A Princess of Thule

Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady Leveret, who was one of Lavender’s especial patrons, and to whom he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that she was a stranger, an interloper, a “third wheel to the cart.” She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and monotonous thing – not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place; she did not know where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the wives and the daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the sea-life down in the South.

And as they drove along the King’s Road on this afternoon she suddenly called out, “Look, Frank!”

On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him.

“It is Mr. Ingram,” said Sheila.

“Which is Mr. Ingram?” asked Mrs. Lorraine, with considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend. “Not that little man?”

“Yes,” said Lavender, coldly; he could have wished that Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton.

“Won’t you stop and speak to him?” said Sheila, with great surprise.

“We are late already,” said her husband. “But if you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you may.”

Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with pillars, overlooking the broad street and the sea.

But next morning she said to him, “I suppose you will be riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?”

“I suppose so.”

“I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there,” she said.

“Ladies don’t generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but of course you don’t care for that.”

“I shall not go if you do not wish me.”

“Oh, nonsense. You may as well go. What is the use of professing to keep observances that you don’t understand? And it will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.”

The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend, to whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk Southerly breeze blowing fresh in from the sea, and the leaves were leaping white in the sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air, or the gray sky, or the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would have challenged her deerhound to a race, and fled down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house. She did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel. She went up the steps, opened the door, and entered the square hall. There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter. Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room, with a cigarette in his hand. He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her, with amazement in his eyes.

“Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for me?” he asked.

“He is not here,” said Sheila. “I have come for you by myself.”

For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but directly he said, with a fine air of carelessness, “Well, that is very good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband comes?”

So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air and the roar of the waves.

“Well, Sheila,” he said, “this is very good of you, really; where is Mr. Lavender?”

“He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the morning.”

“And what do you do?”

“I sit at the window.”

“Don’t you go boating?”

“No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And yesterday it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him nothing about the people here or the fishing.”

“But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would like to know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their wool, and so on; but you would find the fishermen here don’t live in that way at all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their clothing in the shops. They never eat any sort of seaweed or dye with it, either. However, I will tell you all about it by-and-by. At present I suppose you are returning to your hotel.”

A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as she turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her eyes.

“I came to see you,” she said. “But perhaps you have an engagement. I do not wish to take up any of your time; if you please, I will go back alone to – ”

“Now, Sheila,” he said, with a smile, and with the old friendly look she knew so well, “you must not talk like that to me. I won’t have it. You know I came down to Brighton because you asked me to come; and my time is altogether at your service.”

“And you have no engagement just now?” said Sheila, with her face brightening.

“No.”

“And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and nets? Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles? It is a very good wind.”

“Oh, I should be very glad,” said Ingram slowly. “I should be delighted. But, you see, wouldn’t your husband think it – wouldn’t he you know – wouldn’t it seem just a little odd to him if you were to go away like that?”

“He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine,” said Sheila quite simply. “He does not want me.”

“Of course you told him you were coming to see – you were going to call at the Old Ship?”

“Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not return for a long time.”

“Are you quite sure, Sheila?”

“Yes, I am quite sure.”

“Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with you. I shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have one of those small boats committed to our own exclusive charge. I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and hold you responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare me for whatever may befall.”

“Oh, no,” said Sheila. “You must work very hard, and I will see whether you remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if we can have some long lines we might get some fish. Will they pay more than thirty shillings for their long lines in this country?”

“I don’t know,” said Ingram. “I believe most of the fishermen here live upon the shillings they get from the passers-by after a little conversation about the weather and their hard lot in life; so that one doesn’t talk to them more than one can help.”

“But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?”

“I don’t know that, either. I suppose there is some good fishing in the Winter, and sometimes in the Summer they get some big shoals of mackerel.”

“It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of the men of the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been very lucky all through the last season, and it was near six thousand ling they got.”

“But I suppose they are in debt to some curer up about Habost?”

“Oh, no; not at all. It is their own boat; it is not hired to them. And it is a very good boat whatever.”

That unlucky “whatever” had slipped out inadvertently: the moment she had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward her companion, fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could she have made such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most particular about the avoidance of the word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know that from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram, much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvapost and Loch Roag than with the Sheila of Notting Hill and Kensington Gardens did not perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in any fashion whatsoever.

By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when the pecuniary negotiations were over, Sheila was invited to walk down over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that his handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The man put off in his boat to shore again, much relieved in mind, but not a little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in which she accomplished it.

“Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?” Ingram called out to Sheila when they had fairly got under way.

She did not answer for a moment; she was still watching with a critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she said, “If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good lookout, I will put on my gloves.”

She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care, and, with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.

“You did not use to fear the saltwater or the sun on your hands, Sheila,” said her companion.

“I do not now,” she said, “but Frank would be displeased to see my hands brown. He has himself such pretty hands.”

What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender’s delicate hands he was not going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at this moment to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air of great satisfaction and content.

And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on this brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay away to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint cloud of smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was unheard; the only sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing of the waves at the prow, and the hissing and gurgling of the water along the boat. The South wind blew fresh and sweet around them, filling the broad white sails and fluttering the small pennon up there in the blue. It seemed strange to Sheila that she should be so much alone with so great a town close by – that under the boom she could catch a glimpse of the noisy Parade without hearing any of its noise. And there, away to windward, there was no mere trace of city life – only the great blue sea, with its waves flowing on toward them from out of the far horizon, and with here and there a pale ship just appearing on the line where the sky and ocean met.

“Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?” said Ingram, getting out his pipe.

“Oh, very well. But you must not smoke Mr. Ingram; you must attend to the boat.”

“Don’t you feel at home in her yet?” he asked.

“I am not afraid of her,” said Sheila, regarding the lines of the small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, “but she is very narrow in the beam, and she carries too much sail for so small a thing. I suppose they have not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and no narrows to go through.”

