Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 31, October, 1873
TextIngram, as soon as he found that Sheila was in the room, relieved her from any doubt as to his intentions. He merely came forward, shook hands with her, and said, "How do you do, Mrs. Lavender?" and went back to the judge. She might have been an acquaintance of yesterday or a friend of twenty years' standing: no one could tell by his manner. As for Sheila, she parted with his hand reluctantly. She tried to look, too, what she dared not say; but whatever of regret and kindness and assurance of friendship was in her eyes he did not see. He scarcely glanced at her face: he went off at once, and plunged again into the Cincinnati Convention.
Mrs. Kavanagh and Mrs. Lorraine were exceedingly and almost obtrusively kind to her, but she scarcely heard what they said to her. It seemed so strange and so sad to her that her old friend should be standing near her, and she so far removed from him that she dared not go and speak to him. She could not understand it sometimes: everything around her seemed to get confused, until she felt as if she were sinking in a great sea, and could utter but one despairing cry as she saw the light disappear above her head. When they went in to dinner she saw that Mr. Ingram's seat was on Mrs. Lorraine's right hand, and, although she could hear him speak, as he was almost right opposite to her, it seemed to her that his voice sounded as if it were far away. The man who had taken her in was a tall, brown-whiskered and faultlessly-dressed person who never spoke, so that she was allowed to sit and listen to the conversation between Mrs. Lorraine and Ingram. They appeared to be on excellent terms. You would have fancied they had known each other for years. And as Sheila sat and saw how preoccupied and pleased with his companion Mr. Ingram was, perhaps now and again the bitter question arose to her mind whether this woman, who had taken away her husband, was seeking to take away her friend also. Sheila knew nothing of all that had happened within these past few days. She knew only that she was alone, without either husband or friend, and it seemed to her that this pale American girl had taken both away from her.
Ingram was in one of his happiest moods, and was seeking to prove to Mrs. Lorraine that this present dinner-party ought to be an especially pleasant one. Everybody was going away somewhere, and of course she must know that the expectation of traveling was much more delightful than the reality of it. What could surpass the sense of freedom, of power, of hope enjoyed by the happy folks who sat down to an open atlas and began to sketch out routes for their coming holidays? Where was he going? Oh, he was going to the North. Had Mrs. Lorraine never seen Edinburgh Castle rising out of a gray fog, like the ghost of some great building belonging to the times of Arthurian romance? Had she never seen the northern twilights, and the awful gloom and wild colors of Loch Coruisk and the Skye hills? There was no holiday-making so healthy, so free from restraint, as that among the far Highland hills and glens, where the clear mountain-air, scented with miles and miles of heather, seemed to produce a sort of intoxication of good spirits within one. Then the yachting round the wonderful islands of the West—the rapid runs of a bright forenoon, the shooting of the wild sea-birds, the scrambled dinners in the small cabin, the still nights in the small harbors, with a scent of sea-weed abroad, and the white stars shining down on the trembling water. Yes, he was going yachting this autumn: in about a fortnight he hoped to start. His friend was at present away up Loch Boisdale, in South Uist, and he did not know how to get there except by going to Skye, and taking his chance of some boat going over. Where would they go then? He did not know. Wherever his friend liked. It would be enough for him if they kept always moving about, seeing the strange sights of the sea and the air and the lonely shores of those northern islands. Perhaps they might even try to reach St. Kilda—
"Oh, Mr. Ingram, won't you go and see my papa?"
The cry that suddenly reached him was like the cry of a broken heart. He started as from a trance, and found Sheila regarding him with a piteous appeal in her face: she had been listening intently to all he had said.
"Oh yes, Sheila," he said kindly, and quite forgetting that he was speaking to her before strangers: "of course I must go and see your papa if we are any way near the Lewis. Perhaps you may be there then?"
"No," said Sheila, looking down.
"Won't you go to the Highlands this autumn?" Mrs. Lorraine asked in a friendly way.
