“And yet,” said Sheila with a smile—and it seemed so strange to Mairi to see her smile—“we will not compare badly in health with the people about us here.”
Mrs. Lavender dropped the question, and began to explain to Sheila what she advised her to do. In the meantime both the girls were to remain in her house. She would guarantee their being met by no one. When suitable rooms had been looked out by Paterson, they were to remove thither. The whole situation of affairs was at once perceived by Mrs. Lavender’s attendant, who was given to understand that no one was to know of young Mrs. Lavender’s being in the house. Then the old woman, much contented with what she had done, resolved that she would reward herself with a joke, and sent for Edward Ingram.
When Sheila, as already described, came into the room, and found her old friend there, the resolution she had formed went clean out of her mind. She forgot entirely the ban that had been placed on Ingram by her husband. But after her first emotion on seeing him was over, and when he began to discuss what she ought to do, and even to advise her in a diffident sort of way, she remembered all that she had forgotten, and was ashamed to find herself sitting there and talking to him as if it were in her father’s house at Borva. Indeed, when he proposed to take the management of her affairs into his own hands, and to go and look at certain apartments that Paterson had proposed, she was forced, with great heart-burning and pain, to hint to him that she could not avail herself of his kindness.
“But why?” he asked, with a stare of surprise.
“You remember Brighton,” she answered, looking down. “You had a bad return for your kindness to me then.”
“Oh, I know,” he said carelessly. “And I suppose Mr. Lavender wished you to cut me after my impertinent interference. But things are very much changed now. But for the time he went North, he has been with me nearly every hour since you left.”
“Has Frank been to the Lewis?” she said suddenly, with a look of fear on her face.
“Oh, no; he had only been to Glasgow to see if you had gone to catch the Clansman and go North from there.”
“Did he take trouble to do all that?” she asked, slowly and wistfully.
“Trouble!” cried Ingram. “He appears to me neither to eat nor sleep day or night, but to go wandering about in search of you in every place where he fancies you may be. I never saw a man so beside himself with anxiety.”
“I did not wish to make him anxious,” said Sheila in a low voice, “Will you tell him that I am well?”
Mrs. Lavender began to smile. Were there not evident signs of softening? But Ingram, who knew the girl better, was not deceived by these appearances. He could see that Sheila merely wished that her husband should not suffer pain on her account; that was all.
“I was about to ask you,” he said gently, “what I may say to him. He comes to me continually, for he has always fancied that you would communicate with me. What shall I say to him, Sheila?”
“You may tell him that I am well,” she answered.
Mairi had by this time stepped out of the room. Sheila sat with her eyes fixed on the floor, her fingers working nervously with a paper knife she held.
“Nothing more than that?” he said.
“Nothing more.”
He saw by her face, and he could tell by the sound of her voice, that her decision was resolute.
“Don’t be a fool, child!” said Mrs. Lavender emphatically. “Here is your husband’s friend, who can make everything straight and comfortable for you in an hour or two, and you quietly put aside the chance of reconciliation and bring on yourself any amount of misery. I don’t speak for Frank. Men can take care of themselves; they have clubs and friends, and amusements for the whole day long. But you!—what a pleasant life you would have, shut up in a couple of rooms, scarcely daring to show yourself at a window! Your fine sentiments are all very well, but they won’t stand in the place of a husband to you; and you will soon find out the difference between living by yourself like that, and having some one in the house to look after you. Am I right, Mr. Ingram, or am I wrong?”
Ingram paused for a moment, and said, “I have not the same courage that you have, Mrs. Lavender, I dare not advise Sheila one way or the other at present. But if she feelsin her own heart that she would rather return now to her husband, I can safely say that she would find him deeply grateful to her, and that he would try to do everything that she desired. That I know. He wants to see you, Sheila, if only for five minutes, to beg your forgiveness.
“I cannot see him,” she said, with the same sad and settled air.
“I am not to tell him where you are?”
“Oh no!” she cried, with a sudden and startled emphasis. “You must not do that, Mr. Ingram. Promise me that you will not do that?”
“I do promise you; but you put a painful duty on me, Sheila, for you know how he will believe that a short interview with you would put everything right; and he will look on me as preventing that.”
“Do you think a short interview at present would put everything right?” she said, suddenly looking up, and regarding him with her clear, steadfast eyes.
He dared not answer. He felt, in his inmost heart, that it would not.
“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Lavender, “young people have much satisfaction in being proud. When they come to my age, they may find they would have been happier if they had been less disdainful.”
“It is not disdain, Mrs. Lavender,” said Sheila, gently.
“Whatever it is,” said the old woman, “I must remind you two people that I am an invalid. Go away and have luncheon. Paterson will look after you. Mr. Ingram, give me that book, that I may read myself into a nap, and don’t forget what I expect of you.”
Ingram suddenly remembered. He and Sheila and Mairi sat down to luncheon in the dining-room, and while he strove to get them to talk about Borva, he was thinking all the time of the extraordinary position he was expected to assume toward Sheila. Not only was he to be the repository of the secret of her place of residence, and the message-carrier between herself and her husband, but he was also to take Mrs. Lavender’s fortune, in the event of her dying, and hold it in trust for the young wife. Surely this old woman, with her suspicious ways and her worldly wisdom, would not be so foolish as to hand him over all her property, free of conditions, on the simple understanding that when he chose hecould give what he chose to Sheila? And yet that was what she had vowed she would do, to Ingram’s profound dismay.
