the moisture in the keen air. “Will you hef your waterproof?”
“Oh, no,” she said, “if I am to meet strangers, I cannot wear a waterproof.”
The sharp wind had brought back the color to her cheeks, and there was some gladness in her eyes. She knew she might have a fight for it before she could persuade her father to set sail in this strange boat; but she never doubted for a moment, recollecting the gentle face and modest manner of the youthful owner, that he would be really glad to do her a service, and she knew that her father’s opposition would give way.
“Shall we take Bras, papa?”
“No, no,” her father said “we will hef to go in a small boat. I hope you will not get wet, Sheila; there is a good breeze on the water this morning.”
“I think they are much safer in here than going around the islands just at present,” Sheila said.
“Ay, you are right there, Sheila,” her father said, looking at the direction of the wind. “They got in in a ferry good time. And they may hef to stay for a while before they can face the sea again.”
“And we shall become very great friends with them, papa, and they will be glad to take us to Jura,” she said with a smile, for she knew there was not much of the hospitality of Borvapost bestowed with ulterior motives.
They went down the steep path to the bay, where the Phœbe was lurching and heaving in the rough swell, her bowsprit sometimes nearly catching the crest of a wave. No one was on deck. How were they to get on board?
“They can’t hear you in this wind,” Sheila said. “We will have to haul down our own boat.”
And that, indeed, they had to do, though the work of getting the little thing down the beach was not very arduous for a man of Mackenzie’s build.
“I am going to pull you out to the yacht, papa,” Sheila said.
“Indeed you will do no such thing,” her father said, indignantly. “As if you wass a fisherman’s lass, and the gentlemen never wass seeing you before! Sit down in the stern, Sheila, and hold on ferry tight, for it is a rough water for this little boat.”
They had almost got out, indeed, to the yacht before any one was aware of their approach, but Pate appeared in time to seize the rope that Mackenzie flung him, and with a little scrambling, they were at last safely on board. The noise of their arrival, however, startled Johnny Eyre, who was lying on his back smoking a pipe after breakfast. He jumped up and said to Mosenberg, who was his only companion, “Halloa! here’s this old gentleman come on board. He knows you. What’s to be done?”
“Done?” said the boy, with a moment’s hesitation; and then a flush of decision sprang into his face. “Ask him to come down. Yes, I will speak to him, and tell him that Lavender is on the island. Perhaps he meant to go into the house; who knows? If he did not, let us make him.”
“All right?” said Johnny; “let’s go a buster.”
Then he called up the companion to Pate to send the gentleman below, while he flung a few things aside to make the place more presentable. Johnny had been engaged a few minutes before in sewing a button on a woolen shirt, and that article of attire does not look well beside a breakfast-table.
His visitors began to descend the narrow wooden steps, and presently Mackenzie was heard to say, “Tek great care, Sheila; the brass is ferry slippery.”
“Oh, thunder!” Johnny said, looking at Mosenberg.
“Good morning, Mr. Eyre,” said the old King of Borva,stooping to get into the cabin; “it is a rough day you are getting. Sheila, mind your head till you have passed the door.”
Mackenzie came forward to shake hands, and, in doing so, caught sight of Mosenberg. The whole truth flashed upon him in a moment, and he instantaneously turned to Sheila, and said, quickly, “Sheila, go up on deck for a moment.”
But she, too, had seen the lad, and she came forward, with a pale face, but with a perfectly self-possessed manner, and said, “How do you do? It is a surprise your coming to the island, but you often used to talk of it.”
“Yes,” he stammered, as he shook hands with her and her father, “I often wished to come here. What a wild place it is! And have you lived here, Mrs. Lavender, all the time since you left London?”
“Yes, I have.”
Mackenzie was getting very uneasy. Every moment he expected Lavender would enter this confined little cabin; and was this the place for these two to meet, before a lot of acquaintances?
“Sheila,” he said, “it is too close for you here, and I am going to have a pipe with the gentlemen. Now if you wass a good lass you would go ashore again, and go up to the house, and say to Mairi that we will all come for luncheon at one o’clock, and she must get some fish up from Borvapost. Mr. Eyre, he will send a man ashore with you in his own boat, that is bigger than mine, and you will show him the creek to put into. Now go away, like a good lass, and we will be up ferry soon—oh, yes, we will be up directly at the house.”
