PART II. CHAPTER IV. ROMANCE-TIME.
PART III. CHAPTER VI. AT BARVAS BRIDGE.
PART IV. CHAPTER VIII. "O TERQUE QUATERQUE BEATE!"
PART V. CHAPTER X. FAIRY-LAND.
PART VI. CHAPTER XII. TRANSFORMATION.
PART VII. CHAPTER XIV. DEEPER AND DEEPER.
PART VIII. CHAPTER XVI. EXCHANGES.
PART IX. CHAPTER XIX. A NEW DAY BREAKS.
PART X. CHAPTER XXII. "LIKE HADRIANUS AND AUGUSTUS."
PART XI. CHAPTER XXV. THE VOYAGE OF THE PHOEBE.
FOOTNOTES:
| Some typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. |
| CONTENTS. |
Part I.
Chapter I., II., III. | Part II.
IV., V. |
Part III.
VI., VII. | Part IV.
VIII., IX. |
Part V.
X., XI. | Part VI.
XII., XIII. |
Part VII.
XIV., XV. | Part VIII.
XVI., XVII., XVIII. |
Part IX.
XIX., XX., XXI. | Part X.
XXII., XXIII., XXIV. |
Part XI.
XXV., XXVI., XXVII. |
| (etext transcriber's note) |
A PRINCESS OF THULE.
BY
W I L L I A M B L A C K,
AUTHOR OF
“A DAUGHTER OF HETH,” “MADCAP VIOLET,” “STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON,” Etc.
NEW YORK:
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY,
14 & 16 Vesey Street.
A PRINCESS OF THULE.
———
By WILLIAM BLACK.
———
CHAPTER I.
“LOCHABER NO MORE.”
ON a small headland of the distant island of Lewis, an old man stood looking out on a desolate waste of rain-beaten sea. It was a wild and wet day. From out of the lowering Southwest fierce gusts of wind were driving up volumes and flying rags of clouds, and sweeping onward at the same time the gathering waves that fell hissing and thundering on the shore. Far as the eye could reach, the sea and the air and the sky seemed to be one indistinguishable mass of whirling and hurrying vapor, as if beyond this point there were no more land, but only wind and water, and the confused and awful voice of their strife.
The short, thick-set, powerfully-built man who stood on this solitary point paid little attention to the rain that ran off the peak of his sailor’s cap, or to the gusts of wind that blew about his bushy gray beard. He was still following, with an eye accustomed to pick out objects far at sea, one speck of purple that was now fading into the gray mist of the rain; and the longer he looked the less it became, until the mingled sea and sky showed only the smoke that the great steamer left in its wake. As he stood there, motionless and regardless of everything around him, did he cling to the fancy that he could still trace out the path of the vanished ship? A little while before it had passed almost close to him. He had watched it steam out of Stornoway Harbor. As the sound of the engines came nearer and the big boat went by, so that he could have almost called to it, there was no sign of emotion on the hard and stern face, except, perhaps, that the lips were held firm and a sort of frown appeared over the eyes. He saw a tiny white handkerchief being waved to him from the deck of the vessel; and he said, almost as though he were addressing some one there:
“My good little girl!”
But in the midst of that roaring of the sea and the wind how could any such message be delivered? And already the steamer was away from the land, standing out to the lonely plain of waters, and the sound of the engines had ceased, and the figures on the deck had grown faint and visionary. But still there was that one speck of white visible; and the man knew that a pair of eyes that had many a time looked into his own—as if with a faith that such intercommunion could never be broken—were now trying, through overflowing and blinding tears, to send him a last look of farewell.
The gray mists of the rain gathered within their folds the big vessel and all the beating hearts it contained, and the fluttering of that little token disappeared with it. All that remained was the sea, whitened by the rushing of the wind and the thunder of waves on the beach. The man, who had been gazing so long down into the Southeast, turned his face landward and set out to walk over a tract of wet grass and sand toward a road that ran near by. There was a large wagonette of varnished oak and a pair of small powerful horses waiting for him there; and having dismissed the boy who had been in charge, he took the reins and got up. But even yet the fascination of the sea and of that sad farewell was upon him, and he turned once more, as if, now that sight could yield him no further tidings, he would send her one more word of good-by. “My poor little Sheila!” That was all he said; and then he turned to the horses and sent them on, with his head down to escape the rain, and a look on his face like that of a dead man.
As he drove through the town of Stornoway the children playing within the shelter of the cottage doors called to each other in a whisper and said: “That is the King of Borva.”
But the elderly people said to each other, with a shake of the head, “It iss a bad day, this day, for Mr. Mackenzie, that he will be going home to an empty house. And it will be a ferry bad thing for the poor folk of Borva, and they will know a great difference, now that Miss Sheila iss gone away, and there is nobody—not anybody at all—left in the island to tek the side of the poor folk.”
He looked neither to the right nor to the left, though he was known to many of the people, as he drove away from the town into the heart of the lonely and desolate land. The wind had so far died down, and the rain had considerably lessened, but the gloom of the sky was deepened by the drawing on of the afternoon, and lay heavily over the dreary wastes of moor and hill. What a wild and dismal country was this which lay before and all around him, now that the last traces of human occupation were passed! There was not a cottage, not a stone wall, not a fence, to break the monotony of the long undulations of moorland, which in the distance rose into a series of hills that were black under the darkened sky. Down from those mountains ages ago, glaciers had slowly crept to eat out hollows in the plains below; and now in those hollows were lonely lakes, with not a tree to break the line of their melancholy shores. Everywhere around were the traces of this glacier drift—great gray boulders of gneiss fixed fast into the black peat moss, or set amid the browns and greens of the heather. The only sound to be heard in this wilderness of rock and morass was the rushing of various streams, rain-swollen and turbid, that plunged down their narrow channels to the sea.
The rain now ceased altogether, but the mountains in the far south had grown still darker, and to the fishermen passing by the coast it must have seemed as though the black peaks were holding converse with the lowering clouds, and that the silent moorland beneath was waiting for the first roll of the thunder. The man who was driving along this lonely route sometimes cast a glance down toward this threatening of a storm, but he paid little heed to it. The reins lay loose on the backs of the horses, and at their own pace they followed, hour after hour, the rising and falling road that led through the moorland and past the gloomy lakes. He may have recalled mechanically the names of those stretches of water—The Lake of the Sheiling, the Lake of the Oars, the Lake of the Fine Sand, and so forth—to measure the distance he had traversed; but he seemed to pay little attention to the objects around him, and it was with a glance of something like surprise, that he suddenly found himself overlooking that great sea-loch on the western side of the island in which was his home.
He drove down the hill to the solitary little inn of Gara-na-hina. At the door, muffled up in a warm woolen plaid, stood a young girl, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and diffident in look.