He labored hard to lighten the spirits of those two girls. He talked of John the Piper, and said he would invite him up to London, and described his probable appearance in the Park. He told them stories of his adventures while he was camping out with some young artists in the Western Highlands, and told them anecdotes, old, recent and of his own invention, about the people he had met. Had they heard of the steward on board one of the Clyde steamers who had a percentage on the drink consumed in the cabin, and who would call out to the captain: “Why wass you going so fast? Dinna put her into the quay so fast! There is a gran’ company down below, and they are drinking fine!” Had he ever told them of the porter at Arran who had demanded sixpence for carrying up some luggage, but who, after being sent to get a sovereign changed, came back with only eighteen shillings, saying: “Oh, yes, it iss sexpence! Oh, ay, it iss sexpence! But it iss two shullensta you!” Or of the other, who, after being paid, hung about the cottage-door for nearly an hour, until Ingram, coming out, asked him why he waited; whereupon he said, with an air of perfect indifference: “Oo, ay, there was something said about a dram; but hoot toot! it is of no consequence whatever!” And was it true that the sheriff of Stornoway was so kind-hearted a man that he remitted the punishment of certain culprits, ordained by the statute to be whipped with birch rods, on the ground that the island of Lewis produced no birch, and that he was not bound to import it? And had Mairi heard any more of the Black Horse of Loch Suainabhal? And where had she pulled those splendid bunches of bell-heather?
He suddenly stopped, and Sheila looked up with inquiring eyes. How did he know that Mairi had brought those things with her? Sheila saw that he must have gone up with her husband and must have seen the room which she had decorated in imitation of the small parlor at Borvapost. She would rather not think of that room now.
“When are you going to the Lewis?” she asked of him with her eyes cast down.
“Well, I think I have changed my mind about that,Sheila. I don’t think I shall go to the Lewis this Autumn.”
Her face became more and more embarrassed. How was she to thank him for his continued thoughtfulness and self-sacrifice?
“There is no necessity,” he said lightly. “The man I am going with has no particular purpose in view. We shall merely go cruising about those wonderful lochs and islands, and I am sure to run against some of those young fellows I know, who are prowling about the fishing-villages with portable easels. They are good boys, those boys. They are very hospitable, if they have only a single bedroom in a small cottage as their studio and reception-room combined. I should not wonder, Sheila, if I went ashore somewhere, and put up my lot with those young fellows, and listened to their wicked stories, and lived on whisky and herrings for a month. Would you like to see me return to Whitehall in kilts? And I should go into the office and salute everybody with ‘And are you ferry well?’ just as Mairi does. But don’t be downhearted, Mairi. You speak English a good deal better than many English folks I know; and by the time you go back to the Lewis we shall have you fit to become a school-mistress, not only in Borva, but in Stornoway itself.”
“I was told it is ferry good English they have in Stornoway,” said Mairi, not very sure whether Mr. Ingram was joking or not.
“My dear child,” he cried, “I tell you it is the best English in the world. If the queen only knew, she would send her grandchildren to be educated there. But I must go now. Good-bye, Mairi. I mean to come and take you to a theater some night soon.”
Sheila accompanied him out into the hall. “When shall you see him,” she said, with her eyes cast down.
“This evening,” he answered.
“I should like you to tell him that I am well, and that he need not be anxious about me.”
“And that is all?”
“Yes, that is all.”
“Very well, Sheila. I wish you had given me a pleasanter message to carry, but when you think of doing that I shall be glad to take it.”
Ingram left and hastened in to his office. Sheila’s affairs were considerably interfering with his attendance there—there could be no question of that—but he had the reputation of being able to get through his work thoroughly, whatever might be the hours he devoted to it, so that he did not greatly fear being rebuked for his present irregularities. Perhaps if a grave official warning had been probable, even that would not have interfered with his determination to do what could be done for Sheila.
But this business of carrying a message to Lavender was the most serious he had yet undertaken. He had to make sundry and solemn resolves to put a bold face on the matter at the outset, and declare that wild horses would not tear from him any further information. He feared the piteous appeals that might be made to him; the representations that, merely for the sake of an imprudent promise, he was delaying a reconciliation between these two until that might be impossible; the reasons that would be urged on him for considering Sheila’s welfare as paramount to his own scruples. He went through the interview as he foresaw it, a dozen times over, and constructed replies to each argument and entreaty. Of course, it would be simple enough to meet all Lavender’s demands with a simple “No,” but there are circumstances in which the heroic method of solving difficulties becomes a trifle inhuman.
He had promised to dine with Lavender that evening at his club. When he went along to St. James’ Street at the appointed hour his host had not arrived. He walked for about ten minutes, and then Lavender appeared, haggard and worn out with fatigue. “I have heard nothing—I can hear nothing—I have been everywhere,” he said, leading the way at once into the dining-room. “I am sorry I have kept you waiting, Ingram.”
They sat down at a small side table: there were few men in the club at this late season, so that they could talk freely enough when the waiter had come and gone.
“Well, I have some news for you, Lavender,” Ingram said.
“Do you know where she is?” said the other eagerly.
“Yes.”
“Where?” he almost called aloud in his anxiety.
“Well,” Ingram said slowly, “she is in London, and she is very well; and you need have no anxiety about her.”
“But where is she?” demanded Lavender, taking noheed of the waiter, who was standing by and uncorking a bottle.
“I promised her not to tell you.”
“You have spoken with her, then?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say? Where has she been? Good Heavens, Ingram! you don’t mean to say you are going to keep it a secret?”
“Oh, no,” said the other; “I will tell you everything she said to me, if you like. Only I will not tell you where she is.”
“I will not ask you,” said Lavender at once, “if she does not wish me to know. But you can tell me about herself? What was she looking like? Is Mairi with her?”