“I am sure,” Sheila said to Johnny Eyre, “we can make you more comfortable up at the house than you are here, although it is a nice little cabin.” And then she turned to Mosenberg and said, “And we have a great many things to talk about.”
“Could she suspect?” Johnny asked himself, as he escorted her to the boat and pulled her in himself to the shore. Her face was pale, and her manner a trifle formal, otherwise she showed no sign. He watched her go along the stones till she reaches the path, then he pulled out to the Phœbe again and went down below to entertain his host of the previous evening.
Sheila walked slowly up the rude little path, taking little heed of the blustering wind and the hurrying clouds. Her eyes were bent down, her face was pale. When she got to the top of the hill, she looked, in a blank sort of way, all around the bleak moorland, but probably she did not expect to see any one there. Then she walked, with rather an uncertain step, into the house. She looked into the room, the door of which stood open. Her husband sat there, with his arms outstretched on the table and his head buried in his hands. He did not hear her approach, her footfall was so light, and it was with the same silent step she went into the room and knelt down beside him and put her hands and face on his knee, and said simply, “I beg for your forgiveness.”
He started up and looked at her as though she were some spirit, and his own face was haggard and strange. “Sheila,” he said in a low voice, laying his hand gently on her head, “It is I who ought to be there, and you know it. But I cannot meet your eyes. I am not going to ask for your forgiveness just yet; I have no right to expect it. All I want is this; if you will let me come and see you just as before we were married, and if you will give me a chance of winning your consent ever again, we can at least be friends until then. But why do you cry, Sheila? You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”
She rose and regarded him for a moment with her streaming eyes, and then, moved by the passionate entreaty of her face, and forgetting altogether the separation and time of trial he had proposed, he caught her to his bosom and kissed her forehead, and talked soothingly and caressingly to her as if she were a child.
“I cry,” she said, “because I am happy—because I believe all that time is over—because I think you will be kind to me. And I will be a good wife to you, and you will forgive me all that I have done.”
“You are heaping coals of fire on my head, Sheila,” he said, humbly. “You know I have nothing to forgive. As for you, I tell you I have no right to expect your forgiveness yet. But I think you will find out by-and-by that my repentance is not a mere momentary thing. I have had a long time to think over what has happened, and what I lost when I lost you, Sheila.”
“But you have found me again,” the girl said, pale a little, and glad to sit down on the nighest couch, while she held his hand and drew him toward her. “And now I must ask you for one thing.”
He was sitting beside her; he feared no longer to meet the look of those earnest, meek, affectionate eyes.
“This is it,” she said. “If we are to be together—not what we were, but something quite different from that—will you promise me never to say one word about what is past—to shut it out altogether—to forget it!”
“I cannot, Sheila,” he said. “Am I to have no chance of telling you how well I know how cruel I was to you—how sorry I am for it?”
“No,” she said, firmly. “If you have some things to regret, so have I; and what is the use of competing with each other as to which has the most forgiveness to ask for? Frank, dear, you will do this for me? You will promise never to speak one word about that time?”
How earnest the beautiful, sad face was! He could not withstand the entreaty of the piteous eyes. He said to her, abashed by the great love that she showed, and hopeless of making other reparation than obedience to her generous wish, “Let it be so, Sheila. I will never speak a word about it. You will see otherwise than in words whether I forget what is passed, and your goodness in letting it go. But, Sheila,” he added, with downcast face, “Johnny Eyre was here last night. He told me—” He had to say no more. She took his hand and led him gently and silently out of the room.
Meanwhile the old King of Borva had been spending a somewhat anxious time down in the cabin of the Phœbe. Many and many a day had he been planning a method by which he might secure a meeting between Sheila and her husband, and now it had all come about without his aid, and in a manner which rendered him unable to take any precautions. He did not know but that some awkward accident might destroy all the chances of the affair. He knew that Lavender was on the island. He had frankly asked young Mosenberg as soon as Sheila had left the yacht.