“Mr. Mackenzie,” she said, with that peculiar and pleasant intonation that marks the speech of the Hebridean who has been taught English in the schools, “it was Miss Sheila wrote to me to Suainabost, and she said I might come down from Suainabost and see if I can be of any help to you in the house.”
The girl was crying, although the blue eyes looked bravely through the tears as if to disprove the fact.
“Ay, my good lass,” he said, putting his hand gently on her head, “and it wass Sheila wrote to you?”
“Yes, sir, and I hef come down from Suainabost.”
“It is a lonely house you will be going to,” he said, absently.
“But Miss Sheila said I wass—I wass to—” But here the young girl failed in her effort to explain that Miss Sheila had asked her to go down to make the house less lonely. The elderly man in the wagonette seemed scarcely to notice that she was crying; he bade her come up beside him; and when he had got her into the wagonette he left some message with the innkeeper, who had come to the door, and drove off again.
They drove along the high land that overlooks a portion of Loch Roag, with its wonderful network of islands and straits, and then they stopped on the lofty plateau of Callernish, where there was a man waiting to take the wagonette and horses.
“And you would be seeing Miss Sheila away, sir?” said the man; “and it was Duncan Macdonald will say that she will not come back no more to Borva.”
The old man with the big gray beard only frowned and passed on. He and the girl made their way down the side of the rocky hill to the shore, and here there was an open boat awaiting them. When they approached, a man considerably over six feet in height, keen-faced, gray-eyed, straight-limbed and sinewy in frame, jumped into the big and rough boat and began to get ready for their departure. There was just enough wind to catch the brown mainsail, and the King of Borva took the tiller, his henchman sitting down by the mast. And no sooner had they left the shore and stood out towards one of the channels of this arm of the sea, than the tall, spare keeper began to talk of that which made his master’s eye grow dark. “Ah, well,” he said, in the plaintive drawling of his race, “and it iss an empty house you will be going to, Mr. Mackenzie; and it iss a bad thing for us all that Miss Sheila hass gone away; and it iss many’s ta time she will hef been wiss me in this very boat—”
“—— —— —— —— you, Duncan Macdonald!” cried Mackenzie, in an access of fury, “what will you talk of like that? It iss every man, woman and child on the island will talk of nothing but Sheila! I will drive my foot through the bottom of the boat if you do not hold your peace!”
The tall gillie patiently waited until his master had exhausted his passion, and then he said, as if nothing had occurred: “And it will not do much good, Mr. Mackenzie, to tek ta name o’ God in vain; and there will be much more of trinking in ta island, and it will be a great difference mirover. And she will be so far away that no one will see her no more—far away beyond ta sound of Sleat, and far away beyond Oban, as I hef heard people say. And what will she do in London, when she has no boat at all, and she will never go out to ta fishing? And I will hear people say that you will walk a whole day and never come to ta sea, and what will Miss Sheila do for that? And she will tame no more o’ ta wild ducks’ young things, and she will find out no more o’ ta nests in the rocks, and she will hef no more horns when the deer is killed, and she will go out no more to see ta cattle swim across Loch Roag when they go to ta sheilings. It will be all different, all different, now; and she will never see us no more. And it iss as bad as if you was a poor man, Mr. Mackenzie, and had to let your sons and your daughters go away to America, and never come back no more. And she ta only one in your house! And it wass the son of Mr. Macintyre, of Sutherland, he would have married her, and come to live on ta island, and not have Miss Sheila go away among strangers that doesna ken her family, and will put no store by her, no more than if she was a fisherman’s lass. It wass Miss Sheila herself had a sore heart tis morning when she went away; and she turned and she looked at Borva as the boat came away, and I said, ’Tis iss the last time Miss Sheila will be in her boat, and she will not come no more again to Borva.”
Mr. Mackenzie heard not one word or syllable of all this. The dead, passionless look had fallen over the powerful features, and the deep-set eyes were gazing, not on the actual Loch Roag before them, but on a stormy sea that lies between Lewis and Skye, and on a vessel disappearing in the midst of the rain. It was by a sort of instinct that he guided this open boat through the channels, which were now getting broader as they neared the sea, and the tall and grave-faced keeper might have kept up his garrulous talk for hours without attracting a look or a word.
It was now the dusk of the evening, and wild and strange indeed was the scene around the solitary boat as it slowly moved along. Large islands—so large that any one of them might have been mistaken for the mainland—lay over the dark waters of the sea, remote, untenanted and silent. There were no white cottages along these rocky shores; only a succession of rugged cliffs and sandy bays, but half mirrored in the sombre water below. Down in the South the mighty shoulders and peaks of Suainabhal and its sister mountains were still darker than the darkening sky; and when at length the boat had got well out from the network of islands and fronted the broad waters of the Atlantic, the great plain of the western sea seemed already to have drawn around it the solemn mantle of the night.
“Will you go to Borvapost, Mr. Mackenzie, or will we run her into your own house?” asked Duncan—Borvapost being the name of the chief village on the island.
“I will not go on to Borvapost,” said the old man, peevishly. “Will they not have plenty to talk about at Borvapost?”
“And it iss no harm tat ta folk will speak of Miss Sheila,” said the gillie with some show of resentment: “it iss no harm tey will be sorry she is gone away—no harm at all, for it was many things tey had to thank Miss Sheila for; and now it will be all ferry different—”
“I tell you, Duncan Macdonald, to hold your peace!” said the old man, with a savage glare of the deep-set eyes; and then Duncan relapsed into a sulky silence, and the boat held on its way.
In the gathering twilight a long gray curve of sand became visible, and into the bay thus indicated Mackenzie turned his small craft. This indentation of the island seemed as blank of human occupation as the various points and bays they had passed, but as they neared the shore a house came into sight, about half way up the slope rising from the sea to the pasture land above. There was a small stone pier jutting out at one portion of the bay, where a mass of rocks was embedded in the white sand; and here at length the boat was run in, and Mackenzie helped the young girl ashore.
The two of them, leaving the gillie to moor the little vessel that had brought them from Callernish, went silently toward the shore, and up the narrow road leading to the house. It was a square, two-storied substantial building of stone, but the stone had been liberally oiled to keep out the wet, and the blackness thus produced had not a very cheerful look. Then, on this particular evening the scant bushes surrounding the house hung limp and dark in the rain, and amid the prevailing hues of purple, blue-green and blue, the bit of scarlet coping running around the black house was wholly ineffective in relieving the general impression of dreariness and desolation.
The King of Borva walked into a large room, which was but partially lit by two candles on the table and by the blaze of a mass of peats in the stone fire-place, and threw himself into a big easy-chair. Then he suddenly seemed to recollect his companion, who was timidly standing near the door, with her shawl still around her head.