“Yes, Mairi is with her. And, of course, she is looking a little troubled and pale, and so forth, but she is very well, I should think, and quite comfortably situated. She said I was to tell you that she was well, and that you need not be anxious.”
“She sent a message to me?”
“That is it.”
“By Jove, Ingram! how can I ever thank you enough? I feel as glad just now as if she had really come home again. And how did you manage it?”
Lavender, in his excitement and gratitude, kept filling up his friend’s glass the moment the least quantity had been taken out of it; the wonder was he did not fill all the glasses on that side of the table, and beseech Ingram to have two or three dinners all at once.
“Oh, you needn’t give me any credit about it,” Ingram said. “I stumbled against her by accident: at least, I did not find her out myself.”
“Did she send for you?”
“No. But look here, Lavender, this sort of cross-examination will lead to but one thing; and you say yourself you won’t try to find out where she is.”
“Not from you, any way. But how can I help wanting to know where she is? And my aunt was saying just now that very likely she had gone right away to the other end of London—to Peckham or some such place.”
“You have seen Mrs. Lavender, then?”
“I have just come from there. The old heathen thinksthe whole affair rather a good joke; but perhaps that was only her way of showing her temper, for she was in a bit of rage, to be sure. And so Sheila sent me that message?”
“Yes.”
“Does she want money? Would you take her some money from me?” he said eagerly. Any bond of union between him and Sheila would be of some value.
“I don’t think she needs money; and in any case I know she wouldn’t take it from you.”
“Well, now, Ingram, you have seen her and talked with her, what do you think she intends to do? What do you think she would have me do?”
“These are very dangerous questions for me to answer,” Ingram said. “I don’t see how you can expect me to assume the responsibility.”
“I don’t ask you to do that at all. But I never found your advice to fail. And if you give me any hint as to what I should do, I will do it upon my own responsibility.”
“Then I won’t. But this I will do; I will tell you as nearly as ever I can what she said, and you can judge for yourself.”
Very cautiously, indeed, did Ingram set out on this perilous undertaking. It was no easy matter so to shut out all references to Sheila’s surroundings that no hint should be given to this anxious listener as to her whereabouts. But Ingram got through it successfully; and when he had finished Lavender sat some time in silence, merely toying with his knife, for, indeed, he had eaten nothing. “If it is her wish,” he said slowly, “that I should not go to see her, I will try to do so. But I should like to know where she is. You say she is comfortable, and she has Mairi for a companion; and that is something. In the meantime I suppose I must wait.”
“I don’t see, myself, how waiting is likely to do much good,” said Ingram. “That won’t alter your relations much.”
“It may alter her determination. A woman is sure to soften into charity and forgiveness; she can’t help it.”
“If you were to ask Sheila now, she would say she had forgiven you already. But that is a different matter from getting her to resume her former method of life with you. To tell you the truth, I should strongly advise her, if I were to give advice at all, not to attempt anything of the sort.One failure is bad enough, and has wrought sufficient trouble.”
“Then what am I to do, Ingram?”
“You must judge for yourself what is the most likely way of winning back Sheila’s confidence in you, and the most likely conditions under which she might be induced to join you again. You need not expect to get her back into that square, I should fancy;thatexperiment has rather broken down.”
“Well,” said Lavender, “I shan’t bore you any more just now about my affairs. Look after your dinner, old fellow; your starving yourself won’t help me much.”
“I don’t mean to starve myself at all,” said Ingram, steadily making his way through the abundant dishes his friend had ordered. “But I had a very good luncheon this morning with—”
“With Sheila,” Lavender said, quickly.
“Yes. Does it surprise you to find that she is in a place where she can get food? I wish the poor child had made better use of her opportunities.”
“Ingram,” he said, after a minute, “could you take some money from me, without her knowing of it, and try to get her some of the little things she likes—some delicacies, you know; they might be smuggled in, as it were, without her knowing who paid for them? There was ice-pudding, you know, with strawberries in it, that she was fond of—”
“My dear fellow, a woman in her position thinks of something else than ice-pudding in strawberries.”
“But why shouldn’t she have it all the same? I would give twenty pounds to get some little gratification of that sort conveyed to her; and if you could try, Ingram—”
“My dear fellow, she has got everything she can want; there was no ice-pudding at luncheon, but doubtless there will be at dinner.”
So Sheila was staying in a house in which ices could be prepared? Lavender’s suggestion had had no cunning intention in it, but here was an obvious piece of information. She was in no humble lodging-house, then. She was either staying with some friends—and she had no friend but Lavender’s friends—or she was staying at a hotel. He remembered that she had once dined at the Langham, Mrs. Kavanagh having persuaded her to go to meet some American visitors. Might she have gone thither?
Lavender was somewhat silent during the rest of that meal, for he was thinking of other things besides the mere question as to where Sheila might be staying. He was trying to imagine what she might have felt before she was driven to this step. He was trying to recall all manner of incidents of their daily life that he now saw might have appeared to her in a very different light from that in which he saw them. He was wondering, too, how all this could be altered, and a new life begun for them both, if that were still possible.
They had gone up stairs into the smoking-room when a card was brought to Lavender.
“Young Mosenberg is below,” he said to Ingram. “He will be a livelier companion for you than I could be. Waiter, ask this gentleman to come up.”
The handsome Jew boy came eagerly into the room, with much excitement visible on his face.
“Oh, do you know,” he said to Lavender, “I have found out where Mrs. Lavender is—yes. She is at your aunt’s house. I saw her this afternoon for one moment—” He stopped, for he saw by the vexation on Ingram’s face that he had done something wrong. “Is it a mistake?” he said. “Is it a secret?”
“It is not likely to be a secret if you have got hold of it,” said Ingram, sharply.