“Oh, yes,” the lad said, “he went away into the island early this morning. I begged of him to go to your house; he did not answer. But I am sure he will, I know he will.”
“My Kott!” Mackenzie said, “and he has been wandering about the island all the morning, and he will be very faint and hungry, and a man is neffer in a good temper then for making up a quarrel. If I had known the last night, I could hef had dinner with you all here, and we should hef given him a good glass of whisky, and then it wass a good time to tek him up to the house.”
“Oh, you may depend on it, Mr. Mackenzie,” Johnny Eyre said, “that Lavender needs no stimulus of that sort to make him desire a reconciliation. No, I should think not. He has done nothing but brood over this affair since ever he left London; and I should not be surprised if you scarcely knew him, he is so altered. You would fancy he had lived ten years in the time.”
“Ay, ay,” Mackenzie said, not listening very attentively, and evidently thinking more of what might be happening elsewhere; “but I was thinking, gentlemen, it wass time for us to go ashore and go up to the house, and hef something to eat.”
“I thought you said one o’clock for luncheon, sir,” young Mosenberg said.
“One o’clock!” Mackenzie repeated, impatiently. “Who the teffle can wait till one o’clock, if you hef been walking about an island since the daylight, with nothing to eat or drink.”
Mr. Mackenzie forgot that it was not Lavender he had asked to lunch.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “Sheila hass had plenty of time to send down to Borvapost for some fish; and by the time you get up to the house you will see that it is ready.”
“Very well,” Johnny said, “we can go up to the house, anyway.”
He went up the companion, and he had scarcely got his head above the level of the bulwarks when he called back, “I say Mr. Mackenzie, here is Lavender on the shore, and your daughter is with him. Do they want to come on board, do you think? Or do they want us to go ashore?”
Mackenzie uttered a few phrases in Gaelic, and got up on deck instantly. There, sure enough, was Sheila, with her hand on her husband’s arm, both looking toward the yacht. The wind was blowing too strong for them to call. Mackenzie wanted himself to pull in for them, but this was overruled, and Pate was despatched.
An awkward pause ensued. The three standing on deck were sorely perplexed as to the forthcoming interview, and as to what they should do. Were they to rejoice over a reconciliation, or ignore the fact altogether and simply treat Sheila as Mrs. Lavender? Her father, indeed, fearing that Sheila would be strangely excited, and would probably burst into tears, wondered what he could get to scold her about.
Fortunately, an incident partly ludicrous broke the awkwardness of their arrival. The getting on deck was a matter of some little difficulty; in the scuffle Sheila’s small hat, with its snow-white feather, got unloosed somehow, and the next minute it was whirled away by the wind into the sea. Pate could not be sent after it just at the moment, and it was rapidly drifting away to leeward, when Johnny Eyre, with a laugh and a “Here goes!” plunged in after the white feather that was dipping and rising in the waves like a sea-gull. Sheila uttered a slight cry, and caught her husband’s arm. But there was not much danger. Johnny was an expert swimmer, and in a few minutes he was seen to be making his way backward with one arm, while in the other hand he held Sheila’s hat. Then Pate had by this time got the small boat around to leeward, and very shortly after Johnny, dripping like a Newfoundland dog, came on deck and presented the hat to Sheila, amidst a vast deal of laughter.
“I am so sorry,” she said; “but you must change your clothes quickly. I hope you will have no harm from it.”
“Not I,” he said; “but my beautiful white decks have got rather into a mess. I am glad you saw them while they were dry, Mrs. Lavender. Now I am going below to make myself a swell, for we’re all going to have luncheon on shore, ain’t we?”
Johnny went below very well pleased with himself. He had called her Mrs. Lavender without wincing. He had got over all the awkwardness of a second introduction by the happy notion of plunging after the hat. He had to confess, however, that the temperature of the sea was not just what he would have preferred for a morning bath.
By and by he made his appearance in his best suit of blue and brass buttons, and asked Mrs. Lavender if she would now come down and see the cabin.