"No," said Sheila in a measured voice as she looked her enemy fair in the face: "I think we are going to the Tyrol."
If the child had only known what occurred to Mrs. Lorraine's mind at this moment! Not a triumphant sense of Lavender's infatuation, as Sheila probably fancied, but a very definite resolution that if Frank Lavender went to the Tyrol, it was not with either her or her mother he should go.
"Mrs. Lavender's father is an old friend of mine," said Ingram, loud enough for all to hear; "and, hospitable as all Highlanders are, I have never met his equal in that way, and I have tried his patience a good many times. What do you think, Mrs. Lorraine, of a man who would give up his best gun to you, even though you couldn't shoot a bit, and he particularly proud of his shooting? And so if you lived with him for a month or six months—each day the best of everything for you, the second best for your friend, the worst for himself. Wasn't it so, Lavender?"
It was a direct challenge sent across the table, and Sheila's heart beat quick lest her husband should say something ungracious.
"Yes, certainly," said Lavender with a readiness that pleased Sheila. "I, at least, have no right to complain of his hospitality."
"Your papa is a very handsome man," said Mrs. Lorraine to Sheila, bringing the conversation back to their own end of the table. "I have seen few finer heads than that drawing you have. Mr. Lavender did that, did he not? Why has he never done one of you?"
"He is too busy, I think, just now," Sheila said, perhaps not knowing that from Mrs. Lorraine's waist-belt at that moment depended a fan which might have given evidence as to the extreme scarcity of time under which Lavender was supposed to labor.
"He has a splendid head," said Ingram. "Did you know that he is called the King of Borva up there?"
"I have heard of him being called the King of Thule," said Mrs. Lorraine, turning with a smile to Sheila, "and of his daughter being styled a princess. Do you know the ballad of the King of Thule in Faust, Mrs. Lavender?'"
"In the opera?—yes," said Sheila.
"Will you sing it for us after dinner?"
"If you like."
The promise was fulfilled, in a fashion. The notion that Mr. Ingram was about to go away up to Lewis, to the people who knew her and to her father's house, with no possible answer to the questions which would certainly be showered upon him as to why she had not come also, troubled Sheila deeply. The ladies went into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Lorraine got out the song. Sheila sat down to the piano, thinking far more of that small stone house at Borva than of the King of Thule's castle overlooking the sea; and yet somehow the first lines of the song, though she knew them well enough, sent a pang to her heart as she glanced at them. She touched the first notes of the accompaniment, and she looked at the words again:
Over the sea, in Thule of old,
Reigned a king who was true-hearted,
Who, in remembrance of one departed—
A mist came over her eyes. Was she the one who had departed, leaving the old king in his desolate house by the sea, where he could only think of her as he sat in his solitary chamber, with the night-winds howling round the shore outside? When her birthday had come round she knew that he must have silently drank to her, though not out of a beaker of gold. And now, when mere friends and acquaintances were free to speed away to the North, and get a welcome from the folks in Borva, and listen to the Atlantic waves dashing lightly in among the rocks, her hope of getting thither had almost died out. Among such people as landed on Stornoway quay from the big Clansman her father would seek one face, and seek it in vain. And Duncan and Scarlett, and even John the Piper—all the well-remembered folks who lived far away across the Minch—they would ask why Miss Sheila was never coming back.
Mrs. Lorraine had been standing aside from the piano. Noticing that Sheila had played the introduction to the song twice over in an undetermined manner, she came forward a step or two and pretended to be looking at the music. Tears were running down Sheila's face. Mrs. Lorraine put her hand on the girl's shoulder, and sheltered her from observation, and said aloud, "You have it in a different key, have you not? Pray don't sing it. Sing something else. Do you know any of Gounod's sacred songs? Let me see if we can find anything for you in this volume."