“I am very sorry,” said the boy. “I thought you were all anxious to know—”
“It does not matter in the least,” said Lavender quietly to both of them. “I shall not seek to disturb her. I am about to leave London.”
“Where are you going?” said the boy.
“I don’t know yet.”
That, at least, had been part of the result of his meditations; and Ingram, looking at him, wondered whether he meant to go away without trying to say one word to Sheila.
“Look here, Lavender,” he said, “you must not fancy we were trying to play any useless and impertinent trick. To-morrow or next day Sheila will leave your aunt’s house, and then I should have told you that she had been there, and how the old lady received her. It was Sheila’s own wish that the lodgings she is going to should not be known. She fancies that would save both of you a great deal of unnecessary and fruitless pain, do you see? That reallyis her only object in wishing to have any concealment about the matter.”
“But there is no need of any such concealment,” he said. “You may tell Sheila that if she likes to stay on with my aunt, so much the better; and I take it very kind of her that she went there, instead of going home or to a strange house.”
“Am I to tell her that you mean to leave London?”
“Yes.”
They went into the billiard-room. Mosenberg was not permitted to play, as he had not dined in the club, but Ingram and Lavender proceeded to have a game, the former being content to accept something like thirty in a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender’s heart was not in the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his spirits were not much downcast.
“Is Peter Hewetson still at Tarbert, do you know?” he asked of Ingram.
“I believe so. I heard of him lately. He and one or two more are there.”
“I suppose you’ll look in on them if you go North?”
“Certainly. The place is badly perfumed, but picturesque, and there is generally plenty of whisky about.”
“When do you go North?”
“I don’t know. In a week or two.”
That was all Lavender hinted of his plans. He went home early that night, and spent an hour or two in packing up some things, and in writing a long letter to his aunt, which was destined considerably to astonish that lady. Then he lay down and had a few hours’ rest.
In the early morning he went out and walked across Kensington Gardens down to the Gore. He wished to have one look at the house in which Sheila was, or perhaps he might, from a distance, see her come out on a simple errand? He knew, for example, that she had a superstitious liking for posting her letters herself; in wet weather or dry, she invariably carried her own correspondence to the nearest pillar-post. Perhaps he might have one glimpse at her face, to see how she was looking, before he left London.
There were few people about; one or two well-known lawyers and merchants were riding by to have their morningcanter in the Park; the shops were being opened. Over there was the house—with its dark front of bricks, its hard ivy, and its small windows with formal red curtains—in which Sheila was immured. That was certainly not the palace that a beautiful sea-princess should have inhabited. Where were the pine woods around it, and the lofty hills, and the wild beating of the waves on the sands below! And now it seemed strange and sad that just as he was about to go away to the North, and breathe the salt air again, and find the strong West winds blowing across the mountain peaks and through the furze, Sheila, a daughter of the sea and the rocks, should be hiding herself in obscure lodgings in the heart of the great city. Perhaps—he could not but think at this time—if he had only the chance of speaking to her for a couple of moments, he could persuade her to forgive him everything that had happened, and go away with him—away from London and all the associations that had vexed her and almost broken her heart—to the free, and open, and joyous life on the far sea coasts of the Hebrides.
Something caused him to turn his head for a second, and he knew that Sheila was coming along the pavement—not from, but towards the house. It was too late to think of getting out of her way, and yet he dared not go up to her and speak to her, as he had wished to do. She, too, had seen him. There was a quick, frightened look in her eyes, and then she came along, with her face pale and her head downcast. He did not seek to interrupt her. His eyes, too, were lowered as she passed him without taking any notice of his presence, although the sad face and the troubled lips told of the pain at her heart. He had hoped, perchance, for one word, for even a sign of recognition, but she went by him calmly, gravely and silently. She went into the house and he turned away with a weight at his heart, as though the gates of heaven had been closed against him.
The island of Borva lay warm and green and bright under a blue sky; there were no white curls of foam on Loch Roag, but only the long Atlantic swell coming in to fall on the white beach; away over there in the South the fine grays and purples of the giant Suainabhal shone in the sunlight amid the clear air; and the beautiful sea-pyots flew about the rocks, their screaming being the only sound audible in the stillness. The King of Borva was down by the shore, seated on a stool, and engaged in the idyllic operation of painting a boat which had been hauled up on the sand. It was the Maighdean-mhara. He would let no one else on the island touch Sheila’s boat. Duncan, it is true, was permitted to keep her masts and sails and seats sound and white, but as for the decorative painting of the small craft—including a little bit of amateur gilding—that was the exclusive right of Mr. Mackenzie himself. For, of course, the old man said to himself, Sheila was coming back to Borva one of these days, and she would be proud to find her own boat bright and sound. If she and her husband should resolve to spend half the year in Stornoway, would not the small craft be of use to her there? and sure he was that a prettier little vessel never entered Stornoway Bay. Mr. Mackenzie was at this moment engaged in putting a thin line of green around the white bulwarks that might have been distinguished across Loch Roag, so keen and pure was the color.
A much heavier boat, broad-beamed, red-hulled and brown-sailed, was slowly coming around the point at this moment. Mr. Mackenzie raised his eyes from his work, and knew that Duncan was coming back from Callernish. Some few minutes thereafter the boat was run into her moorings, and Duncancame along the beach with a parcel in his hand. “Here wass your letters, sir,” he said. “And there iss one of them will be from Miss Sheila, if I wass make no mistake.”