“Mairi,” he said, “go and ask them to give you some dry clothes. Your box it will not be here for half an hour yet.” Then he turned to the fire.
“But you yourself, Mr. Mackenzie, you will be ferry wet—”
“Never mind me, my lass; go and get yourself dried.”
“But it wass Miss Sheila,” began the girl diffidently—“it wass Miss Sheila asked me—she asked me to look after you, sir—”
With that he rose abruptly, and advanced to her and caught her by the wrist. He spoke quite quietly to her, but the girl’s eyes, looking up at the stern face, were a trifle frightened.
“You are a ferry good little girl, Mairi,” he said slowly, “and you will mind what I say to you. You will do what you like in the house, you will take Sheila’s place as much as you like, but you will mind this—not to mention her name, not once. Now go away, Mairi, and find Scarlett Macdonald, and she will give you some dry clothes; and you will tell her to send Duncan down to Borvapost, and bring up John the Piper and Alisternan-Each, and the lads of the Nighean dubh, if they are not gone home to Habost yet. But it iss John the Piper must come directly.”
The girl went away to seek counsel of Scarlett Macdonald, Duncan’s wife, and Mr. Mackenzie proceeded to walk up and down the big and half-lit chamber. Then he went to the cupboard, and put out on the table a number of tumblers and glasses, with two or three odd-looking bottles of Norwegian make, consisting of four semicircular tubes of glass, meeting at top and bottom, leaving the center of the vessel thus formed open. He stirred up the blazing peats in the fire-place. He brought down from a shelf a box filled with coarse tobacco, and put it on the table. But he was evidently growing impatient, and at last he put on his cap again and went out into the night.
The air blew cold in from the sea, and whistled through the bushes that Sheila had trained about the porch. There was no rain now, but a great and heavy darkness brooded overhead, and in the silence he could hear the breaking of the waves along the hard coast. But what was this other sound he heard, wild and strange in the stillness of the night—a shrill and plaintive cry that the distance softened, until it almost seemed to be the calling of a human voice? Surely those were words he heard, or was it only that the old, sad air spoke to him?
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.
That was the message that came to him out of the darkness, and it seemed to him as if the sea and the night and the sky were wailing over the loss of his Sheila. He walked away from the house and up the hill behind. Led by the sound of the pipes, that grew louder and more unearthly as he approached, he found himself at length on a bit of high table-land overlooking the sea, where Sheila had had a rude bench of iron and wood fixed into the rock. On this bench sat a little old man, humpbacked and bent, and with long white hair falling down to his shoulders. He was playing the pipes—not wildly and fiercely, as if he were at a drinking-bout of the lads come home from the Caithness fishing, nor yet gaily and proudly, as if he were marching at the head of a bridal procession, but slowly, mournfully, monotonously, as though he were having the pipes talk to him.
Mackenzie touched him on the shoulder, and the old man started. “Is it you, Mr. McKenzie?” he said in Gaelic. “It is a great fright you have given me.”
“Come down to the house, John. The lads from Habost and Alister, and some more will be coming; and you will get a ferry good dram, John, to put wind in the pipes.”
“It’s no dram I’m thinking of, Mr. Mackenzie,” said the old man. “And you will have plenty of company without me. But I will come down to the house, Mr. Mackenzie—oh, yes, I will come down to the house—but in a little while I will come to the house.”
Mackenzie turned from him with a petulant exclamation, and went along and down the hill rapidly, as he could hear voices in the darkness. He had just got into the house when his visitors arrived. The door of the room was opened, and there appeared some six or eight tall and stalwart men, mostly with profuse brown beards and weather-beaten faces, who advanced into the chamber with some show of shyness. Mackenzie offered them a rough and hearty welcome, and as soon as their eyes had got accustomed to the light bade them help themselves to the whisky on the table. With a certain solemnity each poured out a glass and drank “Shlainte!” to his host as if it were some funeral rite. But when he bade them replenish their glasses, and got them seated with their faces to the blaze of the peats, then the flood of Gaelic broke loose. Had the wise little girl from Suainabost warned these big men? There was not a word about Sheila uttered. All their talk was of the reports that had come from Caithness, and of the improvements of the small harbor near the Butt, and of the black sea-horse that had been seen in Lock Suainabhal, and of some more sheep having been found dead on the Pladda Isles, shot by the men of the English smacks. Pipes were lit, the peat stirred up anew, another glass or two of whisky drunk, and then, through the haze of the smoke, the brown faces of the men could be seen in eager controversy, each talking faster than the other, and comparing facts and fancies that had been brooded over through solitary nights of waiting on the sea. Mackenzie did not sit down with them; he did not even join them in their attention to the curious whisky-flasks. He paced up and down the opposite side of the room, occasionally being appealed to with a story or question, and showing by his answers that he was but vaguely hearing the vociferous talk of his companions. At last he said, “Why the teffle does not John the Piper come? Here, you men—you sing a song, quick! None of your funeral songs, but a good brisk one of trinking and fighting.”
But were not nearly all their songs—like those of all dwellers on a rocky and dangerous coast—of a sad and sombre hue, telling of maidens whose lovers were drowned, and of wives bidding farewell to husbands they were never to see again? Slow and mournful are the songs that the Northern fishermen sing as they set out in the evening, with the creaking of the long oars keeping time to the music, until they get out beyond the shore to hoist the red mainsail and catch the breeze blowing over from the regions of the sunset. Not one of these Habost fishermen could sing a brisk song, but the nearest approach to it was a ballad in praise of a dark-haired girl, which they, owning the Nighean dubh, were bound to know. And so one young fellow began to sing, “Mo Nighean dubh d’fhas boidheach dubh, mo Nighean dubhna treig mi,”[1] in a slow and doleful fashion, and the others joined in the chorus with a like solemnity. In order to keep time, four of the men followed the common custom of taking a pocket handkerchief (in this case an immense piece of brilliant red silk, which was evidently the pride of its owner), and holding it by the four corners letting it slowly rise and fall as they sang. The other three men laid hold of a bit of rope, which they used for the same purpose. “Mo Nighean dubh,” unlike most of the Gaelic songs, has but a few verses; and, as soon as they were finished, the young fellow, who seemed pleased with his performance, started another ballad. Perhaps he had forgotten his host’s injunction, perhaps he knew no merrier song, but at any rate he began to sing the “Lament of Monaltrie.” It was one of Sheila’s songs. She had sung it the night before in this very room, and her father had listened to her describing the fate of young Monaltrie as if she had been foretelling her own, and scarcely dared to ask himself if ever again he should hear the voice that he loved so well. He could not listen to the song. He abruptly left the room and went out once more into the cool night-air and the darkness. But even here he was not allowed to forget the sorrow he had been vainly endeavoring to banish, for in the far distance the pipes still played the melancholy wail of Lochaber.