“It doesn’t remind you of Lewis, does it?” he said, filling his pipe all the same.

“A little – out there it does,” she said, turning to the broad plain of the sea, “but it is not much that is in this country that is like the Lewis; sometimes I think that I shall be a stranger when I go back to the Lewis, and the people will scarcely know me, and everything will be changed.”

He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe, which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, “I want you to tell me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking about many things, and especially about your home in the North, in that sad way. You did not do that when you came to London first; and yet it was then that you might have been struck and shocked by the difference. You had no home-sickness for a long time. But is it home-sickness, Sheila?”

How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of giving him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it occurred to her that she would be wronging her husband in seeking such sympathy from a friend as she had been expecting, and expecting in vain, from him.

“Perhaps it is home-sickness,” she said, in a low voice, while she pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet. “I should like to see Borva again.”

“But you don’t want to live there all your life?” he said. “You know that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your husband could manage it; and I don’t suppose he can. Surely your papa does not expect you to go and live in Lewis always?”

“Oh, no,” she said, eagerly. “You must not think my papa wishes anything like that. It will be much less than that he was thinking of when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do not wish to live in the Lewis always; I have no dislike to London – none at all – only that – that – ” And here she paused.

“Come, Sheila,” he said in the old paternal way to which she had been accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old days of their friendship, “I want you to be frank with me, and tell me what is the matter. I know there is something wrong; I have seen it for some time back. Now, you know I took the responsibility of your marriage on my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to your papa and myself for your comfort and happiness. Do you understand?”

She still hesitated, grateful in her inmost heart, but still doubtful as to what she should do.

“You look on me as an intermeddler,” he said with a smile.

“No, no,” she said; “you have always been our best friend.”

“But I have intermeddled, none the less. Don’t you remember when I told you that I was prepared to accept the consequences?”

It seemed so long a time since then!

“And once having to intermeddle, I can’t stop it, don’t you see? Now, Sheila, you’ll be a good little girl and do what I tell you. You’ll take the boat a long way out; we’ll put her head around, take down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till you tell me all about your troubles, and then we’ll see what can be done.”

She obeyed in silence with her face grown grave enough in anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness, she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure her was right for her to do.

How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs above them! Brighton, lying farther to the West, had become dim and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King’s road and all its carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to be close in shore; the two piers were foreshortened into small dusky masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small white and pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.

Ingram took his seat by Sheila’s side, so that he should not have to look in her downcast face; and then with some little preliminary nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She told it to sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed how matters stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He let her talk in her own simple and artless way: and the girl spoke to him, after a little while, with an earnestness which showed how deeply she felt her position. At the very outset she told him that her love for her husband had never altered for a moment – that all the prayers and desire of her heart were that they two might be to each other as she had at one time hoped they would be when he got to know her better.

She went over all the story of her coming to London, of her first experiences there, of the conviction that grew upon her that her husband was somehow disappointed with her, and was anxious now that she should conform to the ways and habits of the people with whom he associated. She spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how heartsick she was with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which he showed. She spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of the way in which he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her showing him, so long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she had in her heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love involved. And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and here it seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband’s conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a large number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was the most natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so out of communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an especial friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at times it hurt her to be left alone – but here the girl broke down somewhat, and Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.

These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were difficult to answer. But out of these revelations – which rather took the form of a cry than of any distinct statement – he formed a notion of Sheila’s position sufficiently exact; and the more he looked at it the more alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of her than her husband did. He knew the latent force of character that underlay all her submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some possibly unintentional wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl – who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to be gentle and obedient – was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila’s waiting-maid. Ingram had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he had formed his own opinion of her. The opinion, based upon nothing, was wholly wrong, but it served to increase, if that were possible, his sympathy with Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on her behalf at whatever cost.

“Sheila,” he said, gravely putting his hand on her shoulder as if she were still the little girl who used to run wild with him about the Borva rocks, “you are a good woman.”

He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the wife he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would suffer no imputation against her husband to be uttered in her presence, however true it might be, or however much she had cause to know it to be true.

“And, after all,” he said in a lighter voice, “I think I can do something to mend all this. I will say for Frank Lavender that he is a thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when you appeal to him, and put things fairly before him, and show him what he ought to do, there is not a more honorable and straightforward man in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London altogether – get him to take to serious landscape painting on some wild coast – the Galway coast, for example.”

“Why not the Lewis?” said Sheila, her heart turning to the North as naturally as the needle.

“Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away from hotels and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all day, and you would do the cooking in some small cottage you could rent, you know.”

“You make me so happy in thinking of that,” she said, with her eyes growing well again.

“And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or idyllic about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is likely to make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some well-earned money. And you might have a boat like this.”

“We are drifting too far in,” said Sheila, suddenly rising. “Shall we go back now?”

“By all means,” he said; and so the small boat was put under canvas again, and was soon making way through the breezy water.

“Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn’t it?” said Ingram.

“Yes,” said the girl, with her face full of hope.

“And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable together, and making heaps of money, you can turn around and abuse me, and say I made all the misery to begin with.”

“Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?” she said in a low voice.

“Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two young folks who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to interfere between two people who are married – that is a certain quarrel. I wonder what you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding me get out of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English you prefer?”

“I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good friends, and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to me.”

“Ah, well, we’ll see.”

When they got back to shore it was half-past one.

“You will come and have some luncheon with us?” said Sheila when they had gone up the steps and into the King’s road.

“Will that lady be there?”

“Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.”

“Then I’ll come some other time.”

“But why not come now?” said Sheila. “It is not necessary that you will see us only to speak about those things we have been talking over?”

“Oh, no, not at all. If you and Mr. Lavender were by yourselves, I should come at once.”