“I think you want a good glass of whisky,” old Mackenzie said, as they all went below; “the water it is ferry cold just now.”
“Yes,” Johnny said, blushing, “we shall all celebrate the capture of the hat.”
It was the capture of the hat, then, that was to be celebrated by this friendly ceremony. Perhaps it was, but there was no mirth now on Sheila’s face.
“And you will drink first, Sheila,” her father said, almost solemnly, “and you will drink to your husband’s health.”
Sheila took the glass of raw whisky in her hand, and looked around timidly. “I cannot drink this, papa,” she said. “If you will let me—”
“You will drink that glass to your husband’s health, Sheila,” old Mackenzie said, with unusual severity.
“She shall do nothing of the sort if she doesn’t like it?” Johnny Eyre cried, suddenly, not caring whether it was the wrath of old Mackenzie or of the devil that he was braving; and forthwith he took the glass out of Sheila’s hand and threw the whisky on the floor. Then he pulled out a champagne bottle from a basket and said, “This is what Mrs. Lavender will drink.”
Mackenzie looked staggered for a moment; he had never been so braved before. But he was not in a quarrelsome mood on such an occasion; so he burst into a loud laugh and cried, “Well, did ever any man see the like o’ that? Good whisky—ferry good whisky—and flung on the floor as if it was water, and as if there wass no one in the boat that would hef drunk it! But no matter, Mr. Eyre, no matter; the lass will drink whatever you give her, for she’s a good lass; and if we have all to drink champagne, that is no matter, too, but there is a man or two up on deck that would not like to know the whisky was spoiled.”
“Oh,” Johnny said, “there is still a drop left for them. And this is what you must drink, Mrs. Lavender.”
Lavender had sat down in a corner of the cabin, his eyes averted. When he heard Sheila’s name mentioned he looked up, and she came forward to him. She said in her simple way, “I drink this to you, my dear husband;” and at the same moment the old King of Borva came forward and held out his hand, and said, “Yes, and by Kott, I drink to your health, too, with ferry good will!”
Lavender started to his feet. “Wait a bit, Mr. Mackenzie. I have got something to say to you before you ought to shake my hand.”
But Sheila interposed quickly. She put her hand on his arm and looked into his face. “You will keep your promise to me,” she said; and that was an end of the matter. The two men shook hands; there was nothing said between them, then or again, of what was over and gone.
They had a pleasant enough luncheon together, up in that quaint room with the Tyrolese pictures on the wall, and Duncan for once respected old Mackenzie’s threats as to what would happen if he called Sheila anything but Mrs. Lavender before these strangers. For some time Lavender sat almost silent, and answered Sheila, who continuously talked to him, in little else than monosyllables. But he looked at her a great deal, sometimes in a wistful sort of way, as if he were trying to recall the various fancies her face used to produce in his imagination.
“Why do you look at me so?” she said to him in an undertone.
“Because I have made a new friend,” he said.
But when Mackenzie began to talk of the wonders of the island and the seas around it and to beg the young yachtsmen to prolong their stay, Lavender joined with a will in that conversation, and added his entreaties.
“Then you are going to stay?” Johnny Eyre said, looking up.
“Oh, yes,” he answered, as if the alternative of going back with them had not presented itself to him. “For one thing, I have got to look out for a place where I can build a house. That is what I mean to do with my savings just at present; and if you would come with me, Johnny, and have a prowl around the island to find out some pretty little bay with a good anchorage in it—for you know I am going to steal that Maighdean-mhara from Mr. Mackenzie—then we can begin and make ourselves architects, and plan out the place that is to be. And then some day—”
Mackenzie had been sitting in mute astonishment, but he suddenly broke in upon his son-in-law. “On this island? No, by Kott, you will not do that! On this island? And with all the people at Stornoway? Hoots, no! that will neffer do. Sheila she has no one to speak to on this island, as a young lass should hef; and you, what would you do yourself in the bad weather? But there is Stornoway. Oh, yes, that is a fine big place, and many people you will get toknow there, and you will hef the newspapers and the letters at once: and there will be always boats there that you can go to Oban, to Greenock, to Glasgow—anywhere in the world—whenever you hef a mind to do that; and then when you go to London, as you will hef to go many times, there will be plenty there to look after your house when it is shut up, and keep the rain out, and the paint and the paper good, more as could be done on this island. On this island!—how would you live on this island?”