He remained there. Duncan generally knew pretty well when a letter from Sheila was among the documents he had to deliver, and on such an occasion he invariably lingered about to hear the news, which was immediately spread abroad throughout the island. The old King of Borva was not a garrulous man, but he was glad that the people about him should know that his Sheila had become a fine lady in the South, and saw fine things and went among fine people. Perhaps this notion of his was a sort of apology to them—perhaps it was an apology to himself—for his having let her go away from the island; but at all events the simple folks about Borva knew that Miss Sheila, as they still invariably called her, lived in the same town as the queen herself, and saw many lords and ladies, and was present at great festivities, as became Mr. Mackenzie’s only daughter. And naturally these rumors and stories were exaggerated by the kindly interest and affection of the people into something far beyond what Sheila’s father intended; insomuch that many an old crone would proudly and sagaciously wag her head, and say that when Miss Sheila came back to Borva strange things might be seen, and it would be a proud day for Mr. Mackenzie if he was to go down to the shore to meet Queen Victoria herself, and the princes and princesses, and many fine people, all come to stay at his house and have great rejoicings in Borva.
Thus it was that Duncan invariably lingered about when he brought a letter from Sheila; and if her father happened to forget or be pre-occupied, Duncan would humbly but firmly remind him. On this occasion Mr. Mackenzie put down his paint-brush and took the bundle of letters and newspapers Duncan had brought him. He selected that from Sheila, and threw the others on the beach beside him.
There was really no news in the letter. Sheila merely said that she could not as yet answer her father’s question as to the time she might probably visit Lewis. She hoped that he was well, and that, if she could not get up to Borva that Autumn, he would come South to London for a time, when the hard weather set in in the North. And so forth. But there was something in the tone of the letter that struck theold man as being unusual and strange. It was very formal in its phraseology. He read it twice over very carefully, and forgot altogether that Duncan was waiting. Indeed, he was going to turn away, forgetting his work and the other letters that still lay on the beach, when he observed that there was a postscript on the other side of the last page. It merely said: “Will you please address your letters now to No.—Pembroke road, South Kensington, where I may be for some time?”
That was an imprudent postscript. If she had shown the letter to any one she would have been warned of the blunder she was committing. But the child had not much cunning, and wrote and posted the letter in the belief that her father would simply do as she asked him, and suspect nothing and ask no questions.
When old Mackenzie read that postscript he could only stare at the paper before him.
“Will there be anything wrong, sir?” said the tall keeper, whose keen gray eyes had been fixed on his master’s face.
The sound of Duncan’s voice startled and recalled Mr. Mackenzie, who immediately turned, and said lightly, “Wrong? What wass you thinking would be wrong? Oh, there is nothing wrong, whatever. But Mairi, she will be greatly surprised, and she is going to write no letters until she comes back to tell you what she has seen; that is the message there will be for Scarlett—she is very well.”
Duncan picked up the other letters and newspapers.
“You may tek them to the house, Duncan,” said Mr. Mackenzie; and then he added carelessly, “Did you hear when the steamer was thinking of leaving Stornoway this night?”
“They were saying it would be seven o’clock or six, as there was a great deal of cargo to get on her.”
“Six o’clock? I am thinking, Duncan, I would like to go with her as far as Oban or Glasgow. Oh, yes, I will go with her as far as Glasgow. Be sharp, Duncan, and bring in the boat.”
The keeper stared, fearing his master had gone mad. “You wass going with her this ferry night?”
“Yes. Be sharp, Duncan,” said Mackenzie, doing his best to conceal his impatience and determination under a careless air.
“But, sir, you canna do it,” said Duncan, peevishly. “You hef no things looked out to go. And by the time we would get to Callernish, it was a ferry hard drive, there will be to get to Stornoway by six o’clock; and there is the mare, sir, she will hef lost a shoe—”
Mr. Mackenzie’s diplomacy gave way. He turned upon his keeper with a sudden fierceness and with a stamp of his foot; “—— —— you, Duncan MacDonald! is it you or me that is the master? I will go to Stornoway this ferry moment if I hef to buy twenty horses!” And there was a light under the shaggy eyebrows that warned Duncan to have done with his remonstrances.
“Oh, ferry well, sir—ferry well, sir,” he said, going off to the boat, and grumbling as he went. “If Miss Sheila was here, it would be no going away to Glesca without any things wis you, as if you wass a poor traffelin tailor that hass nothing in the world but a needle and a thimble mirover. And what will the people in Styornoway hef to say, and sa captain of sa steamboat, and Scarlett? I will hef no peace from Scarlett if you was going away like this. And as for sa sweerin, it is no use sa sweerin, for I will get sa boat ready—oh, yes, I will get sa boat ready; but I do not understand why I will get sa boat ready.”
By this time, indeed, he had got along to the larger boat, and his grumblings were inaudible to the object of them. Mr. Mackenzie went to the small landing-place and waited. When he got into the boat and sat down in the stern, taking the tiller in his right hand, he still held Sheila’s letter in the other hand, although he did not need to re-read it.
They sailed out into the blue waters of the loch and rounded the point of the island in absolute silence. Duncan meanwhile being both sulky and curious. He could not make out why his master should so suddenly leave the island, without informing any one, without even taking with him that tall and roughly-furred black hat which he sometimes wore on important occasions. Yet there was a letter in his hand, and it was a letter from Miss Sheila. Was the news about Mairi, the only news in it?
Duncan kept looking ahead to see that the boat was steering her right course for the Narrows, and was anxious, now that he had started, to make the voyage in the least possible time, but all the same his eyes would come back to Mr. Mackenzie,who sat very much absorbed, steering almost mechanically, seldom looking ahead, but instinctively guessing his course by the outlines of the shore close by. “Was there any bad news, sir, from Miss Sheila?” he was compelled to say, at last.
“Miss Sheila!” said Mr. Mackenzie, impatiently. “Is it an infant you are that you will call a married woman by such a name?”
Duncan had never been checked before for a habit which was common to the whole Island of Borva.
“There iss no bad news,” continued Mackenzie, impatiently. “Is it a story you would like to tek back to the people of Borvapost?”
“It wass no thought of such a thing wass come into my head, sir,” said Duncan. “There iss no one in sa island would like to carry bad news about Miss Sheila; and there iss no one in sa island would like to hear it—not any one whatever—and I can answer for that.”
“Then hold your tongue about it. There is no bad news from Sheila,” said Mackenzie; and Duncan relapsed into silence, not very well content.
By dint of very hard driving, indeed, Mr. Mackenzie just caught the boat as she was leaving Stornoway harbor, the hurry he was in fortunately saving him from the curiosity and inquiries of the people he knew on the pier. As for the frank and good-natured captain, he did not show that excessive interest in Mr. Mackenzie’s affairs that Duncan had feared; but when the steamer was well away from the coast, and bearing down on her route to Skye, he came and had a chat with the King of Borva about the condition of affairs on the West of the island; and he was good enough to ask, too, about the young lady that had married the English gentleman. Mr. Mackenzie said briefly that she was very well, and returned to the subject of the fishing.
It was on a wet and dreary morning that Mr. Mackenzie arrived in London; and as he was slowly driven through the long and dismal thoroughfares with their gray and melancholy houses, their passers-by under umbrellas, and their smoke and drizzle and dirt, he could not help saying to himself: “My poor Sheila!” It was not a pleasant place surely to live in always, although it might be all very well for a visit. Indeed, the cheerless day added to the gloomy forebodings inhis mind, and it needed all his resolve and his pride in his own diplomacy to carry out his plan of approaching Sheila.
When he got down to Pembroke Road he stopped the cab at the corner and paid the man. Then he walked along the thoroughfare, having a look at the houses. At length he came to the number mentioned in Sheila’s letter, and he found that there was a brass plate on the door bearing an unfamiliar name. His suspicions were confirmed.
He went up the steps and knocked; a small girl answered the summons. “Is Mrs. Lavender living here?” he said.
She looked for a moment with some surprise at the short, thick-set man, with his sailor costume, his peaked cap, and his voluminous gray beard and shaggy eyebrows; and then she said that she would ask, and what was his name? But Mr. Mackenzie was too sharp not to know what that meant.
“I am her father. It will do ferry well if you will show me the room.”
And he stepped inside. The small girl obediently shut the door, and then led the way up-stairs. The next minute Mr. Mackenzie had entered the room, and there before him was Sheila, bending over Mairi and teaching her how to do some fancy-work.
The girl looked up on hearing some one enter, and then, when she suddenly saw her father there, she uttered a slight cry of alarm and shrunk back. If he had been less intent on his own plans he would have been amazed and pained by this action on the part of his daughter, who used to run to him, on great occasions and small, whenever she saw him; but the girl had for the last few days been so habitually schooling herself into the notion that she was keeping a secret from him—she had become so deeply conscious of the concealment intended in that brief letter—that she instinctively shrank from him when he suddenly appeared. It was but for a moment.
Mr. Mackenzie came forward with a fine assumption of carelessness and shook hands with Sheila and with Mairi and said, “How do you do, Mairi! And are you ferry well, Sheila? And you will not expect me this morning; but when a man will not pay you what he wass owing, it wass no good letting it go on in that way; and I hef come to London—”
He shook the rain-drops from his cap, and was a little embarrassed.
“Yes, I hef come to London to have the account settled up; for it wass no good letting him go on for effer and effer. Ay, and how are you, Sheila?”
He looked about the room; he would not look at her. She stood there unable to speak, and with her face grown wild and pale.
“Ah, it wass raining hard all the last night, and there wass a good deal of water came into the carriage; and it is a ferry hard bed you will make of a third-class carriage. Ay, it wass so. And this a new house you will hef, Sheila?”
She had been coming nearer to him, with her face down and the speechless lips trembling. And then suddenly, with a strange sob, she threw herself into his arms and hid her head, and burst into a wild fit of crying.
“Sheila,” he said, “what ails you? What iss all the matter?”
Mairi had covertly got out of the room.
“Oh, papa, I have left him,” the girl cried.
“Ay,” said her father, quite cheerfully—“oh, ay, I thought there was some little thing wrong when your letter wass come to us the other day. But it is no use making a great deal of trouble about it, Sheila, for it is easy to have all those things put right again—oh, yes, ferry easy. And you have left your own home, Sheila? And where is Mr. Lavender?”
“Oh, papa,” she cried, “you must not try to see him. You must promise not to go to see him. I should have told you everything when I wrote, but I thought you would come up and blame it all on him, and I think it is I who am to blame.”
“But I do not want to blame any one,” said her father. “You must not make so much of these things, Sheila. It is a pity—yes, it is a ferry great pity—your husband and you will hef a quarrel; but it iss no uncommon thing for these troubles to happen, and I am coming to you this morning, not to make any more trouble, but to see if it cannot be put right again. And I will not blame anyone; but if I wass to see Mr. Lavender—”
A bitter anger had filled his heart from the moment he hadlearned how matters stood, and yet he was talking in such a bland, matter-of-fact, almost cheerful fashion that his own daughter was imposed upon, and began to grow comforted. The mere fact that her father now knew all her troubles, and was not disposed to take a very gloomy view of them, was of itself a great relief to her. And she was greatly pleased, too, to hear her father speak in the same light and even friendly fashion of her husband. She had dreaded the possible results of her writing home and relating what had occurred. She knew the powerful passion of which this lonely old man was capable, and if he had come suddenly down South with a wild desire to revenge the wrongs of his daughter, what might not have happened?
Sheila sat down, and with averted eyes told her father the whole story, ingenuously making all possible excuses for her husband, and intimating strongly that the more she looked over the history of the past time the more she was convinced that she was herself to blame. It was but natural that Mr. Lavender should like to live in the manner to which he had been accustomed. She had tried to live that way, too, and the failure to do so was surely her fault. He had been very kind to her. He was always buying her new dresses, jewelry, and what not, and was always pleased to take her to be amused anywhere. All this she said, and a great deal more; and although Mr. Mackenzie did not believe the half of it, he did not say so.
“Ay, ay, Sheila,” he said, cheerfully; “but if everything was right like that, what for will you be here?”
“But everything was not right, papa,” the girl said, still with her eyes cast down. “I could not live any longer like that, and I had to come away. That is my fault, and I could not help it. And there was a misunderstanding between us about Mairi’s visit—for I had said nothing about it—and he was surprised—and he had some friends coming to see us that day—”
“Oh, well, there iss no great harm done—none at all,” said her father, lightly, and, perhaps, beginning to think that after all something was to be said for Lavender’s side of the question. “And you will not suppose, Sheila, that I am coming to make any trouble by quarreling with any one. There are some men—oh, yes, there are ferry many—that would have no judgment at such a time, and they would think onlyabout their daughter, and hef no regard for any one else, and they would only make effery one angrier than before. But you will tell me, Sheila, where Mr. Lavender is.”
“I do not know,” she said. “And I am anxious, papa, you should not go to see him. I have asked you to promise that to please me.”
He hesitated. There were not many things he could refuse his daughter, but he was not sure he ought to yield to her in this. For were not these two a couple of foolish young things, who wanted an experienced and cool and shrewd person to come with a little dexterous management and arrange their affairs for them?
“I do not think I have half explained the difference between us,” said Sheila, in the same low voice. “It is no passing quarrel, to be mended up and forgotten; it is nothing like that. You must leave it alone, papa.”
“That is foolishness, Sheila,” said the old man, with a little impatience. “You are making big things out of ferry little, and you will only bring trouble to yourself. How do you know but that he wishes to hef all this misunderstanding removed, and hef you go back to him?”
“I know that he wishes that,” she said, calmly.
“And you speak as if you wass in great trouble here, and yet you will not go back?” he said, in great surprise.
“Yes, that is so,” she said. “There is no use in my going back to the same sort of life; it was not happiness for either of us, and to me it was misery. If I am to blame for it, that is only a misfortune.”
“But if you will not go back to him, Sheila,” her father said, “at least you will go back with me to Borva.”
“I cannot do that either,” said the girl, with the same quiet yet decisive manner.
Mr. Mackenzie rose with an impatient gesture and walked to the window. He did not know what to say. He was very well aware that when Sheila had resolved upon anything, she had thought it well over beforehand, and was not likely to change her mind. And yet the notion of his daughter living in lodgings in a strange town—her only companion a young girl who had never been in the place before—was vexatiously absurd.
“Sheila,” he said, “You will come to a better understanding about that. I suppose you wass afraid the people wouldwonder at your coming back alone. But they will know nothing about it. Mairi she is a very good lass; she will do anything you will ask of her; you hef no need to think she will carry stories. And every one wass thinking you will be coming to the Lewis this year, and it is ferry glad they will be to see you; and if the house at Borvapost hass not enough amusement for you after you hef been in a big town like this, you will live in Stornoway with some of our friends there, and you will come over to Borva when you please.”
“If I went up to the Lewis,” said Sheila, “do you think I could live anywhere but in Borva? It is not any amusements I will be thinking about. But I cannot go back to the Lewis alone.”
Her father saw how the pride of the girl had driven her to this decision, and saw, too, how useless it was for him to reason with her just at the present moment. Still, there was plenty of occasion here for the use of a little diplomacy merely to smooth the way for the reconciliation of husband and wife, and Mr. Mackenzie concluded in his own mind that it was far from injudicious to allow Sheila to convince herself that she bore part of the blame of this separation. For example, he now proposed that the discussion of the whole question be postponed for the present, and that Sheila should take him about London and show him all that she had learned; and he suggested that they should then and there get a hansom cab and drive to some exhibition or other.
“A hansom, papa?” said Sheila. “Mairi must go with us, you know.”
This was precisely what he had angled for, and he said, with a show of impatience, “Mairi! How can we take about Mairi to every place? Mairi is a ferry good lass—oh, yes—but she is a servant-lass.”
The words nearly stuck in his throat; and indeed had any other addressed such a phrase to one of his kith and kin there would have been an explosion of rage; but now he was determined to show to Sheila that her husband had some cause for objecting to this girl sitting down with his friends.
But neither husband nor father could make Sheila forswear allegiance to what her own heart told her was just and honorable and generous; and indeed her father was not displeased to see her turn around on himself with just a touchof indignation in her voice. “Mairi is my guest, papa,” she said. “It is not like you to think of leaving her at home.”
“Oh, it wass of no consequence,” said old Mackenzie, carelessly; indeed he was not sorry to have met with this rebuff. “Mairi is a ferry good girl—oh, yes—but there are many who would not forget she is a servant-lass, and would not like to be always taking her with them. And you hef lived a long time in London?”
“I have not lived long enough in London to make me forget my friends, or insult them,” Sheila said, with proud lips, and yet turning to the window to hide her face.
“My lass, I did not mean any harm whatever,” her father said, gently. “I wass saying nothing against Mairi. Go away and bring her into the room, Sheila, and we will see what we can do now, and if there is a theater we can go to this evening. And I must go out, too, to buy some things; for you are a ferry fine lady now, Sheila, and I was coming away in such a hurry.”
“Where is your luggage, papa?” she said, suddenly.
“Oh, luggage!” said Mackenzie, looking around in great embarrassment. “It was luggage you said, Sheila? Ay, well, it wass a hurry I wass in when I came away—for this man will have to pay me at once whatever—and there wass no time for any luggage—oh, no, there wass no time, because Duncan he wass late with the boat, and the mare she had a shoe to put on—and—and—oh, no, there was no time for any luggage.”
“But what was Scarlett about to let you come away like that?” said Sheila.
“Scarlett? Well, Scarlett did not know; it was all in such a hurry. Now go and bring in Mairi, Sheila, and we will speak about the theatre.”
But there was to be no theatre for any of them that evening. Sheila was just about to leave the room to summon Mairi, when the small girl who had let Mackenzie into the house appeared and said, “Please, m’m, there is a young woman below who wishes to see you. She has a message to you from Mrs. Paterson.”
“Mrs. Paterson?” Sheila said, wondering how Mrs. Lavender’s hench-woman should have been entrusted with any such commission. “Will you please ask her to come up?”
The girl came up-stairs, looking rather frightened and much out of breath.
“Please, m’m, Mrs. Paterson has sent me to tell you, and would you please come as soon as it is convenient? Mrs. Lavender has died. It was quite sudden—only she recovered a little after the fit, and then sank; the doctor is there now, but he wasn’t in time, it was all so sudden. Will you please come around, m’m?”
“Yes—I shall be there directly,” said Sheila, too bewildered and stunned to think of the possibility of meeting her husband there.
The girl left, and Sheila still stood in the middle of the room apparently stupefied. That old woman had got into such a habit of talking about her approaching death that Sheila had ceased to believe her, and had grown to fancy that these morbid speculations were indulged in chiefly for the sake of shocking bystanders. But a dead man or a dead woman is suddenly invested with a great solemnity; and Sheila, with a pang of remorse, thought of the fashion in which she had suspected this old woman of a godless hypocrisy. She felt, too, that she had unjustly disliked Mrs. Lavender—that she had feared to go near her, and blamed her unfairly for many things that had happened. In her own way that old woman in Kensington Gore had been kind to her; perhaps the girl was a little ashamed of herself at this moment that she did not cry.
Her father went out with her, and up to the house with the dusty ivy and the red curtains. How strangely like was the aspect of the house inside to the very picture that Mrs. Lavender had herself drawn of her death! Sheila could remember all the ghastly details that the old woman seemed to have a malicious delight in describing; and here they were—the shutters drawn down, the servants walking about on tip-toe, the strange silence in one particular room. The little shriveled old body lay quite still and calm now; and yet as Sheila went to the bedside, she could hardly believe that within that forehead there was not some consciousness of the scene around. Lying almost in the same position, the old woman, with a sardonic smile on her face, had spoken of the time when she should be speechless, sightless and deaf, while Paterson would go about stealthily as if she was afraid the corpse would hear. Was it possible to believe that the dead body was not conscious at this moment that Paterson was really going about in that fashion—that the blinds were down,friends standing some little distance from the bed, a couple of doctors talking to each other in the passage outside?
They went into another room, and then Sheila, with a sudden shiver, remembered that soon her husband would be coming, and might meet her and her father there.
“You have sent for Mr. Lavender?” she said calmly to Mrs. Paterson.
“No, ma’am,” Paterson said with more than her ordinary gravity and formality; “I did not know where to send for him. He left London some days ago. Perhaps you would read the letter, ma’am?”
She offered Sheila an open letter. The girl saw that it was in her husband’s handwriting, but she shrank from it as though she were violating the secrets of the grave.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I cannot do that.”
“Mrs. Lavender, ma’am, meant you to read it, after she had had her will altered. She told me so. It is a very sad thing, ma’am, that she did not live to carry out her intentions; for she has been inquiring, ma’am, these last few days, as to how she could leave everything to you, ma’am, which she intended; and now the other will—”
“Oh, don’t talk about that!” said Sheila. It seemed to her that the dead body in the other room would be laughing hideously, if only it could, at this fulfillment of all the sardonic prophecies that Mrs. Lavender used to make.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Paterson said, in the same formal way, as if she was a machine set to work in a particular direction. “I only mentioned the will to explain why Mrs. Lavender wished you to read this letter.”
“Read the letter, Sheila,” said her father.
The girl took it and carried it to the window. While she was there, old Mackenzie, who had fewer scruples about such matters, and who had the curiosity natural to a man of the world, said to Mrs. Paterson—not loud enough for Sheila to overhear—“I suppose, then, the poor old lady has left her property to her nephew?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, somewhat sadly, for she fancied she was the bearer of bad news. “She had a will drawn out only a short time ago, and nearly everything is left to Mr. Ingram.”
“To Mr. Ingram?”
“Yes,” said the woman, amazed to see that Mackenzie’s face, so far from evincing displeasure, seemed to be as delighted as it was surprised.
“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, “I was one of the witnesses. But Mrs. Lavender changed her mind, and was very anxious that everything should go to your daughter, if it could be done; and Mr. Appleyard, sir, was to come here to-morrow forenoon.”
“And has Mr. Lavender got no money whatever?” said Sheila’s father, with an air that convinced Mrs. Paterson that he was a revengeful man, and was glad his son-in-law should be so severely punished.
“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, careful not to go beyond her own sphere.
Sheila came back from the window. She had taken a long time to read and ponder over that letter, though it was not a lengthy one. This was what Frank Lavender had written to his aunt: