A Princess of Thule
“Oh, ay, fine. Many’s the time I hiv been in to Borvapost.”
“But,” said Lavender, “do you know the loch itself? Do you know the bay on which Mackenzie’s house stands?”
“Weel, I’m no’ sae sure aboot that, sir. But if ye want to gang there, we can pick up some bit body at Borvapost that will tak’ us around.”
“Well,” Lavender said, “I think I can tell you how to go. I know the channel is quite simple – there are no rocks about – and once you are round the point you will see your anchorage.”
“It’s twa or three years since I was there, sir,” Pate remarked, as he put the glass back on the table. “I mind there was a daft auld man there that played the pipes.”
“That was old John the Piper,” Lavender said. “Don’t you remember Mr. Mackenzie, whom they call the King of Borva?”
“Weel, sir, I never saw him, but I was aware he was in the place. I have never been up here afore wi’ a party of gentlemen, and he wasna coming down to see the like o’ us.”
With what a strange feeling Lavender beheld, the following afternoon, the opening to the great loch that he knew so well! He recognized the various rocky promontories, the Gaelic names of which Sheila had translated for him. Down there in the South were the great heights of Suainabhal and Cracabahl and Mealasabhal. Right in front was the sweep of Borvapost Bay, and its huts and its small garden patches; and up beyond it was the hill on which Sheila used to sit in the evening to watch the sun go down behind the Atlantic. It was like entering again a world with which he had once been familiar, and in which he had left behind a peaceful happiness he had sought in vain elsewhere. Somehow, as the yacht dipped to the waves and slowly made her way into the loch, it seemed to him that he was coming home – that he was returning to the old and quiet joys he had experienced there – that all the past time that had darkened his life was now to be removed. But when, at last, he saw Mackenzie’s house high up there over the tiny bay, a strange thrill of excitement passed through him, and that was followed by a cold feeling of despair, which he did not seek to remove.
He stood on the companion, his head only being visible, and directed Pate until the Phœbe had arrived at her moorings, and then he went below. He had looked wistfully for a time up to the square, dark house, with its scarlet copings, in the vague hope of seeing some figure he knew; but now sick at heart, and fearing that Mackenzie might make him out with a glass, he sat down in the state-room, alone and silent and miserable.
He was startled by the sound of oars, and got up and listened. Mosenberg came down and said, “Mr. Mackenzie has sent a tall, thin man – do you know him? – to see who we are, and whether we will go up to his house.”
“What did Eyre say?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he is going.”
Then Johnny himself came below. He was a sensitive young fellow, and at this moment he was very confused, excited and nervous. “Lavender,” he said, stammering somewhat, “I am going up now to Mackenzie’s house. You know whom I shall see; shall I take any message – if I see a chance – if your name is mentioned – a hint, you know – ”
“Tell her,” Lavender said, with a sudden pallor of determination in his face; but he stopped, and said abruptly, “Never mind, Johnny; don’t say anything about me.”
“Not to-night, anyway,” Johnny said to himself as he drew on his best jacket, with its shining brass buttons, and went up the companion to see if the small boat was ready.
Johnny had had a good deal of knocking about the Western Highlands, and was familiar with the frank and ready hospitality which the local lairds – more particularly in the remote islands; where a stranger brought recent newspapers and a breath of the outer world with him – granted to all comers who bore with them the credentials of owning a yacht. But never before had he gone up to a strange house with such perturbation of spirit. He had been so anxious, too, that he had left no time for preparation. When he started up the hill he could see, in the gathering dusk, that the tall keeper had just entered the house, and when he arrived there he found absolutely nobody about the place.
In ordinary circumstances he would simply have walked in and called some one from the kitchen. But he now felt himself somewhat of a spy, and was not a little afraid of meeting the handsome Mrs. Lavender, of whom he had heard so much. There was no light in the passage, but there was a bright red gloom in one of the windows, and almost inadvertently he glanced in there. What was this strange picture he saw? The red flame of the fire showed him the grand, figures on the walls of Sheila’s dining-room, and lit up the white table-cover and the crystal in the middle of the apartment. A beautiful young girl, clad in a tight blue dress, had just arisen from beside the fire to light two candles that were on the table; and then she went back to her seat and took up her sewing, but not to sew, for Johnny saw her gently kneel down beside a little bassinet that was a mass of wonderful pink and white, and he supposed the door in the passage was open, for he could hear a low voice humming some lullaby-song sung by the young mother to her child. He went back a step bewildered by what he had seen. Could he fly down to the shore, and bring Lavender up to look at this picture through the window, and beg of him to go in and throw himself on her forgiveness and mercy? He had not time to think twice. At this moment Mairi appeared in the dusky passage, looking a little scared, although she did not drop the plates she carried: “Oh, sir, and are you the gentleman that has come in the yacht? And Mr. Mackenzie, he is upstairs just now, but he will be down ferry soon; and will you come in and speak to Miss Sheila?”
“Miss Sheila!” he repeated to himself with amazement; and the next moment he found himself before this beautiful young girl, apologizing to her, stammering, and wishing that he had never undertaken such a task, while he knew that all the time she was calmly regarding him with her large, calm and gentle eyes, and that there was no trace of embarrassment in her manner.
“Will you take a seat by the fire until papa comes down?” she said. “We are very glad to have any one come to see us; we do not have many visitors in the winter.”
“But I am afraid,” he stammered, “I am putting you to trouble;” and he glanced at the swinging pink and white couch.
“Oh, no,” Sheila said with a smile; “I was just about to send my little boy to bed.”
She lifted the sleeping child and rolled it in some enormous covering of white and silken-haired fur, and gave the small bundle to Mairi to carry to Scarlett.
“Stop a bit!” Johnny called out to Mairi; and the girl started and looked around, whereupon he said to Sheila, with much blushing, “Isn’t there a superstition about an infant waking to find silver in its hands? I am sure you wouldn’t mind my – ”
“He cannot hold anything yet,” Sheila said, with a smile.
“Then, Mairi, you must put this below his pillow. Is not that the same thing for luck?” he said, addressing the young Highland girl as if he had known her all his life; and Mairi went away proud and pleased to have this precious bundle to carry, and talking to it with a thousand soft and endearing phrases in her native tongue.
Mackenzie came in and found the two talking together. “How do you do, sir?” he said, with a grave courtesy. “You are ferry welcome to the island, and if there is anything you want for the boat you will hef it from us. She is a little thing to hef come so far.”
“She’s not very big,” Johnny said, “but she’s a thorough good sailer; and then we watch our time, you know. But I don’t think we shall go farther North than Lewis.”
“Hef you no friends on board with you?” Mackenzie asked.
“Oh, yes,” Johnny answered, “two. But we did not wish to invade your house in a body. To-morrow – ”
“To-morrow!” said Mackenzie, impatiently; “no, but to-night! Duncan, come here! Duncan, go down to the boat that has just come in and tell the gentlemen – ”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Johnny cried, “but my two friends are regularly done up – tired; they were just going to turn in when I left the yacht. To-morrow, now, you will see them.”
“Oh, ferry well, ferry well,” said Mackenzie, who had hoped to have a big dinner party for Sheila’s amusement. “In any way, you will stop and hef some dinner? It is just ready – oh, yes – and it is not a ferry fine dinner, but it will be different from your cabin for you to sit ashore.”
“Well, if you will excuse me – ” Johnny was about to say, for he was so full of the news he had to tell that he would have sacrificed twenty dinners to get off at this moment. But Mr. Mackenzie would take no denial. An additional cover was laid, for the stranger, and Johnny sat down to stare at Sheila in a furtive way, and to talk to her father about everything that was happening in the great world.
“And what now is this,” said Mackenzie, with a lofty and careless air – “what is this I see in the papers about pictures painted by a gentleman called Lavender? I hef a great interest in these exhibitions. Perhaps you hef seen the pictures?”
Johnny blushed very red, but he hid his face over his plate, and presently he answered, without daring to look at Sheila: “I should think I have seen them! Why, if you care for coast landscapes, I can tell you you never saw such thorough good work in all your life! Why, everybody’s talking of them. You never heard of a man making such a name for himself in so short a time.”
He ventured to look up. There was a strange, proud light in the girl’s face, and the effect of it on this bearer of good tidings was to make him launch into such praises of these pictures as considerably astonished old Mackenzie. As for Sheila, she was proud and happy, but not surprised. She had known it all along. She had waited for it patiently, and it had come at last, although she was not to share in his triumph.