The old King of Borva spoke quite impatiently and contemptuously of the place. You would have thought his life on this island was a species of penal servitude, and that he dwelt in his solitary house only to think with a vain longing of the glories and delights of Stornoway. Lavender knew well what prompted these scornful comments on Borva. The old man was afraid that the island would really be too dull for Sheila and her husband, and that, whereas the easy compromise of Stornoway might be practicable, to set up house in Borva might lead them to abandon the North altogether.
“From what I have heard of it from Mr. Lavender,” Johnny said with a laugh, “I don’t think this island such a dreadful place; and I’m hanged if I have found it so, so far.”
“But you will know nothing about it—nothing whatever,” said Mackenzie petulantly. “You do not know the bad weather, when you cannot go down the loch to Callernish, and you might have to go to London just then.”
“Well, I suppose London could wait,” Johnny said.
Mackenzie began to get angry with this young man. “You hef not been to Stornoway,” he said, severely.
“No, I haven’t,” Johnny replied with much coolness, “and I don’t hanker after it. I get plenty of town life in London; and when I come up to the sea and the islands, I’d rather pitch my tent with you, sir, than live in Stornoway.”
“Oh, but you don’t know, Johnny, how fine a place Stornoway is,” Lavender said, hastily, for he saw the old man was beginning to get vexed. “Stornoway is a beautiful little town, and it is on the sea, too.”
“And it hass fine houses, and ferry many people, and ferry good society whatever,” Mackenzie added with some touch of indignation.
“But you see, this is how it stands, Mr. Mackenzie,”Lavender put in humbly. “We should have to go to London from time to time, and we should then get quite enough of city life, and you might find an occasional trip with us not a bad thing. But up here I should have to look on my house as a sort of workshop. Now, with all respect to Stornoway, you must admit that the coast about here is a little more picturesque. Besides, there’s another thing. It would be rather more difficult at Stornoway to take a rod or a gun out of a morning. Then there would be callers bothering you at your work. Then Sheila would have far less liberty in going about by herself.”
“Eighthly and tenthly, you’ve made up your mind to have a house here,” cried Johnny Eyre, with a loud laugh.
“Sheila says she would like to have a billiard-room,” her husband continued. “Where could you get that in Stornoway?”
“And you must have a large room for a piano, to sing in and play in,” the young Jew boy said, looking at Sheila.
“I should think a one-storied house, with a large verandah, would be the best sort of thing,” Lavender said, “both for the sun and the rain; and then one could have one’s easel outside, you know. Suppose we all go for a walk around the shore by-and-by. There is too much of a breeze to take the Phœbe down the loch.”
So the King of Borva was quietly overruled, and his dominions invaded in spite of himself. Sheila could not go out with the gentlemen just then; she was to follow in about an hour’s time. Meanwhile they buttoned their coats, pulled down their caps tight, and set out to face the grey skies and the Wintry wind. Just as they were passing away from the house, Mackenzie, who was walking in front with Lavender, said in a cautious sort of way, “You will want a deal of money to build this house you wass speaking about, for it will hef to be all stone and iron, and very strong whatever, or else it will be a plague to you from the one year to the next with the rain getting in.”
“Oh, yes,” Lavender said, “it will have to be done well once for all; and what with rooms big enough to paint in and play billiards in, and also a bedroom or two for friends who may come to stay with us, it will be an expensive business. But I have been very lucky, Mr. Mackenzie. It isn’t the money I have, but the commissions I am offered,that warrant my going in for this house. I’ll tell you about all these things afterward. In the meantime I shall have twenty-four hundred pounds, or thereabouts, in a couple of months.”