They were a long time finding anything in that volume. When they did find it, behold! it was one of Mrs. Lorraine's songs, and that young lady said if Mrs. Lavender would only allow herself to be superseded for a few minutes—And so Sheila walked, with her head down, to the conservatory, which was at the other end of the piano; and Mrs. Lorraine not only sung this French song, but sang every one of the verses; and at the end of it she had quite forgotten that Sheila had promised to sing.
"You are very sensitive," she said to Sheila, coming into the conservatory.
"I am very stupid," Sheila said with her face burning. "But it is a long time since I will see the Highlands—and Mr. Ingram was talking of the places I know—and—and so—"
"I understand well enough," said Mrs. Lorraine tenderly, as if Sheila were a mere child in her hands. "But you must not get your eyes red. You have to sing some of those Highland songs for us yet, when the gentlemen come in. Come up to my room and I will make your eyes all right. Oh, do not be afraid! I shall not bring you down like Lady Leveret. Did you ever see anything like that woman's face to-night? It reminds me of the window of an oil-and-color shop. I wonder she does not catch flies with her cheeks."
So all the people, Sheila learned that night, were going away from London, and soon she and her husband would join in the general stampede of the very last dwellers in town. But Mairi? What was to become of her after that little plot had been played out? Sheila could not leave Mairi to see London by herself: she had been enjoying beforehand the delight of taking the young girl about and watching the wonder of her eyes. Nor could she fairly postpone Mairi's visit, and Mairi was coming up in another couple of days.
On the morning on which the visitor from the far Hebrides was to make her appearance in London, Sheila felt conscious of a great hypocrisy in bidding good-bye to her husband. On some excuse or other she had had breakfast ordered early, and he found himself ready at half-past nine to go out for the day.
"Frank," she said, "will you come in to lunch at two?"
"Why?" he asked: he did not often have luncheon at home.
"I will go into the Park with you in the afternoon if you like," she said: all the scene had been diligently rehearsed on one side, before.
Lavender was a little surprised, but he was in an amiable mood.
"All right!" he said. "Have something with olives in it. Two, sharp."
With that he went out, and Sheila, with a wild commotion at her heart, saw him walk away through the square. She was afraid Mairi might have arrived before he left. And, indeed, he had not gone above a few minutes when a four-wheeler drove up, and an elderly man got out and waited for the timid-faced girl inside to alight. With a rush like that of a startled deer, Sheila was down the stairs, along the hall and on the pavement; and it was, "Oh, Mairi! and have you come at last? And are you very well? And how are all the people in Borva? And Mr. M'Alpine, how are you? and will you come into the house?"
Certainly, that was a strange sight for a decorous London square—the mistress of a house, a young girl with bare head, coming out on the pavement to shake hands in a frantic fashion with a young maid-servant and an elderly man whose clothes had been pretty well tanned by sunlight and sea-water! And Sheila would herself help to carry Mairi's luggage in. And she would take no denial from Mr. M'Alpine, whose luggage was also carried in. And she would herself pay the cabman, as strangers did not know about these things, Sheila's knowledge being exhibited by her hastily giving the man five shillings for driving from Euston Station. And there was breakfast waiting for them both as soon as Mairi could get her face washed; and would Mr. M'Alpine have a glass of whisky after the night's traveling?—and it was very good whisky whatever, as it had come all the way from Stornoway. Mr. M'Alpine was nothing loath.
"And wass you pretty well, Miss Sheila?" said Mairi, looking timidly and hastily up, and forgetting altogether that Sheila had another name now. "It will be a great thing for me to go back to sa Lewis, and tell them I wass seeing you, and you wass looking so well. And I will be thinking I wass neffer coming to any one I knew any more; and it is a great fright I hef had since we came away from sa Lewis; and I wass thinking we would neffer find you among all sa people and so far away across sa sea and sa land. Eh—!" The girl stopped in astonishment. Her eyes had wandered up to a portrait on the walls; and here, in this very room, after she had traveled over all this great distance, apparently leaving behind her everything but the memory of her home, was Mr. Mackenzie himself, looking at her from under his shaggy eyebrows.
"You must have seen that picture in Borva, Mairi," Sheila said. "Now come with me, like a good girl, and get yourself ready for breakfast. Do you know, Mairi, it does my heart good to hear you talk again? I don't think I shall be able to let you go back to the Lewis."
"But you hef changed ferry much in your way of speaking, Miss—Mrs. Lavender," said Mairi with an effort. "You will speak just like sa English now."
"The English don't say so," replied Sheila with a smile, leading the way up stairs.
Mr. M'Alpine had his business to attend to, but, being a sensible man, he took advantage of the profuse breakfast placed before him. Mairi was a little too frightened and nervous and happy to eat much, but Mr. M'Alpine was an old traveler, not to be put out by the mere meeting of two girls. He listened in a grave and complacent manner to the rapid questions and answers of Mairi and her hostess, but he himself was too busy to join in the conversation much. At the end of breakfast he accepted, after a little pressing, half a glass of whisky; and then, much comforted and in a thoroughly good-humor with himself and the world, got his luggage out again and went on his way toward a certain inn in High Holborn.
"Ay, and where does the queen live, Miss Sheila?" said Mairi. She had been looking at the furniture in Sheila's house, and wondering if the queen lived in a place still more beautiful than this.
"A long way from here."
"And it iss no wonder," said Mairi, "she will neffer hef been in sa Lewis. I wass neffer thinking the world wass so big, and it wass many a time since me and Mr. M'Alpine hef come away from Styornoway I wass thinking it wass too far for me effer to get back again. But it is many a one will say to me, before I hef left the Lewis, that I wass not to come home unless you wass coming too, and I wass to bring you back with me, Miss Sheila. And where is Bras, Miss Sheila?"
"You will see him by and by. He is out in the garden now." She said "gyarden" without knowing it.
"And will he understood the Gaelic yet?"
"Oh yes," Sheila said. "And he is sure to remember you."
There was no mistake about that. When Mairi went into the back garden the demonstrations of delight on the part of the great deerhound were as pronounced as his dignity and gravity would allow. And Mairi fairly fell upon his neck and kissed him, and addressed to him a hundred endearing phrases in Gaelic, every word of which it was quite obvious that the dog understood. London was already beginning to be less terrible to her. She had met and talked with Sheila. Here was Bras. A portrait of the King of Borva was hung up inside, and all round the rooms were articles which she had known in the North, before Sheila had married and brought them away into this strange land.
"You have never asked after my husband, Mairi," said Sheila, thinking she would confuse the girl.
But Mairi was not confused. Probably she had been fancying that Mr. Lavender was down at the shore, or had gone out fishing, or something of that sort, and would return soon enough. It was Sheila, not he, whom she was concerned about. Indeed, Mairi had caught up a little of that jealousy of Lavender which was rife among the Borva folks. They would speak no ill of Mr. Lavender. The young gentleman whom Miss Sheila had chosen had by that very fact a claim upon their respect. Mr. Mackenzie's son-in-law was a person of importance. And yet in their secret hearts they bore a grudge against him. What right had he to come away up to the North and carry off the very pride of the island? Were English girls not good enough for him, that he must needs come up and take away Sheila Mackenzie, and keep her there in the South so that her friends and acquaintances saw no more of her? Before the marriage Mairi had a great liking and admiration for Mr. Lavender. She was so pleased to see Miss Sheila pleased that she approved of the young man, and thanked him in her heart for making her cousin and mistress so obviously happy. Perhaps, indeed, Mairi managed to fall in love with him a little bit herself, merely by force of example and through sympathy with Sheila; and she was rapidly forming very good opinions of the English race and their ways and their looks. But when Lavender took away Sheila from Borva a change came over Mairi's sentiments. She gradually fell in with the current opinions of the island—that it was a great pity Sheila had not married young Mr. Maclntyre of Sutherland, or some one who would have allowed her to remain among her own people. Mairi began to think that the English, though they were handsome and good-natured and free with their money, were on the whole a selfish race, inconsiderate and forgetful of promises. She began to dislike the English, and wished they would stay in their own country, and not interfere with other people.
"I hope he is very well," said Mairi dutifully: she could at least say that honestly.
"You will see him at two o'clock. He is coming in to luncheon; and he does not know you are here, and you are to be a great surprise to him, Mairi. And there is to be a greater surprise still; for we are going to make one of the rooms into the drawing-room at home; and you must open your boxes, and bring me down the heather and the peat, Mairi, and the two bottles; and then, you know, when the salmon is on the table, and the whisky and the beer, and Bras lying on the hearth-rug, and the peat-smoke all through the room, then you will come in and shake hands with him, and he will think he is in Borva again."
Mairi was a little puzzled. She did not understand the intention of this strange thing. But she went and fetched the materials she had brought with her from Lewis, and Sheila and she set to work.
It was a pleasant enough occupation for this bright forenoon, and Sheila, as she heard Mairi's sweet Highland speech, and as she brought from all parts of the house the curiosities sent her from the Hebrides, would almost have fancied she was superintending a "cleaning" of that museum-like little drawing-room at Borva. Skins of foxes, seals and deer, stuffed eagles and strange fishes, masses of coral and wonderful carvings in wood brought from abroad, shells of every size from every clime,—all these were brought together into Frank Lavender's smoking-room. The ordinary ornaments of the mantelpiece gave way to fanciful arrangements of peacocks' feathers. Fresh-blown ling and the beautiful spikes of the bell-heather formed the staple of the decorations, and Mairi had brought enough to adorn an assembly-room.
"That is like the Lewis people," Sheila said with a laugh: she had not been in as happy a mood for many a day. "I asked you to bring one peat, and of course you brought two. Tell the truth, Mairi: could you have forced yourself to bring one peat?"
"I wass thinking it was safer to bring sa two," replied Mairi, blushing all over the fair and pretty face.
And indeed, there being two peats, Sheila thought she might as well try an experiment with one. She crumbled down some pieces, put them on a plate, lit them, and placed the plate outside the open window, on the sill. Presently a new, sweet, half-forgotten fragrance came floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent of the peat. Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke a house—any one, that is to say, who did not save the smoke for his thatch. And who was so particular as Sheila had been about having the clothes come in from the washing dried so that they should not retain this very odor that seemed now to delight her?
At last the room was finished, and Sheila contemplated it with much satisfaction. The table was laid, and on the white cloth stood the bottles most familiar to Borva. The peat-smoke still lingered in the air: she could not have wished anything to be better.
Then she went off to look after the luncheon, and Mairi was permitted to go down and explore the mysteries of the kitchen. The servants were not accustomed to this interference and oversight, and might have resented it, only that Sheila had proved a very good mistress to them, and had shown, too, that she would have her own way when she wanted it. Suddenly, as Sheila was explaining to Mairi the use of some particular piece of mechanism, she heard a sound that made her heart jump. It was now but half-past one, and yet that was surely her husband's foot in the hall. For a moment she was too bewildered to know what to do. She heard him go straight into the very room she had been decorating, the door of which she had left open. Then, as she went up stairs, with her heart still beating fast, the first thing that met her eye was a tartan shawl belonging to Mairi that had been accidentally left in the passage. Her husband must have seen it.
"Sheila, what nonsense is this?" he said.
He was evidently in a hurry, and yet she could not answer: her heart was throbbing too quickly.
"Look here," he said: "I wish you'd give up this grotto-making till to-morrow. Mrs. Kavanagh, Mrs. Lorraine and Lord Arthur Redmond are coming here to luncheon at two. I suppose you can get something decent for them. What is the matter? What is the meaning of all this?"
And then his eyes rested on the tartan shawl, which he had really not noticed before.
"Who is in the house?" he said. "Have you asked some washerwoman to lunch?"
Sheila managed at last to say, "It is Mairi come from Stornoway. I was thinking you would be surprised to see her when you came in."
"And these preparations are for her?"
Sheila said nothing: there was that in the tone of her husband's voice which was gradually bringing her to herself, and giving her quite sufficient firmness.
"And now that this girl has come up, I suppose you mean to introduce her to all your friends; and I suppose you expect those people who are coming in half an hour to sit down at table with a kitchen-maid?"
"Mairi," said Sheila, standing quite erect, but with her eyes cast down, "is my cousin."
"Your cousin! Don't be ridiculous, Sheila. You know very well that Mairi is nothing more or less than a scullery-maid; and I suppose you mean to take her out of the kitchen and introduce her to people, and expect her to sit down at table with them. Is not that so?" She did not answer, and he went on impatiently: "Why was I not told that this girl was coming to stay at my house? Surely I have some right to know what guests you invite, that I may be able at least to ask my friends not to come near the house while they are in it."
"That I did not tell you before—yes, that was a pity," said Sheila, sadly and calmly. "But it will be no trouble to you. When Mrs. Lorraine comes up at two o'clock there will be luncheon for her and for her friends. She will not have to sit down with any of my relations or with me, for if they are not fit to meet her, I am not; and it is not any great matter that I do not meet her at two o'clock."
There was no passion of any sort in the measured and sad voice, nor in the somewhat pale face and downcast eyes. Perhaps it was this composure that deceived Frank Lavender: at all events, he turned and walked out of the house, satisfied that he would not have to introduce this Highland cousin to his friends, and just as certain that Sheila would repent of her resolve and appear in the dining-room as usual.
Sheila went down stairs to the kitchen, where Mairi still stood awaiting her. She gave orders to one of the servants about having luncheon laid in the dining-room at two, and then she bade Mairi follow her up stairs.
"Mairi," she said, when they were alone, "I want you to put your things in your trunk at once—in five minutes if you can: I shall be waiting for you."
"Miss Sheila!" cried the girl, looking up to her friend's face with a sudden fright seizing her heart, "what is the matter with you? You are going to die!"
"There is nothing the matter, Mairi. I am going away."
She uttered the words placidly, but there was a pained look about the lips that could not be concealed, and her face, unknown to herself, had the whiteness of despair in it.
"Going away!" said Mairi, in a bewildered way. "Where are you going, Miss Sheila?"
"I will tell you by and by. Get your trunk ready, Mairi. You are keeping me waiting."
Then she called for a servant, who was sent for a cab; and by the time the vehicle appeared Mairi was ready to get into it, and her trunk was put on the top. Then, clad in the rough blue dress that she used to wear in Borva, and with no appearance of haste or fear in the calm and death-like face, Sheila came out from her husband's house and found herself alone in the world. There were two little girls, the daughters of a neighbor, passing by at the time: she patted them on the head and bade them good-morning. Could she recollect, five minutes thereafter, having seen them? There was a strange and distant look in her eyes.
She got into the cab and sat down by Mairi, and then took the girl's hand. "I am sorry to take you away, Mairi," she said; but she was apparently not thinking of Mairi, nor of the house she was leaving, nor yet of the vehicle in which she was so strangely placed. Was she thinking of a certain wild and wet day in the far Hebrides, when a young bride stood on the decks of a great vessel and saw the home of her childhood and the friends of her youth fade back into the desolate waste of the sea? Perhaps there may have been some unconscious influence in this picture to direct her movements at this moment, for of definite resolves she had none. When Mairi told her that the cabman wanted to know whither he was to drive, she merely answered, "Oh yes, Mairi, we will go to the station;" and Mairi added, addressing the man, "It was the Euston Station." Then they drove away.
"Are you going home?" said the young girl, looking up with a strange foreboding and sinking of the heart to the pale face and distant eyes—"Are you going home, Miss Sheila?"
"Oh yes, we are going home, Mairi," was the answer she got, but the tone in which it was uttered filled her mind with doubt, and something like despair.