“I know some people who know him,” said Johnny, who had taken two or three glasses of Mackenzie’s sherry, and felt bold; “and what a shame it is he should go away from all his friends, and almost cease to have any communication with them! And then, of all the places in the world to spend the Winter in, Jura is about the – ”
“Jura!” said Sheila, quickly, and he fancied that her face paled somewhat.
“I believe so,” he said; “somewhere on the Western coast, you know, over the Sound of Islay.”
Sheila was obviously very much agitated, but her father said, in a careless way, “Oh, yes, Jura is not a ferry good place in the Winter. And the West side, you said? Ay, there are not many houses on the West side; it is not a ferry good place to live in. But it will be ferry cheap, whatever.”
“I don’t think that is the reason of his living there,” said Johnny, with a laugh.
“But,” Mackenzie urged, rather anxiously, “you wass not saying he would get much for these pictures? Oh, no, who will give much money for pictures of rocks and sea-weed? Oh, no!”
“Oh, won’t they, though?” Johnny cried. “They give a deal more for that sort of picture now than for the old-fashioned cottage-scenes, with a young lady dressed in a drugget petticoat and a pink jacket, sitting peeling potatoes. Don’t you make any mistake about that. The public are beginning to learn what real good work is, and, by Jove! don’t they pay for it, too? Lavender got eight hundred pounds for the smaller of the two pictures I told you about.”
Johnny Eyre was beginning to forget that the knowledge he was showing of Frank Lavender’s affairs was suspiciously minute.
“Oh, no, sir,” Mackenzie said, with a frown. “It is all nonsense the stories that you hear. I hef had great experience of these exhibitions. I hef been to London several times, and every time I wass in the exhibitions.”
“But I should know something of it, too, for I am an artist myself.”
“And do you get eight hundred pounds for a small picture?” Mackenzie asked severely.
“Well, no,” said Johnny, with a laugh. “But then I am a duffer.”
After dinner Sheila left the room: Johnny fancied he knew where she was going. He pulled in a chair to the fire, lit his pipe, and said he would have but one glass of toddy, which Mackenzie proceeded to make for him. And then he said to the old King of Borva, “I beg your pardon, sir, but will you allow me to suggest that that young girl who was in here before dinner should not call your daughter Miss Sheila before strangers!”
“Oh, it is very foolish,” said Mackenzie, “but it is an old habit, and they will not stop it. And Duncan, he is worse than any one.”
“Duncan, I suppose, is the tall fellow who waited at dinner?”
“Oh, ay, that is Duncan.”
Johnny’s ingenious bit of stratagem had failed. He wanted to have old Mackenzie call his daughter Mrs. Lavender, so that he might have had occasion to open the question and plead for his friend. But the old man resolutely ignored the relationship between Lavender and his daughter so far as this stranger was concerned, and so Johnny had to go away partly disappointed.
But another opportunity might occur, and in the meantime was not he carrying rare news down to the Phœbe? He had lingered too long in the house, but now he made up for lost time, and once or twice nearly missed his footing in running down the steep path. He had to find the small boat for himself, and go out on the slippery stones and seaweed to get into her. Then he pulled away from the shore, his oars striking white fire into the dark water, the water gurgling at the bow. Then he got into the shadow of the black hull of the yacht, and Pate was there to lower the little gangway.
When Johnny stepped on deck, he paused, in considerable doubt as to what he should do. He wished to have a word with Lavender alone; how could he go down with such a message as he had to deliver to a couple of fellows probably smoking and playing chess?
“Pate,” he said, “tell Mr. Lavender I want him to come on deck for a minute.”
“He’s by himsel’, sir,” Pate said. “He’s been sitting by himsel’ for the last hour. The young gentleman’s lain doon.”
Johnny went down into the little cabin. Lavender, who had neither book nor cigar, nor any other sign of occupation near him, seemed in his painful anxiety almost incapable of asking the question that rose to his lips.
“Have you seen her, Johnny?” he said, at length, with his face looking strangely careworn.
Johnny was an impressionable young fellow. There were tears running freely down his cheeks as he said, “Yes, I have, Lavender, and she was rocking a child in a cradle.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
REDINTEGRATIO AMORIS
THAT same 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 her face 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, you must not go,” she cried. “You would speak harshly – and he is very proud – and we should never see each other 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, I could 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.”