“But you hef more than that now,” Mackenzie said, gravely. “This is what I wass going to tell you. The money that your aunt left, that is yours, every penny of it—oh, yes, every penny and every farthing of it is yours, sure enough. For it wass Mr. Ingram hass told me all about it; and the old lady, she wanted him to take care of the money for Sheila; but what wass the good of the money to Sheila? My lass, she will hef plenty of money of her own; and I, wanted her to hef nothing to do with what Mr. Ingram said; but it wass all no use, and there iss the money now for you and for Sheila, every penny and every farthing of it.”
Mackenzie ended by talking in an injured way, as if this business had seriously increased his troubles.
“But you know,” Lavender said, with amazement—you know as well as I do that this money was definitely left to Ingram, and—you may believe me or not—I was precious glad of it when I heard it. Of course it would have been of more use to him if he had not been about to marry this American lady.”
“Oh, you hef heard that, then?” Mackenzie said.
“Mosenberg brought me the news. But are you quite sure about this affair? Don’t you think this is merely a trick of Ingram’s to enable him to give the money to Sheila? That would be very like him. I know him of old.”
“Well, I cannot help it if a man will tell lies,” said Mackenzie. “But that is what he says is true. And he will not touch the money—indeed, he will hef plenty, as you say. But there it is for Sheila and you, and you will be able to build whatever house you like. And if you was thinking of having a bigger boat than the Maighdean-mhara—” the old man suggested.
Lavender jumped at that notion directly. “What if we could get a yacht big enough to cruise anywhere in the Summer months?” he said. “We might bring a party of people all the way from the Thames to Loch Roag, and cast anchor opposite Sheila’s house. Fancy Ingram and his wife coming up like that in the Autumn; and I know you could go over to Sir James, and get us some shooting.”
Mackenzie laughed grimly: “We will see—we will see about that. I think there will be no great difficulty about getting a deer or two for you, and as for the salmon, there will be one or two left in the White Water. Oh yes, we will have a little shooting and a little fishing for any of your friends. And as for the boat, it will be ferry difficult to get a good big boat for such a purpose without you was planning and building one yourself; and that will be better, I think, for the yachts nowadays they are all built for the racing, and you will have a beat fifty tons, sixty tons, seventy tons, that hass no room in her below, but is nothing but a big heap of canvas and spars. But if you was wanting a good, steady boat, with good cabins below for the leddies, and a good saloon that you could have your dinner in all at once, then you will maybe come down with me to a shipbuilder I know in Glasgow—oh, he is a ferry good man—and we will see what can be done. There is a gentleman now in Dunoon—and they say he is a ferry great artist, too—and he hass a schooner of sixty tons that I hef been in myself, and it wass just like a steamer below for the comfort of it. And when the boat is ready I will get you ferry good sailors for her, that will know every bit of the coast from Loch Indaal to the Butt of Lewis, and I will see that they are ferry cheap for you, for I hef plenty of work for them in the Winter. But I was no saying yet,” the old man added, “that you were right about coming to live in Borva. Stornoway is a good place to live in; and it is a fine harbor for repairs, if the boat was wanting repairs.”
“If she were, couldn’t we send her around to Stornoway?”
“But the people in Stornoway—it iss the people in Stornoway,” said Mackenzie, who was not going to give in without a grumble.
Well, they did not fix on a site for the house that afternoon. Sheila did not make her appearance. Lavender kept continually turning and looking over the long undulations of rock and moorland; and at length he said, “Look here, Johnny, would you mind going on by yourselves? I think I shall walk back to the house.”
“What is keeping that foolish girl?” her father said, impatiently. “It is something about the dinner now, as if any one was particular about a dinner in an island like this, where you can expect nothing. But at Stornoway—oh, yes, they hef many things there.”
“But I want you to come and dine with us on board the Phœbe to-night, sir,” Johnny said. “It will be rather a lark, mind you; we make up a tight fit in that cabin. I wonder if Mrs. Lavender would venture; do you think she would, sir?”
“Oh, no, not this evening, anyway,” said her father; “for I know she will expect you all to be up at the house this evening; and what would be the use of tumbling about in the bay when you can be in a house? But it is very kind of you. Oh, yes, to-morrow night, then, we will go down to the boat, but this night I know Sheila will be ferry sorry if you do not come to the house.”
“Well, let’s go back now,” Johnny said, “and if we’ve time we might go down for our guns and have a try along the shore for an hour or so before the daylight goes. Fancy that chance at those wild duck!”
“Oh, but that is nothing,” Mackenzie said. “To-morrow you will come with me up to the loch, and there you will hef some shooting; and in many other places I will show you you will hef plenty of shooting.”
They had just got back to the house when they found Sheila coming out. She had, as her father supposed, been detained by her preparations for entertaining their guests; but now she was free until dinner-time, and so the whole party went down to the shore to pay a visit to the Phœbe and let Mackenzie have a look at the guns on board. Then they went up to the house, and found the tall and grim keeper with the baby in his arms, while Scarlett and Mairi were putting the finishing touches on the gleaming white table and its show of steel and crystal.
How strange it was to Sheila to sit at dinner there, and listen to her husband talking of boating and fishing and what not as he used to sit and talk in the olden time to her father, on the Summer evenings, on the high rocks over Borvapost! The interval between that time and this seemed to go clean out of her mind. And yet there must have been some interval, for he was looking older and sterner and much rougher about the face now, after being buffeted about by wind and rain and sun during that long and solitary stay in Jura. But it was very like the old times when they went into the little drawing-room, and when Mairi brought in the hot water and the whisky, the tobacco and the long pipes, when the old King of Borva sat himself down in his great chair bythe table, and when Lavender came to Sheila and asked her if he should get out her music and open the piano for her.
“Madam,” young Mosenberg said to her, “it is a long time since I heard one of your strange Gaelic songs.”
“Perhaps you never heard this one,” Sheila said, and she began to sing the plaintive “Farewell to Glenshalloch.” Many a time, indeed, of late had she sung its simple and pathetic air as a sort of lullaby, perhaps because it was gentle, monotonous and melancholy, perhaps because there were lines here and there that she liked. Many a time had she sung—
Sleep sound, my sweet babe, there is naught to alarm thee,The sons of the valley no power have to harm thee,I’ll sing thee to rest in the balloch untrodden,With a coronach sad for the slain of Culloden.
Sleep sound, my sweet babe, there is naught to alarm thee,The sons of the valley no power have to harm thee,I’ll sing thee to rest in the balloch untrodden,With a coronach sad for the slain of Culloden.
Sleep sound, my sweet babe, there is naught to alarm thee,The sons of the valley no power have to harm thee,I’ll sing thee to rest in the balloch untrodden,With a coronach sad for the slain of Culloden.
But long before she had reached the end of it her father’s patience gave way, and he said, “Sheila, we will hef no more of those teffles of songs! We will hef a good song; and there is more than one of the gentlemen can sing a good song, and we do not wish to be always crying over the sorrows of other people. Now be a good lass, Sheila, and sing us a good cheerful song.”
And Sheila, with great good nature, suddenly struck a different key, and sang with a spirit that delighted the old man.
The standard on the braes o’ MarIs up and streaming rarely;The gathering pipe on LochnagarIs sounding lang and clearly;The Highlandmen from hill and glen,In martial hue, with bonnets blue,Wi’ belted plaids and burnished blades,Are coming late and early.
The standard on the braes o’ MarIs up and streaming rarely;The gathering pipe on LochnagarIs sounding lang and clearly;The Highlandmen from hill and glen,In martial hue, with bonnets blue,Wi’ belted plaids and burnished blades,Are coming late and early.
The standard on the braes o’ MarIs up and streaming rarely;The gathering pipe on LochnagarIs sounding lang and clearly;The Highlandmen from hill and glen,In martial hue, with bonnets blue,Wi’ belted plaids and burnished blades,Are coming late and early.
“Now, that is a better kind of song—that is a teffle of a good song,” Mackenzie cried, keeping time to the music with his right foot, as if he were a piper playing in front of his regiment. “Wass there anything like that in your country, Mr. Mosenberg?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the lad meekly, “but if you like, I will sing you one of our soldiers’ songs. They have plenty of fire in them, I think.”