Lochaber no more! Lochaber no more!
—that was the only solace brought him by the winds from the sea; and there were tears running down the hard gray face as he said to himself, in a broken voice, “Sheila, my little girl, why did you go away from Borva?”
CHAPTER II.
THE FAIR-HAIRED STRANGER.
“WHY you must be in love with her yourself!”
“I in love with her? Sheila and I are too old friends for that!”
The speakers were two young men seated in the stern of the steamer Clansman as she ploughed her way across the blue and rushing waters of the Minch. One of them was a tall young fellow of three-and-twenty, with fair hair and light blue eyes, whose delicate and mobile features were handsome enough in their way, and gave evidence of a nature at once sensitive, nervous and impulsive. He was clad in light gray from head to heel—a color that suited his fair complexion and yellow hair; and he lounged about the white deck in the glare of the sunlight, steadying himself from time to time as an unusually big wave carried the Clansman aloft for a second or two, and then sent her staggering and groaning into a hissing trough of foam. Now and again he would pause in front of his companion, and talk in a rapid, playful, and even eloquent fashion for a minute or two; and then, apparently a trifle annoyed by the slow and patient attention which greeted his oratorical efforts, would start off once more on his unsteady journey up and down the white planks.
The other was a man of thirty-eight, of middle height, sallow complexion and generally insignificant appearance. His hair was becoming prematurely gray. He rarely spoke. He was dressed in a suit of rough blue cloth, and indeed looked somewhat like a pilot who had gone ashore, taken to study and never recovered himself. A stranger would have noticed the tall and fair young man who walked up and down the gleaming deck, evidently enjoying the brisk breeze that blew about his yellow hair, and the sunlight that touched his pale and fine face or sparkled on his teeth when he laughed, but would have paid little attention to the smaller, brown-faced, gray-haired man, who lay back on the bench with his two hands clasped around his knee, and with his eye fixed on the southern heavens, while he murmured to himself the lines of some ridiculous old Devonshire ballad or replied in monosyllables to the rapid and eager talk of his friend.
Both men were good sailors, and they had need to be, for although the sky above them was as blue and clear as the heart of the sapphire, and although the sunlight shone on the decks and the rigging, a strong north-easter had been blowing all the morning, and there was a considerable sea on. The far blue plain was whitened with the tumbling crests of the waves, that shone and sparkled in the sun, and ever and anon a volume of water would strike the Clansman’s bow, rise high in the air with the shock, and fall in heavy showers over the forward decks. Sometimes, too, a wave caught her broadside, and sent a handful of spray over the two or three passengers who were safe in the stern; but the decks here remained silvery and white, for the sun and wind speedily dried up the traces of the sea-showers.
At length the taller of the young men came and sat down by his companion: “How far to Stornoway yet?”
“An hour.”
“By Jove, what a distance! All day yesterday getting up from Oban to Skye, all last night churning our way up to Loch Gair, all to-day crossing to this outlandish island, that seems as far away as Iceland;—and for what?”
“But don’t you remember the moonlight last night as we sailed by the Cuchullins? And the sunrise this morning as we lay in Loch Gair? Were not these worth coming for.”
“But that was not what you came for, my dear friend. No. You came to carry off this wonderful Miss Sheila of yours, and of course you wanted somebody to look on; and here I am, ready to carry the ladder and the dark lantern and the marriage-license. I will saddle your steeds for you and row you over lakes, and generally do anything to help you in so romantic an enterprise.”
“It is very kind of you, Lavender,” said the other with a smile, “but such adventures are not for old fogies like me. They are the exclusive right of young fellows like you, who are tall and well-favored, have plenty of money and good spirits, and have a way with you that all the world admires. Of course the bride will tread a measure with you. Of course all the bridesmaids would like to see you marry her. Of course she will taste the cup you offer her. Then a word in her ear, and away you go as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and as if the bridegroom was a despicable creature merely because God had only given him five feet six inches. But you couldn’t have a Lochinvar five feet six.”
The younger man blushed like a girl and laughed a little, and was evidently greatly pleased. Nay, in the height of his generosity he began to protest. He would not have his friend imagine that women cared only for stature and good looks. There were other qualities. He himself had observed the most singular conquests made by men who were not good-looking, but who had a certain fascination about them. His own experience of women was considerable, and he was quite certain that the best women, now—the sort of women whom a man would respect—the women who had brains—
And so forth and so forth. The other listened quite gravely to these well-meant, kindly, blundering explanations, and only one who watched his face narrowly could have detected in the brown eyes a sort of amused consciousness of the intentions of the amiable and ingenuous youth.
“Do you really mean to tell me, Ingram,” continued Lavender, in his rapid and impetuous way, “do you mean to tell me that you are not in love with this Highland princess? For ages back you have talked of nothing but Sheila. How many an hour have I spent in clubs, up the river, down at the coast, everywhere, listening to your stories of Sheila, and your praises of Sheila, and your descriptions of Sheila! It was always Sheila, and again Sheila, and still again Sheila. But, do you know, either you exaggerated or I failed to understand your descriptions; for the Sheila I came to construct out of your talk, is a most incongruous and incomprehensible creature. First, Sheila knows about stone and lime and building; and then I suppose her to be a practical young woman, who is a sort of overseer to her father. But Sheila, again, is romantic and mysterious, and believes in visions and dreams; and then I take her to be an affected school-miss. But then Sheila can throw a fly and play her sixteen-pounder, and Sheila can adventure upon the lochs in an open boat, managing the sail herself; and then I find her to be a tom-boy. But, again, Sheila is shy and rarely speaks, but looks unutterable things with her soft and magnificent eyes; and what does that mean but that she is an ordinary young lady, who has not been in society, and who is a little interesting, if a little stupid, while she is unmarried, and who, after marriage, calmly and complacently sinks into the dull domestic hind, whose only thought is of butchers’ bills and perambulators!”
This was a fairly long speech, but it was no longer than many which Frank Lavender was accustomed to utter when in the vein for talking. His friend and companion did not pay much heed. His hands were still clasped around his knee, his head leaning back, and all the answer he made was to repeat, apparently to himself, these not very pertinent lines:
“In Ockington, in Devonsheer,
My vather he lived vor many a yeer:
And I, his son, with him did dwell,
To tend his sheep: ’twas doleful well.
Diddle-diddle!”
“You know, Ingram, it must be precious hard for man who has to knock about in society, and take his wife with him, to have to explain to everybody that she is in reality a most unusual and gifted young person, and that she must not be expected to talk. It is all very well for him in his own house—that is to say, if he can preserve all the sentiment that made her shyness fine and wonderful before their marriage—but a man owes a little to society, even in choosing a wife.”
Another pause.
“It happened on a zartin day
Four-score o’ the sheep they rinned astray
Says vather to I, ‘Jack, rin arter ’m, du!’
Says I to vather, ‘I’m darned if I du!’
Diddle-diddle!”
“Now you are the sort of a man, I should think, who would never get careless about your wife. You would always believe about her what you believed at first; and I dare say you would live very happily in your own house if she was a decent sort of woman. But you would have to go out into society sometimes; and the very fact that you had not got careless—as many men would, leaving their wives to produce any sort of impression they might—would make you vexed that the world could not, off-hand, value your wife as you fancy she ought to be valued. Don’t you see?”
This was the answer:
“Puvoket much at my rude tongue,
A dish o’ brath at me he vlung,
Which so incensed me to wrath,
That I up an’ knack un instantly to arth,
Diddle-diddle!”
“As for your Princess Sheila, I firmly believe you have some romantic notion of marrying her and taking her up to London with you. If you seriously intend such a thing, I shall not argue with you. I shall praise her by the hour together, for I may have to depend on Mrs. Edward Ingram for my admission to your house. But if you only have the fancy as a fancy, consider what the result would be. You say she has never been to a school; that she has never had the companionship of a girl of her own age; that she has never read a newspaper; that she has never been out of this island; and that almost her sole society has been that of her mother, who educated her and tended her, and left her as ignorant of the real world as if she had lived all her life in a lighthouse. Goodness gracious! what a figure such a girl would cut in South Kensington!”
“My dear fellow,” said Ingram at last, “don’t be absurd. You will soon see what are the relations between Sheila Mackenzie and me, and you will be satisfied. I marry her? Do you think I would take the child to London to show her its extravagance and shallow society, and break her heart with thinking of the sea, and of the rude islanders she knew, and of their hard and bitter struggle for life? No. I should not like to see my wild Highland doe shut up in one of your southern parks, among your tame fallow-deer. She would look at them askance. She would separate herself from them, and by and by she would make one wild effort to escape and kill herself. That is not the fate in store for our good little Sheila; so you need not make yourself unhappy about her or me.
‘Now all ye young men, of every persuasion,
Never quarl wi’ your vather upon any occasion;
For instead of being better, you’ll vind you’ll be wuss,
For he’ll kick you out o’ doors, without a varden in your puss!
Diddle-diddle!’ ”
“Talking of Devonshire, how is that young American lady you met at Torquay in the Spring?”
“There, now, is the sort of woman a man would be safe in marrying!”
“And how?”
“Oh, well, you know,” said Frank Lavender, “I mean the sort of woman who would do you credit—hold her own in society, and that sort of thing. You must meet her some day. I tell you, Ingram, you will be delighted and charmed with her manners, and her grace, and the clever things she says; at least, everybody else is.”
“Ah, well!”
“You don’t seem to care much for brilliant women,” remarked the other, rather disappointed that his companion showed so little interest.
“Oh, yes, I like brilliant women very well. A clever woman is always a pleasanter companion than a clever man. But you were talking of the choice of a wife; and pertness in a girl, although it may be amusing at the time, may become something else by and by. Indeed, I shouldn’t advise a young man to marry an epigrammatist, for you see her shrewdness and smartness are generally the result of experiences in which he has had no share.”
“There may be something in that,” said Lavender; “but of course, you know, with a widow it is different; and Mrs. Lorraine never does go in for the ingenue.”
The pale blue cloud that had for some time been lying faintly along the horizon now came nearer and more near, until they could pick out something like the configuration of the island, its bays and promontories and mountains. The day seemed to become warmer as they got out of the driving wind of the Channel, and the heavy roll of the sea had so far subsided. Through comparatively calm water the great Clansman drove her away, until, on getting near the land and under shelter of the peninsula of Eye, the voyagers found themselves on a beautiful blue plain, with the spacious harbor of Stornoway opening out before them. There, on the one side, lay a white and cleanly town, with its shops, and quays and shipping. Above the bay in front stood a great gray castle, surrounded by pleasure-grounds and terraces and gardens; while on the southern side the harbor was overlooked by a semi-circle of hills, planted with every variety of tree. The white houses, the blue bay and the large gray building set amid green terraces and overlooked by wooded hills, formed a bright and lively little picture on this fresh and brilliant forenoon; and young Lavender, who had a quick eye for compositions which he was always about to undertake, but which never appeared on canvas, declared enthusiastically that he would spend a day or two in Stornoway on his return from Borva, and take home with him some sketch of the place.
“And is Miss Sheila on the quay, yonder?” he asked.
“Not likely,” said Ingram. “It is a long drive across the island, and I suppose she would remain at home to look after our dinner in the evening.”
“What? The wonderful Princess Sheila look after our dinner! Has she visions among the pots and pans, and does she look unutterable things when she is peeling potatoes?”
Ingram laughed: “There will a pretty alteration in your tune in a couple of days. You are sure to fall in love with her, and sigh desperately for a week or two. You always do when you meet a woman anywhere. But it won’t hurt you much, and she wont know anything about it.”
“I should rather like to fall in love with her to see how furiously jealous you would become. However, here we are.”
“And there is Mackenzie—the man with the big gray beard and the peaked cap—and he is talking to the chamberlain of the island.”
“What does he get up on his wagonette for, instead of coming on board to meet you?”
“Oh, that is one of his little tricks,” said Ingram, with a good-humored smile. “He means to receive us in state, and impress you, a stranger, with his dignity. The good old fellow has a hundred harmless ways like that, and you must humor him. He has been accustomed to be treated en roi, you know.”
“Then the papa of the mysterious princess is not perfect?”
“Perhaps I ought to tell you now that Mackenzie’s oddest notion is that he has a wonderful skill in managing men, and in concealing the manner of his doing it. I tell you this that you mayn’t laugh and hurt him when he is attempting something that he considers particularly crafty, and that a child could see through.”
“But what is the aim of it all?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“He does not do a little bet occasionally?”
“Oh, dear! no. He is the best and honestest fellow in the world, but it pleases him to fancy that he is profoundly astute, and that other people don’t see the artfulness with which he reaches some little result that is not of the least consequence to anybody.”
“It seems to me,” remarked Mr. Lavender, with a coolness and shrewdness that rather surprised his companion, “that it would not be difficult to get the King of Borva to assume the honors of a papa-in-law.”
The steamer was moored at last; the crowd of fishermen and loungers drew near to meet their friends who had come up from Glasgow—for there are few strangers, as a rule, arriving at Stornoway to whet the curiosity of the islanders—and the tall gillie who had been standing by Mackenzie’s horses came on board to get the luggage of the young men.
“Well, Duncan,” said the elder of them, “and how are you, and how is Mr. Mackenzie, and how is Miss Sheila? You have not brought her with you, I see.”
“But Miss Sheila is ferry well, whatever, Mr. Ingram, and it is a great day, this day, for her, tat you will be coming to the Lewis; and it wass tis morning she wass up at ta break o’ day, and up ta hills ta get some bits o’ green things for ta rooms you will hef, Mr. Ingram. Ay, it iss a great day, tis day, for Miss Sheila.”
“By Jove, they all rave about Sheila up in this quarter!” said Lavender, giving Duncan a fishing-rod and a bag he had brought from the cabin. “I suppose in a week’s time I shall begin to rave about her, too. Look sharp, Ingram, and let us have audience of His Majesty.”
The King of Borva fixed his eye on young Lavender, and scanned him narrowly as he was being introduced. His welcome of Ingram had been most gracious and friendly, but he received his companion with something of a severe politeness. He requested him to take a seat beside him, so that he might see the country as they went across to Borva; and Lavender having done so, Ingram and Duncan got into the body of the wagonette, and the party drove off.
Passing through the clean and bright little town, Mackenzie suddenly pulled up his horses in front of a small shop, in the windows of which some cheap bits of jewelry were visible. The man came out, and Mr. Mackenzie explained with some care and precision that he wanted a silver brooch of a particular sort. While the jeweler had returned to seek the article in question, Frank Lavender was gazing around him in some wonder at the appearance of so much civilization on this remote and rarely visited island. There were no haggard savages, unkempt and scantily clad, coming forth from their dens in the rocks to stare wildly at the strangers. On the contrary, there was a prevailing air of comfort and “bien-ness” about the people and their houses. He saw handsome girls with coal-black hair and fresh complexions, who wore short and thick blue petticoats, with a scarlet tartan shawl wrapped around their bosom and fastened at the waist; stalwart, thick-set men, in loose blue jacket and trowsers and scarlet cap, many of them with bushy red beards; and women of extraordinary breadth of shoulder, who carried enormous loads in a creel strapped on their backs, while they employed their hands in contentedly knitting stockings as they passed along. But what was the purpose of these mighty loads of fish-bones they carried—burdens that would have appalled a railway porter of the South?
“You will see, sir,” observed the King of Borva, in reply to Lavender’s question, “there is not much of the phosphates in the grass of this island; and the cows they are mad to get the fish-bones to lick, and it is many of them you cannot milk unless you put the bones before them.”
“But why do the lazy fellows lounging about there let the women carry those enormous loads?”
Mr. Mackenzie stared: “Lazy fellows! They hef harder work than any who will know of in your country; and besides the fishing, they will do the ploughing and much of the farm work. And iss the women to do none at all? That iss the nonsense that my daughter talks; but she has got it out of books, and what do they know how the poor people hef to live?”
At this moment the jeweler returned with some half dozen brooches displayed on a plate, and shining with all the brilliancy of cairngorm stones, polished silver and variously-colored pebbles.
“Now, John Mackintyre, this is a gentleman from London,” said Mackenzie, regarding the jeweler sternly, “and he will know all apout such fine things, and you will not put a big price on them.”
It was now Lavender’s turn to stare, but he good-naturedly accepted the duties of referee, and eventually a brooch was selected and paid for, the price being six shillings. Then they drove on again.
“Sheila will know nothing of this; it will be a great surprise for her,” said Mackenzie, almost to himself, as he opened the white box, and saw the glaring piece of jewelry lying on the white cotton.
“Good Heavens, sir,” cried Frank Lavender, “you don’t mean to say you bought that brooch for your daughter?”
“And why not?” said the King of Borva, in great surprise.
The young man perceived his mistake, grew considerably confused, and only said: “Well, I should have thought that—that some small piece of gold jewelry, now, would be better suited for a young lady.”
Mackenzie smiled shrewdly: “I had something to go on. It was Sheila herself was in Stornoway three weeks ago, and she was wanting to buy a brooch for a young girl who had come down to us from Suainabost, and is very useful in the kitchen, and it wass a brooch, just like this one, she gave to her.”
“Yes, to a kitchen-maid,” said the young man, meekly.
“But Mairi is Sheila’s cousin,” said Mackenzie, with continued surprise.
“Lavender does not understand Highland ways yet, Mr. Mackenzie,” said Ingram, from behind. “You know we, in the South, have different fashions. Our servants are nearly always strangers to us—not relations and companions.”
“Oh, I hef peen in London myself,” said Mackenzie, in somewhat of an injured tone; and then he added, with a touch of satisfaction: “and I hef been in Paris, too.”
“And Miss Sheila, has she been in London?” asked Lavender, feigning ignorance.
“She has never been out of the Lewis.”
“But don’t you think the education of a young lady should include some little experience of traveling?”
“Sheila, she will be educated quite enough; and is she going to London or Paris without me?”
“You might take her.”
“I have too much to do on the island now, and Sheila has much to do. I do not think she will ever see any of those places, and she will not be much the worse.”
Two young men off for their holidays, a brilliant day shining all around them, the sweet air of the sea and the moorland blowing about them—this little party that now drove away from Stornoway ought to have been in the best of spirits. And indeed the young fellow who sat beside Mackenzie was bent on pleasing his host by praising everything he saw. He praised the gallant little horses that whirled them past the plantations and into the open country. He praised the rich black peat that was visible in long lines and heaps, where the townspeople were slowly eating into the moorland. Then all these traces of occupation were left behind, and the travelers were alone in the untenanted heart of the island, where the only sounds audible were the humming of insects in the sunlight and the falling of the streams. Away in the south the mountains were of a silvery and transparent blue. Nearer at hand the rich reds and browns of the moorland softened into a tender and beautiful green on nearing the margins of the lakes; and these stretches of water were now as fair and bright as the sky above them, and were scarcely ruffled by the moorfowl moving out from the green rushes. Still nearer at hand great masses of white rock lay embedded in the soft soil; and what could have harmonized better with the rough and silver-gray surface than the patches of rose-red bell-heather that grew up in the clefts or hung over their summits. The various and beautiful colors around seemed to tingle with light and warmth as the clear sun shone on them and the keen mountain air blew over them; and the King of Borva was so far thawed by the enthusiasm of his companions that he regarded the fair country with a pleased smile, as if the enchanted land belonged to him, and as if the wonderful colors and the exhilarating air and the sweet perfumes were of his own creation.
Mr. Mackenzie did not know much about tints and hues, but he believed what he heard; and it was perhaps, after all, not very surprising that a gentleman from London, who had skill of pictures and other delicate matters, should find strange marvels in a common stretch of moor, with a few lakes here and there, and some lines of mountains only good for sheilings. It was not for him to check the raptures of his guest. He began to be friendly with the young man, and could not help regarding him as a more cheerful companion than his neighbor Ingram, who would sit by your side for an hour at a time without breaking the monotony of the horses’ tramp with a single remark. He had formed a poor opinion of Lavender’s physique from the first glimpse he had of his white fingers and girl-like complexion; but surely a man who had such a vast amount of good spirits and such a rapidity of utterance must have something corresponding to these qualities in substantial bone and muscle. There was something pleasing and ingenuous too about this flow of talk. Men who had arrived at years of wisdom, and knew how to study and use their fellows, were not to be led into these betrayals of their secret opinions; but for a young man—what could be more pleasing than to see him lay open his soul to the observant eye of a master of men? Mackenzie began to take a great fancy to young Lavender.
“Why,” said Lavender, with a fine color mantling in his cheeks as the wind caught them on a higher portion of the road, “I had heard of Lewis as a most bleak and desolate island, flat moorland and lake, without a hill to be seen. And everywhere I see hills, and yonder are great mountains which I hope to get nearer before we leave.”
“We have mountains in this island,” remarked Mackenzie slowly as he kept his eye on his companion, “we have mountains in this island sixteen thousand feet high.”
Lavender looked sufficiently astonished, and the old man was pleased. He paused for a moment or two and said. “But this iss the way of it: you will see that the middle of the mountains it has all been washed away by the weather, and you will only have the sides now dipping one way and the other at each side o’ the island. But it iss a very clever man in Stornoway will tell me that you can make out what wass the height o’ the mountain, by watching the dipping of the rocks on each side; and it iss an older country, this island, than any you will know of; and there were the mountains sixteen thousand feet high long before all this country and all Scotland and England wass covered with ice.”
The young man was very desirous to show his interest in this matter, but did not know very well how. At last he ventured to ask whether there were any fossils in the blocks of gneiss that were scattered over the moorland.
“Fossils?” said Mackenzie. “Oh, I will not care much about such small things. If you will ask Sheila, she will tell you all about it, and about the small things she finds growing on the hills. That is not of much consequence to me; but I will tell you what is the best thing the island grows; it is good girls and strong men—men that can go to the fishing and come back to plough the fields and cut the peat and build the houses, and leave the women to look after the fields and the gardens when they go back again to the fisheries. But it is the old people—they are ferry cunning, and they will not put their money in the bank at Stornoway, but will hide it away about the house, and then they will come to Sheila and ask for money to put a pane of glass in their house. And she has promised that to every one who will make a window in the wall of their house; and she is very simple with them and does not understand the old people that tell lies. But when I hear of it I say nothing to Sheila—she will know nothing about it—but I have a watch put upon the people; and it was only yesterday I will take back two shillings she gave to an old woman of Borvabost that told many lies. What does a young thing know of these old people? She will know nothing at all, and it is better for some one else to look after them, but not to speak one word of it to her.”
“It must require great astuteness to manage a primitive people like that,” said young Lavender, with an air of conviction; and the old man eagerly and proudly assented, and went on to tell of the manifold diplomatic arts he used in reigning over his small kingdom, and how his subjects lived in blissful ignorance that this controlling power was being exercised.
They were startled by an exclamation from Ingram, who called to Mackenzie to pull up the horses just as they were passing over a small bridge.
“Look there, Lavender, did you ever see salmon jumping like that? Look at the size of them!”
“Oh, it iss nothing,” said Mackenzie, driving on again. “Where you will see the salmon, it is in the narrows of Loch Roag, where they come into the rivers, and the tide is low. Then you will see them jumping; and if the water wass too low for a long time, they will die in hundreds and hundreds.”
“But what makes them jump before they get into the rivers?”
Old Mackenzie smiled a crafty smile, as if he had found out all the ways and the secrets of the salmon. “They will jump to look about them—that iss all.”
“Do you think a salmon can see where he is going?”
“And maybe you will explain this to me, then,” said the king, with a compassionate air, “how iss it the salmon will try to jump over some stones in the river, and he will see he can’t go over them; but does he fall straight down on the stones and kill himself? Neffer—no, neffer. He will get back to the pool he left by turning in the air; that is what I hef seen hundreds of times myself.”
“Then they must be able to fly as well as see in the air.”
“You may say about it what you will please, but that is what I know—that is what I know ferry well myself.”
“And I should think there were not many people in the country who knew more about salmon than you,” said Frank Lavender. “And I hear, too, that your daughter is a great fisher.”
But this was a blunder. The old man frowned; “Who will tell you such nonsense? Sheila has gone out many times with Duncan, and he will put a rod in her hand; yes, and she will have caught a fish or two, but it iss not a story to tell. My daughter she will have plenty to do about the house without any of such nonsense. You will expect to find us all savages, with such stories of nonsense.”
“I am sure not,” said Lavender, warmly. “I have been very much struck with the civilization of the island, so far as I have seen it; and I can assure you I have always heard of Miss Sheila as a singularly accomplished young lady.”
“Yes,” said Mackenzie, somewhat mollified, “Sheila has been well brought up; she is not a fisherman’s lass, running about wild and catching the salmon. I cannot listen to such nonsense, and it iss Duncan will tell it.”
“I can assure you, no. I have never spoken to Duncan. The fact is, Ingram mentioned that your daughter had caught a salmon or two—as a tribute to her skill, you know.”
“Oh, I know it wass Duncan,” said Mackenzie, with a deeper frown coming over his face. “I will hef some means taken to stop Duncan from talking such nonsense.”
The young man knowing nothing as yet of the childlike obedience paid to the King of Borva by his islanders, thought to himself, “Well, you are a strong and self-willed old gentleman, but if I were you I should not meddle much with that tall keeper with the eagle beak and the gray eyes. I should not like to be a stag, and know that fellow was watching me somewhere with a rifle in his hands.”
At length they came upon the brow of the hill overlooking Gara-na-hina[2] and the panorama of the western lochs and mountains. Down there on the side of the hill was the small inn, with its little patch of garden; then a few moist meadows leading over to the estuary of the Black river; and beyond that an illimitable prospect of heathy undulations rising into the mighty peaks of Cracabhal, Mealasabhal and Suainabhal. Then on the right, leading away to the as yet invisible Atlantic, lay the blue plain of Loch Roag, with a margin of yellow seaweed along its shores, where the rocks revealed themselves at low water, and with a multitude of large, variegated and verdant islands which hid from sight the still greater Borva beyond.
They stopped to have a glass of whisky at Gara-na-hina, and Mackenzie got down from the wagonette and went into the inn.
“And this is a Highland loch!” said Lavender, turning to his companion from the South. “It is an enchanted sea; you could fancy yourself in the Pacific, if only there were some palm trees on the shores of the islands. No wonder you took for an Eve any sort of woman you met in such a paradise!”
“You seem to be thinking a good deal about that young lady.”
“Well, who would not wish to make the acquaintance of a pretty girl, especially when you have plenty of time on your hands, and nothing to do but pay her little attentions, you know, and so forth, as being the daughter of your host?”
There was no particular answer to such an incoherent question, but Ingram did not seem so well pleased as he had been with the prospect of introducing his friend to the young Highland girl whose praises he had been reciting for many a day.
However, they drank their whisky, drove on to Callernish, and here paused for a minute or two to show the stranger a series of large so-called Druidical stones which occupy a small station overlooking the loch. Could anything have been more impressive than the sight of these solitary gray pillars placed on this bit of table-land high over the sea, and telling of a race that vanished ages ago, and left the surrounding plains, and hills, and shores a wild and untenanted solitude? But, somehow Lavender did not care to remain among those voiceless monuments of a forgotten past. He said he would come and sketch them some other day. He praised the picture all around, and then came back to the stretch of ruffled blue water lying at the base of the hill. “Where was Mr. Mackenzie’s boat?” he asked.
They left the high plain, with its Tuirsachan,[3] or Stones of Mourning, and descended to the side of the loch. In a few moments, Duncan, who had been disposing of the horses and the wagonette, overtook them, got ready the boat, and presently they were cutting asunder the bright blue plain of summer waves.
At last they were nearing the King of Borva’s home, and Ingram began to study the appearance of the neighboring shores, as if he would pick out some feature of the island he remembered. The white foam hissed down the side of the open boat. The sun burned hot on the brown sail. Far away over the shining plain the salmon were leaping into the air, catching a quick glint of silver on their scales before they splashed again into the water. Half a dozen sea-pyes, with their beautiful black and white plumage and scarlet beaks and feet, flew screaming out from the rocks and swept in rapid circles above the boat. A long flight of solan geese could just be seen slowly sailing along the westward horizon. As the small craft got out toward the sea the breeze freshened slightly, and she lay over somewhat as the brine-laden winds caught her and tingled on the cheeks of her passengers from the softer South. Finally, as the great channel widened out, and the various smaller islands disappeared behind, Ingram touched his companion on the shoulder, looked over to a long and low line of rock and hill, and said, “Borva!”
And this was Borva!—nothing visible but an indefinite extent of rocky shore, with here and there a bay of white sand, and over that a table-land of green pasture, apparently uninhabited.
“There are not many people on the island,” said Lavender, who seemed rather disappointed with the look of the place.
“There are three hundred,” said Mackenzie with the air of one who had experienced the difficulties of ruling over three hundred islanders.
He had scarcely spoken when his attention was called by Duncan to some object that the gillie had been regarding for some minutes back.
“Yes, it is Miss Sheila,” said Duncan.
A sort of flush of expectation passed over Lavender’s face, and he sprang to his feet. Ingram laughed. Did the foolish youth fancy he could see half as far as this gray-eyed, eagle-faced man, who had now sunk into his accustomed seat by the mast? There was nothing visible to ordinary eyes but a speck of a boat, with a single sail up, which was, apparently, in the distance, running in for Borva.
“Ay, ay, ay,” said Mackenzie in a vexed way, “it is Sheila, true enough; and what will she do out in the boat at this time, when she wass to be at home to receive the gentlemen that hef come all the way from London?”
“Well, Mr. Mackenzie,” said Lavender, “I should be sorry to think that our coming had interfered in any way whatever with your daughter’s amusements.”
“Amusements!” said the old man with a look of surprise. “It iss not amusements she will go for; that is no amusements for her. It is for some teffle of a purpose she will go, when it iss the house that is the proper place for her, with friends coming from so great a journey.”
Presently it became clear that a race between the two boats was inevitable, both of them making for the same point. Mackenzie would take no notice of such a thing, but there was a grave smile on Duncan’s face, and something like a look of pride in his keen eyes.
“There iss no one, not one,” he said, almost to himself, “will take her in better that Miss Sheila—not one in ta island. And it wass me tat learnt her every bit o’ ta steering about Borva.”
The strangers could now make out that in the other boat there were two girls—one seated in the stern, the other by the mast. Ingram took out his handkerchief and waved it: a similar token of recognition was floated out from the other vessel. But Mackenzie’s boat presently had the better of the wind, and slowly drew on ahead, until, when her passengers landed on the rude stone quay, they found the other and smaller craft still some little distance off.
Lavender paid little attention to his luggage. He let Duncan do with it what he liked. He was watching the small boat coming in, and getting a little impatient, and perhaps a little nervous, in waiting for a glimpse of the young lady in the stern. He could vaguely make out that she had an abundance of dark hair looped up; that she wore a small straw hat with a short white feather in it; and that, for the rest, she seemed to be habited entirely in some rough and close-fitting costume of dark blue. Or was there a glimmer of a band of rose-red around her neck?
The small boat was cleverly run alongside the jetty: Duncan caught her bow and held her fast, and Miss Sheila, with a heavy string of lythe in her right hand, stepped, laughing and blushing, on to the quay. Ingram was there. She dropped the fish on the stones and took his two hands in hers, and without uttering a word, looked a glad welcome into his face. It was a face capable of saying unwritten things—fine and delicate in form, and yet full of an abundance of health and good spirits that shone in deep gray-blue eyes. Lavender’s first emotion was one of surprise that he should have heard this handsome, well-knit and proud-featured girl called “little Sheila,” and spoken of in a pretty and caressing way. He thought there was something almost majestic in her figure, in the poising of her head and the outline of her face. But presently he began to perceive some singular suggestions of sensitiveness and meekness in the low, sweet brow, in the short and exquisitely curved upper lip, and in the look of the tender blue eyes, which had long, black eyelashes to give them a peculiar and indefinable charm. All this he noticed hastily and timidly as he heard Ingram, who still held the girl’s hands in his, saying, “Well, Sheila, and you haven’t quite forgotten me? And you are grown such a woman now: why, I musn’t call you Sheila any more, I think. But let me introduce you to my friend, who has come all the way from London to see all the wonderful things at Borva.”
If there was any embarrassment or blushing during that simple ceremony it was not on the side of the Highland girl, for she frankly shook hands with him and said, “Are you very well?”
The second impression which Lavender gathered from her was, that nowhere in the world was English pronounced so beautifully as in the Island of Lewis. The gentle intonation with which she spoke was so tender and touching—the slight dwelling on the e in “very” and “well” seemed to have such a sound of sincerity about it that he could have fancied he had been a friend of hers for a lifetime. And if she said “ferry” for “very,” what then? It was the most beautiful English he had ever heard.