Certainly, Mackenzie had plenty of brilliant and cheerful and stirring music that evening, but that which pleased him most, doubtless, was to see, as all the world could see, the happiness of his good lass. Sheila, proud and glad, with a light on her face that had not been there for many a day, wanted to do everything at once to please and amuse herguests, and most of all to wait upon her husband; and Lavender was so abashed by her sweet service and her simple ways that he could show his gratitude only by some furtive and kindly touch of the hand as Sheila passed.
It seemed to him she had never looked so beautiful, and never, indeed since they left Stornoway together had he heard her quiet, low laugh so full of enjoyment. What had he done, he asked himself, to deserve her confidence, for it was the hope in her proud and gentle eyes that gave that radiant brightness to her face. He did not know. He could not answer. Perhaps the foregiveness she had so freely and frankly tendered, and the confidence she now so clearly showed in him, sprang from no judgment or argument, but were only the natural fruit of an abounding and generous love. More than once that night he wished that Sheila could read the next half-dozen years as though in some prophetic scroll, that he might show her how he would endeavor to prove himself, if not unworthy—for he could scarcely hope that—at least conscious of her great and unselfish affection, and as grateful for it as a man could be.
They pushed their enjoyment to such a late hour of the night that when they discovered what time it was, Mackenzie would not allow one of them to venture out into the dark to find the path down to the yacht, and Duncan and Scarlett were forthwith called on to provide the belated guests with some more or less haphazard sleeping accommodation.
“Mr. Mackenzie,” said Johnny, “I don’t mind a bit if I sleep on the floor. I’ve just had the jolliest night I ever spent in my life. Mosenberg, you’ll have to take the Phœbe back to Greenock by yourself; I shall never leave Borva any more.”
“You will be sober in the morning, Mr. Eyre,” young Mosenberg said; but the remark was unjust, for Johnny’s enthusiasm had not been produced by the old king’s whisky, potent as that was.
“ISHOULDlike,” said Mrs. Edward Ingram, sitting down and contentedly folding her hands in her lap—I should so much like, Edward, to have my own way for once, it would be so novel and so nice.”
Her husband was busy with a whole lot of plans all stretched out before him, and with a pipe which he had some difficulty in keeping alight. He did not even turn around as he answered. “You have your own way always. But you can’t expect to have mine also, you know.”
“Do you remember,” she said, slowly, “anything your friend Sheila told you about your rudeness to people? I wish, Edward, you would leave those ragged children and their school-houses for three minutes. Do! I so much want to see some places when we go to Scotland, for who knows when we may be there again? I have set my heart on the Braes of Yarrow. And Loch Awe by moonlight. And the Pass of Glencoe—”
“My dear child,” he said at last, turning around in his chair, “how can we go to those places? Sheila says Oban on the fifteenth.”
“But what Sheila says isn’t an Act of Parliament,” said the young American lady, plaintively and patiently. “Why should you regulate all your movements by her? You are always looking to the North: you are like the spires of the churches that are said to be always telling us that Heaven is close by the Pole Star.”
“The information is inaccurate, my dear,” Ingram said, looking at his pipe, “for the spires of the churches on the other side of the world point the other way. However, that does not matter. How do you propose to go rampaging all over Scotland, and still be at Oban on the fifteenth?”
“Telegraph to Mr. and Mrs. Lavender to come on to Edinburgh, and leave the trip to Lewis until we have seen those places. For, once we have got to that wild island, who knows when we shall return? Now, do, like a good boy. You know this new house of theirs will be all the drier in a month’s time. And their yacht will be all the more ship-shape. And both Sheila and her husband will be the better for coming down among civilized folks for a week’s time—especially just now, when numbers of their friends must be in the Highlands; and, of course, you get better attention at the hotels when the season is going on, and they have every preparation made; and I am told the heather and fern on the hills look very fine in August; and I am sure Mr. and. Mrs. Lavender will enjoy it very much if we get a carriage somewhere and leave the railways altogether, and drive by ourselves all through the prettiest districts.”
She wished to see the effect of her eloquence on him. It was peculiar. He put his pipe down and gravely repeated these lines, with which she was abundantly familiar: